To Mbuyumi

Breakfast consisting of boiled potatoes and boiled egg was slow to arrive, slightly delaying my departure. I was heading off on my own, with Mingi staying for his second day. I'd also looked at the option of going Northward and looping back via Arusha to Kilimanjaro to end in Dar es Salaam. It would be a more beachy environment for the end of the trip. But it meant riding away from Mingi and potentially not getting to Dar, or Zanzibar, if things changed later.
Staying with the revised Eastward route also provided for a break at the end of month 3 on the bike. Leaving the 4g Royal Lodge I quickly dropped the 150m back to the T1. From there it was a gentle downhill to the start of the gorge formed by the Udzungwa Mountains, part of the extended national parks that span Tanzania. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Udzungwa_Mountains . They would feature again tomorrow. Trucks passed in clusters probably because of the benefit of numbers when the inevitable mechanical occurred in a harder to reach location. Arriving in Mbuyumi I checked out a few lodges and settled on what I hoped would be the best of a bad bunch. I grabbed a beer from a nearby pub and headed to the shower. The beer was good. I headed out for dinner and ended up chatting to Jenefa the owner of the 10k distant Crocodile Camp. She also owned this joint , which a moto rider had deposited me at. The camp was a local favourite of the overlander community. It had had its troubles following Covid. The distance and few recent neutral reviews was sufficient to dampen my desire to make it there today. I'd eyeball it on my way past tomorrow. It was an adventurous walk up the road in the dark trekking back to the lodge, which by moto seemed so close.Read more