Dar es Salaam - March 4th to 7th by Paul

After our expensive night in the hotel, we made our way to a camping spot, Mikadi Beach, which had been recommended to us at Russell's Place, Mozambique and was also in the guidebook and sounded like a nice place, "run by some friendly Australians". We arrived there by lunchtime, as it was only a short drive, the weather was hot and humid. The place was on the beach with white sand and beautiful blue water, with several small islands out in the distance, this seemed the perfect place to stay before heading to Zanzibar.

As it turned out the friendly Australian's were no longer there, they had sold the place and it was now being run by a friendly Zimbabwean/Chilean couple. They had only been there for 10 days so were still getting a feel for the place but they were very welcoming.

The next day we thought we would head into Dar to check it out. Mikadi beach is south of Dar and there is a ferry crossing into the city itself. The ferry carries both vehicles and foot passengers and was quite an experience, but we soon enjoyed the crossings and began to feel more comfortable being the only white people on the whole ferry. We even had a friendly encounter with a guy who talked to us for awhile then asked if we would like to come and stay with him and his family.

Dar itself was very hot. I had somehow caught a cold before we reached Dar and it was a strange feeling having a runny nose with sweat just poring out of me. Eventually we found a nice air-conditioned café where we could cool down. We wondered the streets of Dar and then headed back to Mikadi for a nice swim in the ocean.

As we had decided to spoil our selves on Zanzibar, from Dar we had chosen to fly across. Rather than leave the car at the airport the new owners of the camp site said we could leave it there and they could keep an eye on it for us. After a couple of days chilling out by the ocean, we left early in the morning for our flight to Zanzibar, which we were both really looking forward to!!!