Record Breakers
Trip Start
Nov 07, 2005
1
58
75
Trip End
Nov 04, 2006
Arusha / Dar Es Salaam,
Tanzania
Sunday, August 27, 2006
Back in Arusha it seemed we3'd manage to lose Romy, Robert and the truck. No one knew which of the 3 campsites in Arusha we were supposed to be staying at. After arriving at the second one we asked the owner who assured us that we were staying there (possibly because everyone started buying beers) but when we questioned him on what time the truck was arriving, he answered nochalantly "Maybe later."
Eventually Romy & Robert did show up and we could all finally have a shower after 3 days of not washing and being covered in dust from the game parks. We couldn't have been at a worse campsite for this. After spending half an hour in no more than a dribble of water which alternated between boiling hot and freezing cold, I emerged to find there was still dirt ingrained into my elbows.
The following day 30 of us (32 including Romy & Robert) crammed into the 28 seater truck for a 700km drive to Dar Es Salaam. We managed to pass a lot of time by playing Who Wants To Be a Millionaire, with the girls team triumphing over the boys. Obviously.
The campsite we arrived at was famous for its vodka slushy drinking competition, on which all the overland trucks competed on a scoreboard. Absolute Africa had been knocked off by a rival company so we had a record to break of 1 min 2 secs. We gathered together in the required groups of 3 people.
Claire, Kiri and Ruth went first, gave it a good try, but the ice headache was too much and they took over 3 mins to slurp the slush.
Alisha, Julia and Bex went next, completing the task in about 2.5 mins.
It wasn't going to well and looked like we were going to fail until the ultimate drinking team of Morgan, Troy and James stepped up (a big drinker, a former rugby player and an army boy - not a bad combination). They downed the lot in a record 46.77 seconds and were instant heros. Then they all puked.
As we were celebrating our victory and writing the new record on the scoreboard, a South African guy sauntered up to James and told him that it hadn't been a proper slushy and so their record was null & void and he'd have it wiped off the scoreboard after we'd left. I'd never heard such crap but we ignored him and decided to start throwing people in the swimming pool instead.
Having a swimming pool next to a bar that serves vodka slushies is probably not the best idea in the world. It wasn't long before most of us had either fallen or been thrown in, in various forms of dress or undress. I'd made a vain attempt to round up the girl to throw Bart in but he escaped. Sarah then turned on me and chucked me in, fully clothed and I soon realised that wearing jeans hadn't been a good choice. Alisha then tried to throw me in again but mistook a random Norwegian girl for me and threw her in instead.
That night I slept in a very wet, very sandy tent.
