Day 9 (Dec 09/60km) SHOWER!!

Riding the 70km into Dar is taking your life into your own hands! Thought our taxi drivers can’t drive, they are extremely polite! We rode into Dar looking for a hotel only to be caught driving on a one way street and off-course the cops were more than happy to swindle us, an unfortunate welcome to Dar.

We then decided to find something to eat and stopped at a Steers outlet. Just as we were settling down a certain sharp Mr Morrison decided to join us for lunch and ask a few questions about us and our bikes. This is a very interesting guy, a teacher of English and Chinese in Dar. He helped point us to a couple of places to stay and we settled for the known Protea Hotel.

 

Morrison had some serious war stories to tell. He rides a BMW F800GS and has ridden solo to Maputo and back. He also told us that he’s ridden into the war torn eastern DRC district of Kivu and was captured by the rebels who wanted to kill him until somehow he managed to free himself. He said that he got onto his bike, started it through a remote control and because of the "soft exhaust" they could not immediately hear him and rode hard with military vehicles in chase. He says he rode for his life only to stop 600km later at the border with no identification. The only way they could identify him was his polio vaccination stamp on his shoulder - so he says.

 

Mr. Morrisson

We later met up with him for dinner and dance at a joint called Jollies, a very snazzy joint indeed. Surprisingly, our friend Morrison seemed to know all the Intelligence officers who hung around Jollies. He had earlier pointed out other intelligence officers at the hotels we were scouting for accommodation (apparently he knows all of this because his Father is a Chief of police in Tanzania)

 

We checked in at the Protea and after our ritual ale arrival toast we headed for our rooms and the first thing we looked for in the room was a SHOWER! Ok, we must confess here that the last time we washed was in Day 3 in Harare 6 days ago!