Day 78: Hondo Hondo to Mikumi

We got up lazily and let the tent dry a bit. We eventually only left at 10:40. We set the GPS to Magombero Village and got there via some very small roads that was only used by bicycles and motorbikes. The gps took us directly into someone’s yard. Caro got out to ask where the Magombero Forest is and through gestures they motioned we should park there and walk straight on. So we did.

Not even 100m further we had to wade knee deep through water. We saw the forest, but no path. We went onto the train track where other people were also walking. The rail ran alongside the forest and just on the edge we could see more red colobus and black and white colobus monkeys. We tried a few more times to ask for directions, but only got gestures that looked like continue straight and the right at some point. Hugo tried to call Emanual again (with the phone number that Stan put on his blog) and got through. Emanual was friendly, but just said we should go to some town and ask for Xavier (or something like that). Hugo tried to ask whether we are on the right track, being on the rail line, but he just said we should go to the village (it was definitely not Magombero village, but Hugo couldn’t make out the name of the village we were suppose to go).

At 13:00 we went back to the MonkeyMobile and then tried to find the village, but the roads were too wet and at one point we had to turn around. We only got back to the main road at 14:00. From there it was just the same way back to TanSwiss, which took 2 hours.

At TanSwiss we were shown the campsite. Caro was quite disgusted by the lack of character or atmosphere. It just looked like an abondoned back yard. We opened the tent to give it a chance to dry further and then went to the restaurant. We shared a burger, which was ok, and a beer and then did some work and research.