Tanzania Roads

On the 23rd Dec 08 we drive into a national game park called Selous. About a 230 km drive SW of Dar es Salaam. The first 100 km was sealed and then there was a town at the turn off point, but not one sign at all telling a tourist how to get to the biggest game park in Tanzania! We pulled in at a gas station to ask if we were going the right way. Their bowzer had broken down (quite a while ago I think) so they had the front panel off and were hand cranking the pump around to get gas to flow. I took a picture and a video of this. The next part was a dirt/sand road. 5 hours for the 130 km. It was mostly dry though so the driving was quite fun really. Ramona did most of it. There were a few water crossings that made us nervous at the start. These were about 5-10 yards across and dirty water so you could now tell how deep they were. But they had a sandy bottom and they were only about 6” deep we found out after crossing a few, so the traction was good. The little Pajero (Patty Pajero) did well.
The day we left we had to drive out the same road and it had bucketed down the night before so I was a bit worried about the road out now. We had met a family at the lodge and they had a driver in a big land cruiser. They were to leave the same day, so I asked if we could follow them out and keep an eye on us. They were happy to do so. The big land cruiser with higher ground clearance and bigger engine was not a concern for those roads. So we drove out in convoy with us following them through all the now bigger puddles across the road. But it was no problem at all and the little Pajero IO easily handled it. Still another 5 hour drive in 4 wd all the way.

Once back on the main road heading south from Dar Es Salaam, we turned right to head further south to a little beach town called Kilwa that we had heard was a nice place to spend a few relaxing days. We did about 15 km of nice sealed road then it turned to crap again. Back into 4 wd drive. We were averaging 5-7 mph on this god awful road. It had rained just before and so the road was full of mud tracks, large deeper puddles, some 20-25 yards across. Luckily they too were not that deep really so the Pajero got though them fine. It was late afternoon by now, and you have to be off the roads by night in these remote regions to be safe we are told. After about 2 hours of this road, I was thinking, “hmm, should we just quit this and turn back” as we didn’t know how much more of it there was. We had just gone through a patch of large puddle after puddle, mud was oozing every where. A Toyota Hi Lux was coming the other way, a typical Mzungu car, so I flagged it down and asked them how much further there was to go. About 30 km they said, but that it did get drier than where we were at the moment. This meant it was quicker to get to the end rather than turn around and head back to Dar. So on we went and got to Kilwa just at dusk. In the tropic latitudes dusk is about 15 mins long and it gets dark quick. (no street lights either) So we were glad to be there. So for a 10 hr drive that day we did 8 of it in 4 wheel drive. Some of these are marked as main highways on the TZ map. Unbelievable they can leave the roads like this and think it is OK. It must be a huge loss of tourism potential income for them to have terrible main roads to nice areas like this.

Kilwa will boom when that last 60 km of road is sealed and it becomes a 3 hr drive from Dar to get there instead of a 6 hour drive in a land cruiser. The British father and son that owned the lodge we stayed at Selous are building a hotel on this beach in Kilwa (which will make 4 places for accommodation then) for this exact reason I expect. We met the son and his girl friend at Selous then later we met them again in Kilwa and chatted to them for a bit.