After the last village before the NCA gate we stopped in order to change the number plates we had bought the previous day. With Tanzanian number plates we would only pay 5USD instead of 30USD per day. We had also some Bobby Tours stickers on both front doors and spare wheel covers to make it look real. For some unkown reason the park officials got suspicious and questioned our Tanzanian number plates, in fact they wanted to see our car papers which we obviously didn’t have. This time we phoned Yusuf who could clear the issue with the park official explaining nicely that we tried to do something stupid. Finally we had to paid the correct car fees, got a new permit and corrupted the park official with 10USD as advised by Yusuf. We managed to get the resident status which saved us a lot of money. Yusuf later confirmed that the park officials wanted to take the issue to the police which could have had nasty consequences... Thank you Yusuf!
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The ascent to the Ngorogoro crater rim was very steep and the Landcruiser overheated the first time. The descent into the crater was as well quite steep in particular as we were pulling the motorbike. The bottom of the crater offer some mediocre wildlife sightings, zebras, impalas, few wildebeests and monkeys. We are probably too spoilt with all the wildlife we had seen on our trip. Just as we were to leave we saw a gathering of cars. There must be something we said and made our way to all the cars-indeed there was one single cheetah that was blocking of a herd of wildebeest. That was it for the day. On way out of the crater the Landcruiser over heated for the second time in the steepest part. Only low range could get us out again and we still had a long way to go the Seronera camp in the Serengeti! After about another two hours the car got hot again and over heated for the third time. This time we tried to cool it down be releasing some pressure from the radiator. For some reason Nik had the idea to take off the radiator cap and as a consequence a hot fountain splashed out of the radiator which emptied it in a few seconds. Anyway we made it to the Seronera camp in the dark. The next stretch would take us through the Western part of the Serengeti and further to Mwanza, the main town of Western Tanzania. We just saw the usual thing, two lions, zebras, impalas, red hartebeest and some other buck. The gathering of many vultures caught our attention and we decided to walk to the spot where the vultures were gathering. They tried to eat what was left over of a young wildebeest that was killed only a few hours ago by some lions. As we walked back, a camp owner stopped and warned us of walking in the Serengeti as the park officials would kick us out if caught. Late in the afternoon we arrived in Mwanza. Fortunately a tour operator left us his details in case we needed help. We met Masumini Tours (http://www.masuminitours.com) at their office and got useful information on accomodation and the roads to Kigali, Rwanda. Temba Hotel, 6kms out of town on the Shinganya road, was real good bet. It allowed us to stay over night for 12USD for all three of us, drink a few beers and have a long discussion on ourselves as they intensive travelling took its toll on our mood, behaviour and atmosphere.
A few conclusions richer we started the next day towards Kigali. We caught the ferry in Kinongo a bit late. On the ferry we met BBC (Big Black Cunt), a tall guy from Drillcorp, who would save our butt a bit later. As we landed on the other side of the bay, he said it’s time to fuck off and enjoy Tanzania which was of short duration as Dominique was stpped by the police for not wearing a helmet driving of the ferry. Again the police officers asked us to come to the office and to open a traffic offense case. Fortunatley BBC saw us, joined us and helped us, we still don’t know how. Without him it could have taken hours. and money was definitely somewhere in the game. Definitely very late we headed off for the border to Rwanda. 380kms and about 7 hours later on very rough and tarred roads we arrived at the border post which was already closed. The only choice we had, was to stay over night in front of the border gate, probably the second worst choice of our trip after the quarry in Northern Mozambique.