Going on leave today!

At about midday today Grant and I will say goodbye to our kitties here at home, to the Guest House staff over at the GH and to Thys and Marnitz. We are off on our three-week break in SA. We leave Mwadui and travel for two hours to Mwanza. tonight we'll stay over in Mwanza at the Tilapia Hotel on the shores of Lake Victoria. The idea is to catch the early morning flight to Dar Es Salaam instead of the one we normally take at 1.45pm. This way we arrive in Dar Es Salaam at about 10am, drive through the horrific traffic to our hotel on the shores of the Indian Ocean and have most of the day to do some Christmas shopping for the company. Whatever we buy, we'll leave with Mohamed our taxi driver in Dar and collect it on the way back in mid-December.

 I'll miss the quiet tree-lined streets of Mwadui

I'll miss our three cats who, in turn, if they have their food laid on, probably won't even notice my absence! 

I definitely won't miss the frequent and hours-long power-outages that are part of summer here in Tanzania!  

Instead of going home for Christmas, Grant has given a couple of other expats the option of spending the special holiday with their loved ones. We will be back in Mwadui for Christmas but we're not alone. Most of our friends from the Client company are also here. We ladies have already arranged a good Christmas Day at the pool, but more about that much later.

As usual we will stay overnight at the SeaCliff hotel in Dar Es Salaam and catch the morning flight to Johannesburg,  South Africa on Saturday. In Johannesburg we connect with our domestic flight and should land in Bloemfontein at 12.30. Angus and Amanda and their precious little ones will meet us at the airport. From there it's an hour-and-a-half drive home to Marquard. 

I hope you're all having a great week.