November 17 - Drive to Tan Swiss Lodge

 We left Selous promptly at 7 a.m. and drove as quickly as possible through the Nyerere National Park where the roads are decent gravel.  Partway through the park we encountered a dead giraffe at the side of the road with 5 hyenas gorging themselves.  It was the most amazing sight and very rare according to our seasoned fellow safari slickers.  Finding animals on a kill is rare.  The road deteriorated, sometimes we could only drive at a crawl and other times we had pavement for brief times going up mountains.  The drive was extremely interesting.  We traveled through lots of villages again and stopped and bought fruit and sodas at least 3 times.  The first village after leaving the park was the village of our guide, Rashidi.  He showed us where he grew up and went to school.  His wife was his neighbour and they now live in Dar es Salaam with 3 children.  He is Muslim and his wife is Roman Catholic and it is no problem at all.  We stopped for lunch in a village and visited with the family who offered us a spot to eat.  Their daughter came to me and said 'my name is Moa'.  We saved them parts of our lunches and gave them to the girl to carry to her mother.  The family ran a pharmacy and broke up quartz stone into decorative gravel.  











 

We drove through high mountain passes with nary a guardrail in sight. Fred bought 20 mangos for 2,000 shillings which is about $1 Canadian.  They were delicious.  Our trip was 300 km and it took 10 hours.  

As soon as we entered Mikumi National Park a male lion crossed the road in front of us.  This road is the main highway.  Animals are on either side of the road all the time and the fines for hitting them are posted along the road.  If you kill an elephant or giraffe you have to pay $15,000 US.  The speed limit is 50 km and you would best heed it to avoid fines.  

We arrived at the Tan Swiss Lodge at 5 p.m. and after being assigned our rooms went straight to the pool.  We enjoyed beer and gas station chips at the poolside before supper where we also caught up with our emails, blogs and social media.  It's the best internet we've had in days.  

We had a lovely dinner at 7:30 and went to our rooms at 9:30 to prepare for another busy game drive tomorrow.

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