Tanzania – Stella is getting older

It took us about four hours to pass the boarders to Tanzania. As soon as we arrived in Tanzania, Stella had some problems. Somehow she couldn´t drive fast anymore. Since the road to Mbeya (our first stop in Tanzania) is uphill, our average speed was 30kph. So we spent the whole day with traveling – from 6am to 6pm. The next day we searched for a mechanic, who was able to fix our car. And as it is in Africa, everyone is a mechanic and wants to help us. As we had no good experience with “street-mechanics” we decided to visit a proper garage in town. The first garage we found was not really helpful. They worked for five hours on our lovely car, exchanged spark plugs and oil; but finally Stella was driving even slower.

We couldn’t drive on like this, thus we searched for another garage. And we found one: a Swiss Garage. It was a mission center combine with a garage. The people were very helpful, fixed the car and invited us to sleep over. There was even a hot shower, it was amazing!!!

The next day we stood up at 6 to drive as fast as possible the 350 kilometers to Iringa. We were very optimistic, because Stella ran well yesterday. After a few kilometers the great depression: Stella was bitching around again. We had the same problems as before. It got even worse, after one hour driving the acceleration cable torn. We got stuck in the middle of nowhere. After a while, a truck driver stopped and offered his help. He tried to fix it, but it wasn’t possible without a new cable. The plan was that Ruven drove with the truck driver to the next town, get a cable and come back to replace it. The drive with the truck was insane. The driver fell asleep several times and sometimes almost touched the passing trucks. In the meantime Felix and Alex constructed their own acceleration-system. With Alex accelerating and Felix driving the car, they made it by themselves to the next town and met Ruven over there.

 

In the town there was a guy who replaced the cable. Afterwards we drove to Iringa and finally arrived at 8pm: 350 kilometres and 14 hours traveling.

 

 

The next they we replaced the fuel pump and did some adjustments by ourselves. Now she is running as good as it was in the beginning of our journey, like a young girl. What we learned from those days: maybe we should trust in ourselves a bit more.