Travel from Mwanza to Geita

 Today is Sunday and we are leaving Mwanza. We enjoy a relaxed breakfast and a coffee on the terrace before Robert and Aaron pick us up at about 11.30. Aaron will be our driver for this road trip. We know him from our previous trips with Robert and he is a really nice guy.

We make a short stop at the ACTT Office before we leave Mwanza. Caro and Justina are there getting ready for the office move. They are only moving next door (to a place currently used by KenTech) but the space will be quite a lot bigger.

Although it is Sunday the traffic is still pretty heavy. It takes about an hour to reach the area on the outskirts of Mwanza where Aaron lives. Here are a few photos from the drive.

We have arranged to meet Aaron’s wife to hand over a few gifts we have brought for his children. The road down to Aaron’s house is too rough for us to use so his wife walks down to the main road to meet us. 

After a short stop we are on our way again driving down to Lake Victoria. Up until now we have always had to take a ferry across this part of the lake but this year there is a new bridge which makes our journey to Geita so much quicker and easier.

It seems the bridge is quite a tourist attraction and we, like others, stop half way across and take some photos. I like that the bridge supports are painted in the Tanzanian colours.

After crossing the bridge we drive on to the town on Sengerema where we stop at Tonny Fast Food for lunch. This is a standard Tanzanian “lunch” restaurant where they have big saucepans full of food ready to serve up. You just say what you want and it quickly arrives at your table. We all choose something different but it is all tasty and costs TSH 25,000 (about £8 ) for the four of us.

After lunch we drive on to Geita arriving about 3.45pm.

On our many previous visits to Geita we have stayed at the Lenny Hotel which is not the most modern place but we like it. However unfortunately it was a victim of the post election rioting in Tanzania in October and suffered a lot of damage which meant we couldn’t stay there.

Hamisi, the ACTT agent for Geita had suggested the Harvest  Hotel to us but when we got there the rooms were either too small or too expensive. So we then tried another hotel which was full and then someone suggested a new hotel at Desire Park (where we have eaten in the past). Anyway after a bit of negotiating we have got a nice room with a balcony for TSH 120,000 per night for the 2 of us including breakfast which is about £38, so quite expensive by Tanzanian standards but not bad (I usually try to get a room for TSH,100,000 or less) and it is a nice room. Another advantage is that they have a decent bar and restaurant here so we have arranged with Robert to eat here tonight. We have a view of the kids play areas, bar and restaurant from our balcony.