Saadani Day 3 - Ungulates Galore!

We opted for a second safari on our last day. This one was quite different that the day before and we went to an area more suitable for grazing herds and probably lions although we didn’t see any sign of lions. At one point, we saw herds of as many as four different animals grazing together plus a few warthogs for good measure.

Altogether we saw Impala, Wildebeest, Greater Kudus, Waterbuck, Hartebeest, Steenbok and Common Reedbuck. We returned for breakfast and were enjoying watching a small monkey hanging round the restaurant when it suddenly leapt up to our table and grabbed a piece of toast. See previous entry about the possibility that they are pests! Very cute pest. We realized the servers were using slingshots firing wine corks to keep them at bay.

Our return flight was on a larger air taxi, a Cessna C208 (Rose thinks she may have just recently been working on a report about one of these.) The flight was uneventful and free of all those time consuming lectures about using seatbelts and location of emergency exits and stowing your gear safely in the event of an emergency! Nothing about safety. Nada! Zilch!

We were met by our Saadani contact in Dar who ensured we hooked up with our pre-paid taxi driver for the trip back to our hotel in Dar. (Rose has been on roller coasters that were less scary than this trip!) Traffic was very busy possibly because of the coming holiday celebrating the end of Ramadan. Each time we stopped, hawkers would walk by with stuff to sell – car chargers for cells phones, CDs, water, apples, nuts, stuffed toys, hazard signs(!), aerosol sprays of some sort and comic books that appeared to feature Sadaam Hussein. What market research are these guys using and where does this stuff come from? And who buys it? We might have seen one sale. The hawkers walk in and out of traffic that stops for no one and accelerates from 0 to 60 in seconds.

Our driver agreed to stop by the Scandinavian Express Bus Station so we could try and get tickets to Muheza for the next day. No luck unfortunately but we were able to get tickets for Oct 1st. Front row, semi-luxury!

Back to the Harbour Suite (We are looking at a building this time but if we look sideways, we can see the harbour.) and a pizza, beer and bits of B movies on TV.

The day was hot and it poured this morning so we spent the day catching up with the blog and resizing and adding photos. This afternoon we walked to a local artisans market we had heard of fending off three more ''touts'' along the way, two of them twice. We are getting better at getting rid of them faster however we had nowhere to go but up. I was about to claim we were on our way to meet husbands who had warned us not to speak to strange men and Sal had just told one she couldn't remember where we were saying when we decided we would just put it right out there that if they were looking for money they would be disappointed. It worked.