Mwanza - Lake Victoria

Although Arusha is a big and vibrant city, we entered it only when we had to. Traffic in African cities gave us a lesson in Patience, with a capital P! If you could forget that there was an urgency in getting somewhere, you could actually enjoy the hustle and bustle, the colours, the people and interactions. Getting through a city could easily take you an hour, unless you were there in peak traffic - then you could be 'sightseeing' for about 2 hours or more! We left Arusha, once again travelling towards the Serengeti, but this time veered to the West. Our aim: Mwanza, a town situated on Lake Victoria. We got as far as Nzeda, where we stayed overnight at The Forest Inn. We were slowly (albeit unwilling?) getting used to the African hospitality industry, and we would just 'go-with-the-flow' and enjoyed it! TUNZA BEACH RESORT at Mwanza, got some great reviews from both BRADT and Trip Advisor. It had a small stretch of beach, with Palm trees and big grassy areas, with colourful tables and chairs for day visitors. It also had a restaurant and bar area (called The Cocpit Bar). Lodging facilities were thatched 'rondavels' (2 single beds, table and chair in each) with bathroom en-suite. As the general bathroom facilities were being upgraded, we were offered a rondavel as our bathroom. This worked out well as there were many day visitors to Tunza that also used the campers bathrooms! We met a few 'lodgers' at Tunza, but we were the only campers. Agatha visited us before we had finished setting up camp and offered laundry services! GREAT!

Sunset at Tunza Beach - Lake Victoria

  One of the regular lodgers at Tunza was Eddie Wilson, a helicopter pilot from Centurion in Pretoria, South Africa! He was contracted by a mine in Tanzania. What an enthusiastic person! Theo and Steve chatted to him and the 4 of us were organized on a helicopter flight the next morning! What a great experience that was! Eddie showed us a hotel from the air - 'Good food' he said, and after our flight we ended up going to The Talapia Hotel for lunch.  Talapia is said to be one of Tanzania's best eating fish. Everyone agreed!  Every night we watched the fishermen with their boats and dhows go out to fish. When darkness decends, the whole horizon is lit up by the lights on the boats. Steve saw a boat-building yard not far from Tunza Beach and we visited it. He had great fun trying to talk to the locals (they spoke only Swahili), climbing into their boats and showing them pictures on his cellphone of fish that he had caught! While we were there, a few boats came in with fresh fish. Yes, of course! Steve bought a fish! (It was a Nile Perch)Then he took it back to Tunza's kitchen, filleted it himself, and I fried it for dinner that night.

Helicopter flight with Eddie

  Mwanza is also known as 'Rock City'. It has numerous 'koppies' of rock strewn all over the town. People just build their houses on top of the rocks! It was a sight to behold from the helicopter! We got really 'mellow' at Tunza Beach. We stayed for 5 days! By the way, Lake Victoria has crocodiles in it! We never swam, but the locals and a big group of school boys on an outing did! It was interesting to observe our fellow Africans coming and going at Tunza. (I am sure they went home and said the same about us!) The owner of Tunza Beach employs the services of a group of Maasai to tend to the security of the Resort. We felt safe even when 50 school boys descended on the small beach. If people came too close to our camp or started hanging around our cars, the Maasai (neatly dressed in traditional Maasai garb) just looked at them and pointed. Then without a word from either party, the culprits would move off. The morning we left Mwanza, we had our first rain! We were expecting the rain, knowing that it would start in October.  The road to Uganda was going to be long, and so we took a ferry across Lake Victoria to cut out a few hundred kilometers.