It's 630km to Arusha. We've got a full tank of gas, half a bag of melted chocolate, it's getting dark and we're wearing sunglasses. Hit it!
Zanzibar was finished, so it was now over to me to provide transport to Arusha. We had only four full days, and while the distance was a manageable 630km, the tuktuk wasn't finished and even when it was the top speed would only be 50kmh if we were lucky. This might be tight. The last few bits of work on the tuktuk took longer than the 'hour or so' I predicted, and we didn't hit the road until 4pm on day one. This coincided nicely with rush hour, so we trundled off into a chugging, beeping mass of traffic.
A tuktuk is halfway between a motorbike and a car, with three tiny wheels and an anaemic 200cc engine. It accelerates slowly and handles badly, but the plus side is that it is narrow enough to drive like a bike a lot of the time. This meant that we could cut through gaps, ride along the side of the road, or follow the local drivers and take shortcuts over the pavement. Despite this, it took the best part of two hours to get the 30km across and out of Dar, and another two hours of hairy nighttime driving to cover the remaining 50km to the coastal town of Bagamoyo (and lucked out by finding the excellent.
Our early start the next morning was slightly delayed by a very enthusiastic South African fan of The Zebra who wanted to know all the details. I'd like to say that I was annoyed but frankly I was loving the attention. Soon enough we were rolling through the villages, waving at the whistles, cheers and astonished looks that we were getting as we cruised past. A slow top speed combined with an even slower uphill speed meant that progress was somewhat stately, but after the first day we had managed a respectable 260km, comfortably within target.
The next day the plan was for much of the same. I had fitted speakers to The Zebra before we left, but the sound wasn't great so early in the day we stopped off and, as you do, got a carpenter by the side of the road to make me some speaker boxes while we waited. With some beefed up audio it was only a matter of time before the power ballads came on, and we looked even stranger belting out some Celine, Whitney and Bonnie whilst trundling past the mountains and plains of North Eastern Tanzania.
After an overnight in Moshi at the foot of Kilimanjaro it was only a short stint to Arusha so I was looking forward to a relaxed day, but we were held up when a stop due to a loose wheel turned into a fruitless attempt by a local mechanic to fix the sketchy brakes. Our woes got worse when, after two days of being relatively reliable, The Zebra decided to refuse to start after stopping. This led to stops at police roadblocks turning comical with the police running and pushing to get us going again. But despite the stop-starting, we still had time to do the most important task for the day - getting some glamorous photos of The Zebra. The road took us past a small lake, and we figured that would be the perfect spot. Well, that nearly turned out to be a disaster.
The road leading down to the lake was just a mud track that quickly deteriorated, but just as Colleen said "maybe we should turn back" we hit the point at which the brakes could no longer fight the effects of gravity. We accelerated down the hill, bouncing wildly from side to side and sending a small group of previously waving children diving into a bush to get out of our way. I really thought that we were going to tip over, but we caught a lucky bounce and somehow made it to the bottom in one piece and on our wheels. And the worst part of it was that there weren't even any decent viewpoints of the lake! The way back up was also fraught as The Zebra didn't have the power to make it up on under her own steam so we had to get a couple of local guys to push us. Hugely relieved to still be on the road, we didn't dare stop again until we got to our campsite in Arusha.
The next morning, after nearly killing an older German man by accepting his offer to bump start us in the morning, we set off to catch our plane to the Serengeti...
Zanzibar was finished, so it was now over to me to provide transport to Arusha. We had only four full days, and while the distance was a manageable 630km, the tuktuk wasn't finished and even when it was the top speed would only be 50kmh if we were lucky. This might be tight. The last few bits of work on the tuktuk took longer than the 'hour or so' I predicted, and we didn't hit the road until 4pm on day one. This coincided nicely with rush hour, so we trundled off into a chugging, beeping mass of traffic.
A tuktuk is halfway between a motorbike and a car, with three tiny wheels and an anaemic 200cc engine. It accelerates slowly and handles badly, but the plus side is that it is narrow enough to drive like a bike a lot of the time. This meant that we could cut through gaps, ride along the side of the road, or follow the local drivers and take shortcuts over the pavement. Despite this, it took the best part of two hours to get the 30km across and out of Dar, and another two hours of hairy nighttime driving to cover the remaining 50km to the coastal town of Bagamoyo (and lucked out by finding the excellent.
Our early start the next morning was slightly delayed by a very enthusiastic South African fan of The Zebra who wanted to know all the details. I'd like to say that I was annoyed but frankly I was loving the attention. Soon enough we were rolling through the villages, waving at the whistles, cheers and astonished looks that we were getting as we cruised past. A slow top speed combined with an even slower uphill speed meant that progress was somewhat stately, but after the first day we had managed a respectable 260km, comfortably within target.
The next day the plan was for much of the same. I had fitted speakers to The Zebra before we left, but the sound wasn't great so early in the day we stopped off and, as you do, got a carpenter by the side of the road to make me some speaker boxes while we waited. With some beefed up audio it was only a matter of time before the power ballads came on, and we looked even stranger belting out some Celine, Whitney and Bonnie whilst trundling past the mountains and plains of North Eastern Tanzania.
The road leading down to the lake was just a mud track that quickly deteriorated, but just as Colleen said "maybe we should turn back" we hit the point at which the brakes could no longer fight the effects of gravity. We accelerated down the hill, bouncing wildly from side to side and sending a small group of previously waving children diving into a bush to get out of our way. I really thought that we were going to tip over, but we caught a lucky bounce and somehow made it to the bottom in one piece and on our wheels. And the worst part of it was that there weren't even any decent viewpoints of the lake! The way back up was also fraught as The Zebra didn't have the power to make it up on under her own steam so we had to get a couple of local guys to push us. Hugely relieved to still be on the road, we didn't dare stop again until we got to our campsite in Arusha.
The next morning, after nearly killing an older German man by accepting his offer to bump start us in the morning, we set off to catch our plane to the Serengeti...
