After the expectedly eclectic breakfast we re-packed our bags for the fourth morning in a row and awaited the arrival of the vehicle which was going to carry us the 130km down the untraveled East Coast of Lake Tangynika to the fishing village of Lagosa.

I managed to make contact with the Birthday boy at Brock whilst the others read and looked through the awesome chimpanzee photos taken in Gombe and at 9am our ride arrived. The shiny Landcruiser's boot absorbed our bags with room to spare and as we pulled away there was a distant roar from the V8 and we marvelled at the relative internal luxury compared to the landrover's bench seats. The creature comforts also extended to a pleasantly perfumed driver but our new vehicle felt soulless and had none of the character of Princess Rainbow III.

We restocked our wallets from the ATMs in town and tracked down the basic inredirnts for 3 suppers which we were going to have to prepare under somewhat basic conditions in the Bandas and in Lagosa. Choice was severely limited so the end result was likely to produce a rather avant garde, carb heavy menu for our adventure into the unknown. The good news was that what the stalls lacked in basic ingredients they made up with in icecream so we set off to Ujiji with soggy cones in hand to see the town made famous by its abhorrent part in the slave trade and its meeting of two of Britain's most famous pioneers.

Having navigated through the quiet village of Ujiji we arrived at the gates to the entrance of the memorial to Dr. Livingstone, I presume. We were greeted by a wizened old man with a glint in his eye and an enthusiastically squeaky voice. He lead us up a small hill to a seat under 2 huge mango trees next to which sat a large stone edifice. This was the spot where in the early 19th century Henry Morton Stanley had met Dr. Livingstone, the infamous explorer and missionary, and we managed to translate parts of the story as it was re-told to us passionately by the old man, who was a characature of Yoda's grandfather. Story time over we toured the 'museum' which was a very local affair before heading back to our vehicle and setting off South on a journey which promised to be an exciting 6 hours.

We turned off the tarmac after a few km and our rapid progress along the dusty single track road was soon brought to a stop by a puncture. We congratulated ourselves that in over 1000 miles behind the wheel of PR3 we had not befallen this fate and set about helping our friendly driver change the wheel.

In 20 minutes the boot was re packed and the very flat tyre, complete with a coating of red dust, was in the boot. After an hour at a slightly slower pace we pulled into a village where the wooden shack offered puncture repairs and Charlie and I gathered a collection of fruit for lunch. We noticed the absence of hot food vendors and remembered it was Ramadan and this was a largely Muslim area. With this in mind, the girls and their short shorts remained in the stifling heat of the car to eat their messy lunch of watermelon, bananas and oranges.

With the tyre re inflated we pushed on but were soon halted by a slow wide river. Fortunately there was a ferry which had recently been refurbished so we sat back to wait the 20 minutes before it departed, watching the goats and their young kids raiding the fruit stands and ignoring the lingering stares of the locals who amassed. The old ferry was just visible downstream and it was a miracle it was still afloat but after a short crossing we were safely deposited on the southern bank and our driver headed onwards.

The roads improved a little as we watched the coastal miles fly by but after stopping to ask a few locals for directions the quality of the going rapidly deteriorated again. Soon the Landcruiser was scrambling up rocky inclines and along tracks so narrow that both wing mirrors were forcing a way through the thick elephant grass that flanked us. The horn got a good airing and on seeing or hearing us approach the countercurrent stream of pedestrians and cyclists dived into the safety of the tall grass as our driver powered past without a backward glance. The tight track wound through dense coconut plantations and forded 2 sizeable rivers, providing much amusement for all those who watched the Mizungos pass. There were countless turns down identical looking tracks and we agreed that we would undoubtably not have made it this far without our driver, and self drive would have tested our friendships to the limit, resulting in very lost group of incredibly stressed Mizungos.

After 5 hours in the dusty, sweaty, bumpy car we met a huge group of kids wearing brightly coloured neckers and woggles in front of a sign announcing this scout troop as belonging to Lagosa! We shared relieved looks and wound our way between the mud huts, scattering chickens and being chased by children, waving to all the inquisitively smiling faces. Again the route was inexplicable to, or repeatable by us but having not seen a single dwelling which looked like a guesthouse we rolled to a stop in a clearing where a group of important looking men sat and talked next to the lake shore.

After much chitchat it was decided that this was not the guesthouse but a rotund man in a lime green shirt, Asher, did know where it was. We 4 squashed onto the back seat of the Landcruiser and Asher took up navigating as we continued our extreme road trip. The village went on for miles and we passed like celebrities through a throng of people celebrating a wedding before pulling up at an unassuming section of mud road flanked by more tired looking huts. We hoped we had just stopped to ask more directions but it appeared that this was the guest house.

On first inspection our situation was not good, a line of what looked like kennels and a toilet you could smell from across the dirty concrete courtyard. Unbelievably they only had one room available, but it was the 'shop front' and only had 3 single beds for the grand sum of 10,000 Tsh (£3) a night. Hattie used her gift of a skipping rope to entertain the group of children who had congregated by the car with their faces painted in pale dust to celebrate the arrival of the 4 dumbstruck Mizungos. Meanwhile Charlie and I tried to confirm that this was a misunderstanding and the real guest house was further along the road, but no, this was the only guesthouse in town. Stunned and slightly disbelieving we focused on booking onward transport to get out of here ASAP the next morning but at this point, Charlie's plan began to fall apart. The park was only 15km away but it was so remote that it could only accessed by boat. The 15 minute water taxi which was reported to charge $5 per person return had escalated into an extraordinary $100 each way and then there as a surprise extra boat required to take us deeper into the park, where the accommodation was, for another wallet sapping $80... Naturally this was all in addition to the extortionate park and accommodation fees.

As the mischievous children, oblivious to our frustration, drew symbols on the landcruiser's dusty panels we discussed our imposing poverty at length and there were hidden costs every which way. Asher returned with a counter offer which involved us trying to navigate an old off road route to get closer to the edge of the park from where we could walk in on foot but this depended on our drivers cooperation and that would cost us $100... We eventually settled on this as a sort of a plan pending approval from the cars owner and as the light faded we unloaded our bags into our hovel. We were sharing a concrete cell and the 3 rickety beds were just 1 metre from the Main Street, with only a very patchy set of ill fitting curtains over the barred holes in the wall between us and the outside world.

It was a mixed blessing that there was no kitchen and Charlie and I, with very stiff upper lips, headed along the dark road, which was now bustling with people, to source some hot food for supper. Charlie found a group of locals around a fire charcoaling corn cobs and we ordered 5 of the manhandled items. We watched as they were tended over the embers by a young lady with a baby on her back, her asbestos hands deftly turning the cobs and re-orientating the glowing embers. The queue got bigger and bigger but it was a good job we ordered 5 as one of our cobs rolled into dust before being handed to us and we beat a hasty retreat.

The girls had made the best of a bad job and there were soon mosquito coils burning as we used our fingers to smear our dusty sweetcorn with indestructible margarine. It turned out to be maize, and it also turned out to be 80% uncooked, all of which lead to it being as inedible as it sounds, but also induced a hypoglycaemic delerium as we moved onto the squashed black bananas for pudding. We ransacked our bags for anything edible which finally ceased when the all of the remaining shortbread biscuits had been consumed having been smothered by Nutella. During our dedperate foraging on the dimly lid, insect ridden room I also found a three quarter full litre bottle of urine which had been left under my bed by its previous occupant.

Fortunately the low point we were in provided its own entertainment as we felt that we could sink no lower and at this point nextdoor starting belting out reggae music which was immediately contested by the mosque's call to prayer. In this din, and beyond the point of caring, we headed to bed and I tucked Bob's fishing net mosquito catching device under her thin mattress whilst Charlie and Hattie tried to orientate themselves top to tail on the single bed. The still air was stifling and the smouldering mosquito coils filled the foetid air with a heady cocktail of incense and body odour from outside. When the skipping, giggling and laughing from outside had finally slowed Charlie turned off the LEDs which had been bodged into the light fitting and with the sounds of streetlife just a metre away we tried to fall asleep in undoubtably the worst conditions I have ever slept.