Monday 21 June - Iringa to Morogoro

Wow but Tanzania is a huge country and there's such a wonderful diversity of scenery. We had a shorter trip today but very interesting. We set off from our lovely Iringa campsite on a good raod thinking it would be plain sailing. Little did we know we were soon to go down a spectacular pass and enter the Rift Valley - a truly beautiful area. The scenery is spectacular but there are a lot of roadworks with the usual stop/ go waits. The vegetation kept changing for bushveld to riverine bush to indigenous forests of giant baobab trees. Every corner brings a new surprise - some of them in the form of buses and trucks hurtling down the highway!!!

We've developed a good regimen for our diet on the road. We decided not to buy food along the road to avoid getting tummy upsets. We have instant oats and fruit for breakfast, cream crackers, cheese, cashew nuts and fruit during the day and a meal made from our store of canned food in the evening. We haven't had any problems in the tummy department so far. We also carried enough drinking water from Port Elizabeth, although that is now coming to an end.

We reached Morogoro in the early afternoon. We drove around looking for a likely camping spot but it didn't look promising. We asked a few people along the road but we didn't have enough Swahili and they didn't have enough English so it was a bit frustrating. Morogoro is a busy, dusty little town and we were beginning to get desperate when we saw a lady who turned out to be an American living in the town. She suggested we try Hotel Sophia of the nearby Mama Pierina's. Our Bradt guide describes Mama P's as an unpretentious place with good food. Unpretentious it certainly is but we decided it was passable for a one night stopover and at least our car would be in a locked courtyard. The owner is a wonderful character of Greek/ Italian extraction who was born in Tanzania and lived here her whole life. The guest house was started by her mother and she has carried it on. It seems some serious maintenance but she is in the process of upgrading some of the rooms. We joined some of the people in the bar to watch Portugal beat North Korea. It was fun as we couldn't believe that Portugal just kept scoring.

Our evening turned  out to be very entertaining. The vegetable lasagne was delicious and they even served it with a Greek salad. The feta is locally made and too salty to be palatable but we enjoyed our meal. One thing that is really prolific in the area is delicious tomatoes and we made the most of them. We met up with a young Irish couple who had been doing some work on a school computer centre in Lilongwe and had made their way up to Tanzania by bus, train and taxi. How's that for adventurous? They were making their way to Nairobi where they'll catch their return flight to Ireland. Demetri, the owner of the guest house, kept us entertained with her own stories of life in Tanzania. She's a very colourful character who's a friend of all. She seems to take care of a number of people within her guest house community and can be described as a "tough lady".

I have discovered than most buildings in Tanzania, including the guest house, don't have glass in the windows. They have strong bars and mosquito mesh. It's all one needs in this hot climate but it does pose a problem in heavy rain with the wind blowing. Of course one can't really block out noise which is a problem when people pass on the corridor or when the call to prayer is sounded from the local mosque in the early hours of the morning. We managed to get a reasonable night's sleep and departed early Tuesday morning, leaving one of our vuvuzelas in the bar.