Feeling the Heat

10/05/2012
Thank the heavens, after a horror of a day yesterday, today I woke up feeling much better. We were off early, eating breakfast and lunch on the run as we made our way to the Tanzanian coast and Dar es Salaam. Despite the packed lunch, we still had a few pit stops for coffee and snacks. One of my favourite things about east Africa would have to be the samosas - they are everywhere, dirt cheap and amazingly tasty. I don't know exactly what is in them (and I think it is safer if I don't know), but they are little triangle parcels of deep fried goodness. At our last stop at a road station not far from Dar, I bought a couple to keep me going until dinner.


It was a classic truck day, with everyone keeping themselves entertained by reading, catching up on their diary entries, watching the countryside go past, playing card games or having a general chat. A few of us were discussing our worst ever date stories. I told the tale of how one weekend I had managed to crash a 'romantic' night in Adelaide for my friend and her sort-of boyfriend at the time: safe to say, it was well and truly crashed. We also played 'Root, Shoot, Marry', and everyone on Jozi was put under pressure by Mitch and Jules to name names. It made for a very interesting afternoon and some very red faces.

The Day After the Night Before

9/05/2012
These are the travel notes that I wrote for myself about the 9th May, 2012:

• Today was a complete write-off
• I woke up most likely still drunk
• Things went downhill pretty quickly
• Couldn't keep anything down all day 
• Felt like death warmed up trying to drink a milkshake at the Arusha shops
• Spent the entire rest of the day on the beach, not moving and wanting to die
• Tried taking anti-nausea tablet when we stopped at the White Parrot campsite for the night. 
• Fail. Threw it right back up.
• On second attempt managed to keep down another anti-nausea tablet and some hydration salts, with a handful of plain pasta for dinner.
• Went to bed very early

Sunrise Proposals and Moonlit Hickies

8/05/2012
I was missing out, I was starting to get a little peeved that I was missing out, and I was letting our safari guide  know it. Poor Robert, I don't think he quite knew how to handle all the questions I was throwing at him as to why I didn't get to go on the "special" early early game drive.

"Why didn't you ask me? I said last night that I would be happy to get up earlier if it meant we could go game driving for longer".

"Julia, Dave and Jodie went, there was still plenty of room in the vehicle!"

"So, they're not actually on a game drive?"

"They've gone hot air ballooning? Awh, I wanted to go hot air ballooning. Why didn't I get the option of going hot air ballooning?"

"It's a surprise? Dave is surprising Jodie? Oh. Ohhhhhh!"

I'm in the Serengeti, B**ch!

7/05/2012
Following the brown dirt track towards the horizon, marvelling at the endless lines of wildebeest and zebra on their annual migration across the Serengeti plains...... It's hard to get much more magical than that. Then a voice pipes up:

'So, when is this going to get interesting?'

...........Uhhh, Jules, I don't know what you were expecting, but how can anything get better than this? (I was wrong, by the way. It gets MUCH more exciting. But more on that later).

Monkeys Are Evil

6/05/2012
When you pass what is supposedly just another settlement along the road, but are told by your safari guide that the entire village is made up of one man, his ten wives and his hundred-or-so children, you know that this is not going to be an ordinary day. TIA.