The landscape continually changes, making the road on this trek ever interesting. The drive from Iringa through to Morogoro took us through the most beautiful pass between forest clad mountains down to the plains of parks such as the Mikhumi below. The road was also a lot better, probably the upgrade of the TanZam highway we saw being done between Old Farmhouse and Iringa.

The trucks and busses are mad in Tanzania. Absolutely mad. They will blindly overtake 3 vehicles at break neck speed. It can be very scary and dangerous driving near them, we've seen a couple of near misses already! The cops were a bit better, they didn't pull us over the whole day! But still about 10 places along the road, which we now know Tanzania is famous for.

The highland areas of the Tanzanian south have towns with such potential. Morogoro has a prettier setting than Stellenbosch or the cape towns with their mountains in the background. Morogoro reminded us of a town below Monk's Cowl as the mountains towered 1000m above, covered in green forest. Just a pity the towns are so busy, badly laid out, dirty and uncomfortable. But to some, that's the beauty of Africa!

The highway took us through the Mikhumi National Park ($20 pppd entry; $30 pppn camping, $20 pd vehicle) which looked great and had the savannah feel to it with the mountains in the background. It has an abundance of giraffe - we stopped and counted at one point 18 to our right and 14 to the left. We tried to steal in on one of the park roads but found a ranger with an AK 47 to stop poachers and played dumb and drove back out!

We got to Morogoro about 14:00 and looked at some camping options but they there was no place kitted, only a guest house offering us to use a bathroom and camp in the gardens, which makes you feel a bit arb if there are other guests. So, knowing there's nothing for about 400km we head off on the road to Dar and turned off to join the A14 to Arusha. We found a campsite at about 17:00 but it was for army only, looked quite sweet though - had open toilets which would have been interesting. Unfortunately they didn't speak a word of English, as is so common in Tanzania, unlike Malawi and Zambia where it's widely spoken, so we couldn't even get good advice.

We decided to head for the little village of Bagamoyo, about 100km north of Dar. The road is under construction and the first 30 of 60km was beautiful, but then the road was the worst I've ever been on - sandy craters everywhere. The last 20 kms after dark took an hour and ended in quite a bustling market village. The beach resort hotel was our camp for the night, the lady I phoned had told me in broken English it was $5 for the night which went up to $7 when we arrived ("non-resident price" as if the locals deal in dollars) and required some more bargaining back to $5! It had a French restaurant with French people eating in it, who also couldn't speak English. The conversation I struck up with them ended in fist punching and "take easy" all-round!

ANT - The only thing to report really is how bad the mozzies were! I had left a hole open in the tent and woke an hour later to initiate war with about 30 in the tent after my back was covered in bites, sleeping without a shirt because of the heat and humidity on the beach. Even in the morning they were everywhere, in the engine, in the car, bathrooms - it was quite intense! I would surely have Malaria without the pills!