The day in Dar es Salaam was just a stopover. It did allow me to get some laundry done on an “express” basis which means it cost twice as much. At least I have clean clothes going forward.
[Not so] Precision Air never fails to disappoint. There schedule is as fluid as a river. We need to get to Mtwara in order to visit the next project which means taking an early morning flight. There is only one flight a day so it is not to be missed. What started out as an 8:00 am flight bounced around to where it is now a 6:00 am flight. That means getting up at about 3:30 am to get packed, checked out and make it to the airport for check-in. 3:30 am is a late night for me, not an early morning.
I managed to make it and we all got boarded for the flight. Of course, the flight was delayed for about 1/2 hour and It took about 1 hour to fly to Mtwara. We got checked into the White Pearl hotel which was a reasonably nice place. That left a lot of time to rest up.
The south of Tanzania is mostly Muslim. The White Pearl is owned by Muslims so they do not serve alcohol, even beer. They will allow you to bring alcohol into the hotel. This group is not a hard drinking group but they do like a drink with dinner. I took it upon myself to remedy the situation. I got a driver to take me to a place in the village that sells beer. It was really just a dirt floor tavern but it had cold beer. I bought a case and took it back to the hotel in time for dinner. I was like the Messiah with manna from heaven. We went through about 1/2 of the case which left us enough for tomorrow evening.
It’s a good thing we got rested up because tomorrow will be a long, tough day.