Day 28: Thurs 27th Feb: Serengeti to Mwanza - start odo 7911km travelled.

We leave at 7:30 for a 4 hour drive through the park to the gate, seeing quite a bit of the usual suspects in game (buffalo, wildebeest, impala, warthog, elephant, giraffe, zebra - lots and lots of pyjama party).

After a tea break at the lodge just outside the park gate we head for Mwanza on Lake Victoria. The first 30km is good tar and we are justifiably surprised, then the road turns to s*** - 33km of horrendous deep potholed gravel, giving an average speed of less than 30km/hr. The driving is hectic and (as I've found out several times now) if I take my eyes off the road for one second I am in a pothole - even when it seems there is a good, smooth gravel or tar section, the road can turn ugly instantaneously. Still (touch wood) the Doddle is performing admirably.

We reach Mwanza at 4pm and the camp site chosen by Dave is at the yacht club (which has seen considerably better days). Next door is the Tilapia Hotel and we decide (as it's my birthday and all) to check in there and have a meal at their restaurant - all good. The room even had aircon and I got the garden guy to wash my car! The lake itself is quite beautiful and the town must have been quite something in its heyday (still some expat housing evident on the upper slopes of the town).

Day 29: Fri 28th Feb: Mwanza to Bush Camp 1 Odo 8190km.

We start the day with a ferry crossing of 45 minutes across the bay (the drive round is several hours) and sit next to a woman sipping Konyagie Gin at 10:00 in the morning! The ferry is pretty organized and there are several running to different spots along the coast. The Doddle attracts a lot of attention from people on the ferry because of the Nelson Mandela pictures and quotes.

After disembarking we get onto possibly the worst road we have ever seen for about 40km but fortunately there is tar in sight and we eventually increase speed. It is clear we will not make a registered camp site tonight (due to proximity of Rwanda border and length of journey) so we make a bush camp (our first) about 50km from the Tanzania Rwanda border post. There are Ankoli cattle milling around and a couple of herdsman - the cattle have huge horns but they are hollow. The herdsmen have a good laugh at us making food with a gas bottle even though we have a huge fire going for the meat to braai! We have a bush shower and the "other stuff" and sleep well.

The road coming to the bush camp had many trucks rolling along and many big potholes (it was a tar road though) and we wonder if the trucks will continue into the night - only one or two fortunately.

Day 30: Sat 1st March: Bush Camp 1 to Akagera National Park, Rwanda.

There is a traffic nightmare at the border post as a new border post is being built (by the Chinese of course) and we battle through raggedy lines of trucks and eventually cross the Akagera River where the Rusumo Falls is directly below the river bridge - reminds me of fast flowing molten chocolate. It is very mud enriched due to the heavy deforestation upstream, but the Rwandans now claim to have the source of the Nile in their own country.

The border crossing is easy as far as paperwork goes and we immediately get the idea that the Rwandans are quite jacked-up. As we drive into Rwanda there is an eerie lack of potholes in the same road, the people seem more smartly dressed and we see electrical reticulation along the road and to houses - quite unusual and unseen for a while now. The kids are very friendly, the bicycle and motorbike taxi drivers all wear official bibs and even the police wave and smile. There are no roadblocks yet and no barriers across the road a la Tanzania and neither are there horrendous speed bumps in and out of every village or town. But there is cultivation everywhere and right up to the edge of the road - and of course we're driving on the right hand side now.

We arrive at the National Park gate before lunch (admittedly after a fairly usual bad gravel road) and have lunch at the lodge - a SALAD, yippee!!!!

Fuel consumption still nearly 10km/litre!!