As usual we had our driving brief by Jan and we were headed for the capital of Tanzania- Dodoma which is about 440kms away.
Jan reminded me to be aware and careful of the police as they will fine you for any infringement ( not driving in shoes, speeding, defects) to supplement their wages .
We pulled out of Snake Park Arusha through the police check point just outside but weren't stopped as BJ had built and donated the police check point area and building to the local police ( as this provides an extra level of security to the snake bite clinic and camping park) so we were never pulled up leaving or entering the park.
Nice drive through the country side whilst slowing down regularly for speed bumps on the highways and also 50km speed zone areas with lots of deadly speed bumps in local village areas- police love this as lots of people speed through these districts. It's handy when these signs are around but lots of time they aren't so you need to keep alert for them, especially when your hooting down the highway and along comes one in an unlimited speed zone.
At the start of every village you are welcomed with the village sign and when you leave they give the same sign with a line through it. This sign means that you are now leaving the village of Himiti
And the speed limit of 50 Kms ends they also give the same sign with a line through it. They don't say how much the speed limit is now just its no longer 50.
The area has very bright red volcanic soil which is great for their farming of crops plus used to make their homes and buildings.
We had travelled about 130kms on the main bitumen highway when we approached a mountain range and the road changed to a one lane dirt road which was very weird as this is the main road to the capital and you then had to share it with transport trucks, buses and cars.
We thought we had taken a wrong turn as surely this couldn't be the main highway however could see Jan and Amanda behind us in the distance so kept going.
We continued on for about another 80 kms when we encounted a brand new 10 metre wide highway that went for about 10 kms then back to dirt until we came across a 100 km new highway that the government is currently have built by a Chinese contractor. We still had the take the dirt road beside the road which was mostly a goat track with red slippery mud along most of it( at least the rain kept the dust at bay)
Considering the state of the roads this was truly a civil engineering masterpiece with swathes of land excavated out to make way for the highway. They were mining the bluestone out of a local mountain and had several crushing plants and batching yards- unbelievable given we were in the middle of a developing African country.
The new president Mr Magufuli who was elected in 2015 is nick named Bulldozer due to his focus on nation building with roads and their natural gas resources.
We then got off the side tracks onto the new road which was being prepared for surfacing just as we hit a mountain range after an afternoon shower and were met with a river of water coming down and eroding the civil works. Due to all the rain lately the Chinese had stopped construction waiting for a dry period to resume.
Started to see the odd baobab trees along the way as well. Besides the cycads I was very keen to see these trees on the trip.
The name baobab is Arabic which means "father of many seeds" and can grow to between 5 and 25 metres as solitary individuals, and are large and distinctive elements of the Savannah. Some live to over 1000 years and lose their leaves for 9 months of the year in the dry season. The span of the roots actually exceeded the tree's height, a factor that enables it to survive in a dry climate.
We continued on for another couple of hundred kms of either dirt or bitumen roads until we finally got to Dodoma at 4 pm. It had taken 8 hours to travel 440kms due to the roads, continual stopping for animals, local villages and comfort stops! We would have done 900kms at home in that time.
Dodoma is smack bang in the middle of the country and was a nice idea at the time. Like all custom built capitals ( think Canberra) it never really caught on even through it was along the old caravan route connecting Central Africa to the sea and it was of little consequence until 1973 when it was named the capital. The original plan was to move the entire government from Dar es Salaam however even through the parliament meets in Dodoma all the economic and political centre remains in Dar es Salaam.
As we were arriving late and unable to set up for Amanda to cook we were booked into a local motel called Dear Mama Hotel ( it also had onsite parking and security) so we quickly checked in and headed to the bar for afternoon refreshments of Kilimanjaro largies for the boys and the local gin Knoyagi for the girls on the deck followed by a meal then off to bed.
No comments:
Post a Comment