Day 263 / 28

Date: 31 December 2022
Sleeping location: Two in One Executive Lodge, Mpanda, Tanzania 
Distance (km today/total/total Part 2): 70 / 16257 / 1420
Estimated climb (m today/total/total Part 2): 700 / 140900 / 22900
Most important quality in a hotel: drying space
Day in three words: Bye bye 2022


My planned breakfast fruit salad was kiboshed by the lack of bananas and the stringiness of the mangos and ended up as just a bit of mango pulp with "chai biskoot" crumbled on it. Fortified by this, the now-dry and bumpy road was kind of annoying but manageable. After 50km, about noon, I finally hit tarmac after 300km of tough dirt road. Time to grant myself some easier cycling, I think. 

I bopped along this into town, dodging between thunderstorms without getting hit. Up here there are big skies and you can see the weather from tens of miles away. I arrived in Mpanda around 2 and immediately realised it was not the bustling metropolis I was hoping for. It had two nice hotels, both of which were outside my price range, so I went in totally the opposite direction and went to a crap cheap one with lots of space and a wet room suitable for thoroughly cleaning the mud off Maggie.  

I spent the rest of the afternoon washing the muddy things and drying the wet things. My tent was erected upside down on the bed with the outer hanging from the ceiling and every available hanging space was festooned with damp things. After this I popped out to run errands. All of the tuk tuks had slogans on the windshield, many of which were religious, but I enjoyed one that said "Unanswered cries (cries)" and another one apparently called "Geoffrey Jr". I also spotted a t-shirt in a fashion boutique that said "Frankie sin go to Hollywojd [sic]" on the front. Back at the hotel I had a bit of fun playing a flip flop throwing game with a tiny kid. Meaningful interactions here are often with kids as they don't require a common language.

For my NYE celebrations I played the "find the mzungus" card of going to the fanciest place in town, which backfired when it turned out it was just me and a middle aged man watching Turkish then Chinese soap operas dubbed into Swahili. I had some food and wrote my blog until about 10 then went searching for somewhere with any kind of vibe. The best place actually seemed to be some of live music jam in a church, but as in Rwanda I didn't feel it was my place to intrude on God’s party. I saw the football on in a hotel and went to watch, but it didn't serve beer so I had to drink an insanely sweet malt drink instead, and I was the only person there. This was up there with Ethiopia-stomach parasite-not-actually-new-year-in Ethiopia-camping-in-the-dark levels of new year fun. Things markedly improved when I bought three beers, and for some reason a small bottle of "Conyagi potable spirit", and went back to my room, where I texted friends and listened to music until 23.45, then had a video call with James, Toni, Christian and Trish back in the UK, all of whom were at James' where I'd probably have been had I not been here. It was lovely to feel connected and we chatted tipsy nonsense until almost 1 when I decided it was probably time for bed. Could have been a lot worse in the end. I never drank the Conyagi, thank goodness.

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