Mbaya
Trip Start
Nov 18, 2002
1
120
157
Trip End
Ongoing
Mbeya,
Tanzania
Friday, June 13, 2008
For the first time since our safari days early on in our time in Tanzania we wake up to a lovely sound of bird song. No engine noise from cars or buses, no people talking in the hotel corridor with loud voices No calls for prayers from the local Mosque, just pure and simple bird song. We had a very restful sleep after our adventurous Friday the 13th episode.
With Mbeya being 1800m above sea level the air is certainly cooler. At least we don't have to sleep under a mosquito net here but it does mean that the long sleeves come out of the bag once again!
After breakfast we went off to explore the town. It seemed friendly enough with the occasional person saying 'jambo or mambo' to us. We wish the same could be said for the ATM machine at Barclays who swallowed our bank card when we tried to get some money out
Mbeya peak
! Luckily the bank was open for the Saturday morning and unlike England where the machine chews your card up for good, here you just show your passport, sign a book and you get the card back. Phew! We then tried the another different account card. No the machine declined to give us any money but at least it gave us the card back! Was this going to be a day like yesterday, Friday the 13th. Corr we hope not.On Barclays advise we went to another ATM and still it would not give us any money. Ahhh! Then before we knew it, it was now 12pm, all banks were shut and we did not want to risk using another machine only to have our card swallowed up and kept in the machine until Monday when the banks open again! Oh well it looks like Malawi is on hold until we can get this little cash problem sorted out..........
Sunday we set off for a walk up Mbeya Peak. Well, when I say walk up it, that actually is an exaggeration. We found the dirt track road just outside the town and headed towards the peaks base. We came across a group of children who we stopped to chat with. Then as the track got progressively steeper we thought bugger this and headed back down the track to the nearest drinking spot were we both ordered a refreshing coke. And that was the extent of our day. We took photos of the peak from the bottom up. We would have liked to achieved at least getting half way up but this time it wasn't to be! The rest of the day was a total chill out as is all our days here!!!
Tomorrow we plan to head to Malawi. If the machine will give us some cash!
