Happy New Year! Mine started with views like these and adventures with Mum and Dad!
Here is a little insight into our Durrant Christmas in the sun.
I met Mum and Dad at Dar es
Salaam airport. The first challenge was to actually find the bus that we were
going to catch to Tanga.
Imagine a bus station with no helpful signs, hundreds of people just milling
around (Staring at the lost white people!) and 30 degree heat, that was us for about 3 hours. We eventually located
the correct bus stop, waited around getting very hot and squashed into 3 seats
that were really made for 2 people, we were squashed but off to Tanga. We
arrived in Tanga 7
hours later and were met by a taxi driver who took us the extra 42 kilometres
to Bahari
Pori…….it seemed like miles and miles as the taxi decided to cut out every
kilometre or so!
It had been a very long day but we had arrived at our house for the next ten days. It was definitely worth the journey when I was woken up by the warm sunshine streaming through the Banda and looked at the beautiful view.
I never imagined that I would be swimming
in the Indian ocean Christmas day! It really didn’t feel like Christmas day as
we tucked into our fresh fish fingers for lunch but Santa did deliver to the
Banda and we did play the good old Christmas afternoon games. ( And Mum and Dad
had their afternoon nap!).
Our days were filled with lots of sunshine and walks along the beach just a few steps from our Banda.
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| Finding shade and a good spot for a nap! |
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| Eating delicious food with an amazing view. |
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| Walking through the Mangroves to investigate the rock pools. |
Found shady spots to enjoy the beach from.
We did venture away from the beach some days. We travelled along the bumpy dirt track to the local town Pangani on local transport. This normally involved sitting or standing squashed into funny positions and holding on tight so you didn't fall into the many staring locals!
One evening we took a boat trip up the river Pangani with a local guide 'Hot Hot'.
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| These were the coconuts being picked. |
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| We had a little helper to carry them back to the village |
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| The little helpers were very interested in my camera. |
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| And these were the same coconuts being drunk a few minutes later! |
After a very relaxing 10 days at the
Banda we decided that it would be good to get back to Dar via Sadani
National Park. We hired a van, driver
and guide, and got up at 5am ready for
our journey. Little did we know what adventures were ahead of us. When we got
to the national park we discovered that they had had torrential rain over night
and even though he was warn not to venture to far into the park the driver was determined to show us some animals
so off we went slipping and sliding along the muddy tracks. We were enjoying
watching the giraffes and Baboons that we past. That was until we drove off the
track and into the rather muddy ditch at the side of the track. The van was not
going anywhere! We climbed out of the van bare footed into the slimy mud,
helped to collect some large sticks to put under the wheels and give it a push
out.
The van was still not budging and the tyres were sinking fast into the
mud. After lots of moving sticks about and trying to jack the car up the driver
and guide and driver announced ‘we’re really sorry!’ and proceeded to strip off
down to their pants! For the next hour or so the driver and guide were lying
around under the van scooping mud out from under the van and did ask me what
time my flight was the next day which was slightly worrying. The van still
moved no where! In
the mean time we had got very muddy feet and had a visit from a nosy family of Baboons. We also discovered that they
had no reception on their phones so couldn’t contact the people that were
suppose to be rescuing us. Luckily my trusty very basic Nokia phone had
reception so after just 3 hours the park warden arrived to rescue us in his
sparkling new 4X4 but it didn’t stay like that for long. It was still pretty
hairy as the metal string which they were towing it with snapped a few times
but eventually after lots of revving, slipping and sliding the van was eventually pulled
out with only a coating of mud!
Just when we thought we were on our way back to
Dar we came across a crane on a lorry which was blocking the road so we had to
wait for it to be unloaded before we could carry on our journey.
We did get to Dar eventually very muddy and tired! I flew back to Mwanza the next day and left Mum and Dad to more adventures in Nairobi. There were some many other funny, beautiful and relaxing moments but I didn't want to make you too jealous!
Term 2 here I come......I have just got back from day 1 and although I didn't enjoy getting up in the dark again it was lovely to be back!
