A Tropical Christmas!

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. 

Finding shade and a good spot for a nap!

Eating delicious food with an amazing view.

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'.

We stopped half way at a local village where they served us coconut milk that couldn't have been any fresher.

These were the coconuts being picked.

We had a little helper to carry them back to the village

The little helpers were very interested in my camera.

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!