After such an enjoyable time in Kilwa we were slightly sad to say goodbye but as time is always against us we decided to move on down the coast to a town called Lindi which is the gateway to exploring the more rugged southern areas of Tanzania. Lindi itself was not particularly interesting but after finding a place to stay for the night we stumbled across a bar on the beach. It was little more than a few plastic chairs on the sand but the beer was cold and we were treated to an amazing sunset over the sea. Truely spectacular and we only had to share it with a few locals!

Early the next morning we got on a bus back to Dar es Salaam as we felt that the journey to Mbeya round the bottom of the country would take too long. Little did we know that this would turn out to be our most frustrating journey yet. The bus was due to take 8 hours but to our utter dismay, 36 hours later we arrived in Dar!!!!

Unbeknown to us 60km of the main road linking the entire south of Tanzania with Dar was only a dirt road and the rains that we had experienced at night in Kilwa had obviously had a very bad effect! Three hours into the journey we were stopped at a police barrier but didn't think too much of it as this happens all over Tanzania. We were soon on the move again but within about 10minutes of being on the dirt road we came to a complete standstill. The next 500m or so would become our home for the next 24hrs because the mud was so deep nothing could get through. Even the big 4x4's, complete with snorkels were getting stuck!

The only thing we could do was to wait and wait and do a little bit more waiting. It almost became a spectator sport with everyone on the side of the road watching all the vehicles charge through the first part of the mud, get stuck, have to be dug out and so on and so on. I was even asked if I wanted to make a bet whether or not the next truck would make it through.

Unfortunately at some point in the day two trucks had got stuck side by side completely blocking the road, one was so far embedded that even the large earthmovers couldn't pull it out and the other had snapped its front axel -bad news indeed! I have to say I was very impressed because with a mixture a substantial man power and a lot of shouting they actually managed to fix the second truck and it was on the move again within 6 hours, of course only to get stuck again 100m down the road!

It slowly dawned on us that as this debacle unfolded in front of us we were going to have to spend the night on a very uncomfortable bus in the middle of nowhere at the mercy of the mosquitoes. This was definitely the low point of our trip so far but I am a firm believer that without the lows the highs are never quite as high.

The next day we met some Pakistani guys that obviously took pity on us because at this point we had not eaten anything apart from a couple of oranges in the last 24 hrs and they gave us some coffee flavoured biscuits that were particularly disgusting - we weren't that hungry yet.

To top the trip off we arrived in Dar at about 8pm the next day only to find that my rucksack had been dowsed with fish juice and absolutely stunk. On our arrival at the reliable Safari Inn, desperate for a shower, some food and a bed even our taxi driver informed us that we were 'really bad smell', this was impressive coming from a Tanzania!