.

.
.

Monday, January 16, 2012

Day 24 - 11.01.12

We left Iringa nice and early on the route to Mbeya, got to Mbeya quite early in the afternoon and unfortunatley as it started raining, got some shelter at a petrol station and waited the rain out, as it subsided we then went back to the Mbeya in and ordered the one thing I really enjoyed there, the Hot and Sour chicken soup done the Chinese way, really amazing!! After that decided to go try find some local coffees and find some mosquito repellent and shoe laces, try find a supermarket in a town like that is another story in total, ended up walking back to the main intersection while getting some odd looks and then found out Town was the other way, went past the Police station, asked them for directions and nobody speaks English, only Swahili so a lot of hand gestures and I got my directions. Bumped into a guy named Laas who had ridden a bicylce equiped with a Game shopping trolley as his trailer solo from Cape Town on his way to Uganda, and he gave me a lot of advice about some of the countries and the alternative routes to take (thanks Laas!) it was quite weird as while we were talking we had a collection of Mzungu's (white folk) all gathered in the centre of the town, an odd sight for the locals! Managed o get some roll on insect stuff from the chemist and some instant coffee from a mini superette at a petrol station next to all the bunched together internet cafe's that apparently have faster internet then in South Africa, (didnt even try!) The funniest part was getting the shoe laces, popped into a few stores and got the same response, dont know what you want, speak swahili, eventually went to a street stall where a guy had a lot of pairs of brand new shoes spread out for sale, i pointed to the laces and was told a price and he pulled them straight off the new shoes and put the shoes back for sale. Still working out where we are gonna get petrol from, spoke to some other South African and a lady who used to live in Malawi, Imo made a few calls and the general response is avoid Malawi if possible ot else come and just buy petrol off the black market, there is nothing at the garages(although still check with each garage as you come in).We agreed that we would have breakfast and push it to Mzuzu in Malawi in the morning. 

No comments:

Post a Comment