Spring Break...another travel nightmare

So right now I am pimping it out in Mtwara...aka the promised land. Mtwara is on the eatsern coast of Tanzania along the Indian Ocean. I have two weeks off for Spring break so I decided to come here and spend it with my girl Heidi. I call it the promise land because Heidi's mother spoils her rotten and puts a package in the mail to her every day. Her mom even sent me a massive Valetine's Day package. So I am gonna feast at her house. She has fudge, capri suns, marshmallows, chocolate galore, taco seasoning, no bake cheesecake....every PCV's dream come true.

So I had a biotch of a tiem getting to Mtwara. Looking on a map it looks really easy to go from Songea to Mtwara, but not in reality. The road is not tarmaced/paved at all and it is the rainy season. If you are lucky you can make it in two days. Luckily, Mithril and Jackie, two PCV's from Njombe were travelling through Songea en route Mtwara at the same time I was going. Good I would not have to travel alone. We left this past Sunday for the bus stand at 5:30am. 7 hours later we finally got to leave Songea. Some jerk tried to get us to pay more money. He said the the driver stated that because the roads were bad he was going to have to charge us an additional 2, 000 each. He of course said thsi to me when I was alone and not around anyone else. He knew he was sketchy so I started talking with the Tanzanians going in our car and asked how much they paid. He never quoted the higher price to them. He kept on coming to me saying "Give me my money"...freakin wanker. We decided to not reply and simply climb into the car and never respond to him. He at one point tried to grab my friend and I just puched him and said to wait. He was mighty mad when he realized he was never gonna get that money. Plus all the Tanzanians were laughing at him because he just got screwed by the Wazungu who knew he was trying to screw them...sweet victory for the foreigners. So about 16 of us crammed into a LandRover and set sail for Mtwara. It was a bumpy arss ride and hardly comfortable. The car kept getting stuck in the mud and we woudl have to push the car. One time everyone but us three and a momma and her little boy stayed in the car. Everyone asked why we weren't getting out. Little did we know that we were about to go off roading. The driver had to drive zig zag and over these massive mnounsd of dirt. I felt like I was in an amusement park. So yeah, you can add "off roading" to my list of many activities done here in TZ. The poor momma did not look too keen. She ended up chundergutting (British English for vomiting)on her poor little boy's face. He was so cute and swet and never cried. I think he was about 5 years old. These Tanzanian kids are so well behaved. In America if a mom vomitted on her child's face, that child would have been in hysterics. No not this little boy. He just kept mum and wiped the vomit off his face. His poor mother. I laughed of course.Jackie did not think it was too funny since the momma was sitting next to her. Luckily it did not smell too bad because my past history has proven that if I smell vomit in cars, I will vomit myself. One time I even vomitted on my sister...not good. So then we had to fight for teh momma to get moved to the front of the car with a window. The first put her in the middle...I swear these people have no bloody clue. The next guy who sat next to Jackie ended up vomitting as wll. Not a good seat. One time when we had to puch the car I climbed underneath some 18 wheeler to escape the rain with the kids and ended up getting the top of my head all nasty dirty. Soem guy was trying to puch the car from a higher hill and ended up biting it. All of our feet were coated in white gray clay. We were smelling pretty sweet at this point. The driver was tearing up the road with a Michael Jackson's greatest hits tape and we were jamming. I think these Tanzanian drivers should hit the professioanl driving circuit. They are freaking amazing. 10 hours later we reached our first days destination...Tunduru. Allegedly there are man-eating liions in Tunduru. I was perrty stoked and hoped that i would get a glimpse of one amongst the high grasses of the land. But no luck.Soem freak dogs at the stand were fighting over us...why, I don't know. Go figure.So we ate a nice dinner at 10pm, went to our hoteli, bathed (I finally got the caked on mudd out of my Halle Berry like hair and could see my toes again). The next day we departed for Masasi, the land of abundant cashews.Started at 7pm, reached at 3pm. Land Rover packed again with 17 people. Then from Masasi to Mtwara. The bus pulled over for a long time and I decide to entertain myself by trying to sell water to teh people on the bus. I even tried to sell my housekeys and matches. They wee amused. Then we had to swap buses since teh road overflooded. Soem men offered to carry us through the river. We walke dit our own and teh water came rushing to above my knees. My friend Mithril kept on sinking. We finally made it on our bus and made it to Mtwara at 9 pm.

It was great. I am in eth promsied land.