Day 71: Sumbawanga to Utengule Coffee Lodge

We had breakfast again in the hotel. We tried out the date syrup (that we recently bought) on the chipati and it was quite good. At 09:30 we were finally packed up and checked out and on the road again.

The road was mostly tarred and mostly in a good condition. A lot of people ‘warned’ us or rather complained about having to go 50 through every town. At first we thought how bad can it be, in Zambia one technically had to go only 40 through towns. We soon however shared the frustration. It felt like we could only go faster than 50 for 20 of the 320km. To make matters even worse, about 50km before Tunduma the police stopped us – to ask for a ride to Vwawa almost 80km further. The whole time it felt like she was making notes every time Hugo accidentally went over 50 he checked the mirror and imagined her writing something down.

Then the chaos of Tunduma came. They were either busy building a road or the road has just disappeared from overuse. It was just gravel with deep ruts and 100s of Tuk-Tuks driving all over the place criss-crossing around trucks. Leaving Tunduma the tar road started again, but the trucks made deep tracks in the tar that makes it feel like driving on a two-spoor track where you cannot leave it.

Finally we made it to Vwawa and the police woman got out and thank us without saying anything about Hugo’s driving. We reached Utengule Coffee Lodge at 16:00.

The camping cost $23 and is basically on the Heli-pad, with the bathrooms being that of the squash courts about 200m away. Before setting up camp we ordered a medium filter coffee pot for 5000 shillings which produced four cups of coffee. Caro thought the coffee was delicious – Hugo just adds so much sugar to coffee that all coffee tastes the same.

For dinner we just ate potatoes. Hugo added some milk and butter to his, while Caro added mayonnaise to hers. Caro didn’t feel to well so got into bed shortly after dinner. Hugo went to sit in the restaurant to do some work. The Afrikaans manager from Jeffrey’s Bay gave him a free 100mb WiFi voucher.