Tanzania mainland is not very developed for tourism and planning a safari can be difficult but extremely rewarding. I found it to be a very unique experience and the travel to and from Mikumi was an immersion into the real Tanzania. 
If you do plan on organising your own safari I recommend picking up a sim card at the airport. There are kiosks for each phone company. I used Halotel and found their 3G to be excellent and very fast. Whatsapp is the preferred mode of communication with most taxis, accommodation and tour companies.  Emails are often left unanswered as most companies rely on their phones for internet.
There are many safari packages that will pick you up from your flight or hotel in Dar es Salaam and deliver you back afterwards, these work out to be quite expensive. 
I was lucky to find a new safari camp: Asante Afrika Camp. They have a link on booking.com also but deal with them directly for better value. You can bring your own tent, use their tents or avail of the lovely cabins. After an unanswered email I contacted them on Whatsapp: +255789838883 and arranged two nights accommodation in the private cabin, all meals and a full day safari. For two people this came to under $300 each. Amazing value compared to other companies I had researched. 
As we were miles from Mikumi town in the heart of the bush, there was no alternative restaurant. There was no need to worry, the food was excellent. Plenty of everything, very tasty and we were also asked before arrival if we were vegetarian or had any food preferences. After dinner each night we sat at the campfire and chatted to the night watchmen, some of whom are local Masai. Then when you wanted to go to bed to your cabin or tent a watchman would walk with you incase of any wandering animals. (A buffalo wandered into the camp at 5am the first night and they also had a lion quite recently!)
The safari began at 7am and we didn't return until after 4pm. We were lucky to have the vehicle to ourselves as the camp was quiet on that day. We had a full packed lunch with us from the camp. The only hold up is in the entrance to the park, very similar to the Tanzanian visa on entry to Dar es Salaam - slow, painfully slow. Fortunately Mikumi is not a very busy park and the hold up should not be more than 30 minutes. George our guide and driver was excellent. Very knowledgeable and ensured we had an enjoyable day. 
I was really pleased with the whole experience at Asante Afrika Camp. I had been a bit apprehensive, wondering if it was too good to be true, especially as all my communication with them was on Whatsapp but it exceeded my expectations. The camp itself is so comfortable, great facilities, hot water, good toilets, all the creature comforts (wifi) available. Ernest the manager/host was very diligent and even stayed with us at the bus station in Mikumi for an hour until we got our bus to Dar es Salaam. 

​Which brings me to the final/only issue with Mikumi-the bus!
The alternative to taking the public bus is to hire your own driver which seems to be $300 return to Dar Es Salaam. If you have 4 people to share the costs, I would definitely recommend it.
There are many buses passing Mikumi from Dar es Salaam. Mikumi is very conveniently situated on the Morogoro road which links Dar es Salaam port to Zambia and other west African countries.
From Dar es Salaam you take any bus to Iringa. There are luxury and semi luxury buses. The luxury bus has air con and toilet. With the bus you cannot have a time limit, the journey will take the length it needs to take! We traveled with Sutco buses at 8am from Dar es Salaam and arrived at approximately 2pm. The distance was 195km. We had one stop of 15 minutes. The roads are terrible, the driving is even worse! We were collected from the bus by a bajaji (same as an Asian tuk tuk) sent by Asante Afrika camp.
The return journey turned into a bit of an adventure. Ernest was arranging a luxury bus for our return to Dar es Salaam but when the bus arrived in Mikumi it had only one seat. He waited with us at the bus station for over an hour until we got a local bus to Morogoro, then the bus conductor brought us to a semi-luxury bus direct to Dar es Salaam. That journey of two buses (and 8 hours in total) cost us $7 each. The journey to Mikumi on the luxury bus from Dar es Salaam cost us $10 each.
Eventhough we were the only Mzungu's in the bus station, on the local bus and in the Dar es Salaam bus station Ubungo, we found everyone to be very kind and helpful to us.
Ubungo bus station in Dar es Salaam is the main bus station and is a bit of a shock. A lot of people work freelance at the station selling tickets and making commission on the sales. Ask your taxi driver to drive you fully into the ticket office area and ask your taxi driver to help you buy the tickets. We were lucky to have a great driver from the airport who gave us his card and told us to Whatsapp him for any further journeys. He looked after us at the bus station and made sure we got the correct ticket for the bus. If you do get overwhelmed with a tout, you won't have to pay more than a few hundred Tzs (50c). Ubungo isn't too daunting when you are ready for it.
We found that while we were pestered a bit, once you told them you already had a ticket or didn't need their service, you were left alone. Even the taxi driver who sprinted at least 100m across Ubungo bus station when he saw the two Mzungus on the bus from Morogoro!  

​12 years ago I arrived in Zanzibar and it was the most exotic place I had ever been. It was a highlight of our year travelling and as I lost the roll of film somewhere in the world during that year, I wondered had I just imagined it or was it really that special.
It is!

​Stone Town, the principal town of the island hasn't changed much at all. Same chilled atmosphere, narrow streets, beautiful sea and great food.

​In 2004 we ate in the night market every single night, loving the cheap food, the bartering and the fresh fish. The night market is still there. The Forodhani Gardens were refurbished in 2010 and are now quite pleasant. There is more of a semblance of hygiene and safety on the stalls. The meat is already precooked and there's no fish now. You can still bargain for your plate of food and you'll be ushered to the plastic seating beside the drinks kiosks.

​Zanzibar is 95% Muslim and this is strongly in evidence in Stone Town with no less than 53 mosques and only 2 Christian churches, an Anglican and a Catholic ​ Church.

​I returned to the famous Mr Mitu spice tour. The oldest spice tour, 55 years on the go. For 15 US dollars you get a tour which begins at 9.30am, finishes at 3pm, includes minibus to spice plantations, guided tour and tastings, lunch and an hour at the beach. Talk about good value!

I also did some sightseeing around the city. I visited the Grand Palace which I'm afraid hasn't been painted or swept since we wandered through it in 2004. I would recommend reading Memoirs of an Arabian Princess from Zanzibar to get into the history of that time. She was an interesting lady!

There is a new exhibition at the Slave Chambers which is well worth visiting. Zanzibar was a slave island and from here slaves were bought, sold and deported around the world. The exhibition is extremely well put together and very thought provoking.

​Other than that it's been a few days of eating, trying various Tanzanian coffees - spiced/ginger/iced. I'm actually staying in a coffee house - Zanzibar Coffee House, so there is a serious coffee theme to these few days.
​Next stop is the east coast for some beach time, swimming and surfing. It's all go!

Just over 8 years ago a certain Mr  Johnston arrived in Tanzania with a pile of money for a village that had no school. That village was Saku and that money was from the pupils of Creagh and Attyrory schools. The pupils had decided they wanted to pledge some of their confirmation money to sponsor a project in Tanzania. The village of Saku had at that time, no school. It was in a remote area and during rainy season especially, it was too dangerous for the children to walk to the closest school.
I visited that school yesterday and saw that first building which the confirmation children sponsored. In time, the government took over the school and it has expanded to over 3000 pupils! The Holy Union Sisters continue to be involved sponsoring two of the Kindergarten teachers. Without their continued support there would only be one Kindergarten teacher for the three classes of Kindergarten.
Each class has over 300 students and most classrooms operate a two shift day e.g. 150 children for the morning school and the other 150 children for the afternoon school.
Two new classrooms are being built and until then the kindergarten have no classroom. They are taught outside which is quite inconvenient during rainy season!
One of the older classes was taking part in a mock exam and since there is not adequate space in the classroom for testing, they sat outside on the ground spaced out from each other.
I have taken a lovely video and many photos to show Mr Johnston  and will upload when I get home or get stronger internet. It's hard to believe that this campus was once an empty piece of land. Food stalls and little shops line the entrance. The staff have no staff room and send out to the food stalls for their lunch between morning and afternoon schools. The children also buy their lunch from the stalls. With over 3000 pupils, this is school not only providing an education to the children but is the main source of income for the local people. 

​Most of my time for the past week has been spent with the new computer room in the COBET (MEMKWA in Swahili) school.
First a little about the COBET project. Continuing Basic Education in Tanzania. This was set up by the government to support children who were unable to access school due to disadvantage and family circumstances. The pupils start at various ages and receive their primary school education in a condensed 3 year programme and are ready to join secondary school. For their first year in mainstream they are in their own class and the next year, they are integrated with the rest of the school.
The pupils stories are varied. Many of the girls are "house girls". They were sent out to work by their family as young as 6 years of age. Some have been lucky to have employers who let them go to school during the day. However they could be working from 4am to 11pm in the house before and after school each day. Other kids are orphaned, many due to AIDs. There are a lot of kids from broken homes or single mothers.
Unfortunately the funding for the COBET projects has been severely reduced but the Holy Union Sisters are intent on continuing the programme.  The "teachers" are not trained and are facilitators who are educating these children as best they can. All teaching is through Swahili and these kids will join the local government school where classes can be well over 100.
Sr Annette decided to try to install a computer room to give these children an opportunity and an advantage over their future classmates in the government school. With the help of the INTO Solidarity Fund, Folens overseas teaching fund, my own confirmation class and other donations, she was able to order 25 computers from Camara.

I have settled, I'm here in Tanzania and despite major wifi withdrawal, I’m OK! I’ll admit, there was a breaking point on Thursday and I paid the nuns IT guy to buy me my own modem, great excitement when he arrived yesterday but unfortunately it was not to be. So it’s old school desktop PC, bye bye whatsapp and constant notifications, I don’t know what to do now in the mornings without all my updates to trawl through!
Enough of my first world problems....Tanzania........

Yes, the suitcase arrived. Luckily Sr. Annette had asked me to have a letter from my school stating that all the contents were a gift to the Holy Union Sisters School. I was stopped at customs after the bag was x-rayed and sent to the red channel. I dutifully produced the letter and blabbered a bit nervously but with a nod I was let through.

​Sr Annette met me at the Dar es Salaam airport. Along with her driver, they had waited patiently for over an hour after my flight arrival time. Let’s just say the visa processing service at immigration is not exactly efficient! Our exit from the airport was then impeded by a car illegally clamped right behind our car. Finally the driver and his mother returned but they didn't seem to have the inclination or the means to get the clamp removed. Finally the space beside our car came vacant and our driver was able to manoeuvre the car out around the clamped, non-moving car!

​An hour later saw us at the Holy Union Sisters Convent, Mbagala. Right next door is the primary school and across the road is the COBET street children project. Little bit of freshening up and we were off again, this time to meet the teachers and see the schools. I was introduced by Sr Annette as a head teacher from Ireland who would inspect the teachers and play sport with the children?! School reopened after its month of summer holidays just this Monday.

​After dinner it was an early night, to catch up on a missed nights sleep.
Wednesday was to be a quiet day for me to rest and get acclimatised to the place. Also Sr Annette was away at another convent. However Sr Mairead took me under her wing and brought me on another tour of the school. This time, school was in session and I was introduced to the children. The school takes children from 3 years and teaches the Montessori Method of preschool. The children all get lunch in the school and instead of going home early; the preschoolers have a nap and go home at the same time as the older pupils. 

Next it was onto the computer room to see the computers funded by the INTO solidarity fund and the room prepared from the funds of my own confirmation class.
Rodney, the new computer tutor was there with a few students but unfortunately the electricity had gone and he could only tell the children about the computers for this class!

The next morning I met with Rodney and we discussed ways of introducing the children to ICT. He took a group for two hours and it was their second lesson on the computers. I took charge of the inside room and my little group started with MS Paint. We thought it might be a nice way to get the children used to using the mouse. Rodney had to translate for me as these children are taught through Swahili and have limited English.
It was hot and stuffy; the kids kept talking to me in Swahili somehow thinking that I'd magically understand them. I supposed they are used to the Sisters like Sr Annette and Sr Mairead speaking their language and as they assume I'm a sister too, of course I should be fluent!
We moved on to PowerPoint when I realised the class was not an hour long but two hours long. They got a great kick out of the transitions on the slides, however they really haven't mastered saving files yet and as soon as you would see a child with a nice presentation they would have exited out of it and not saved it!

​Yesterday I spent the morning with Rodney teaching the same group of children computers. I thought 2 hours were long the previous day, these kids were timetabled for 4 hours! But we got on fine, we continued with PowerPoint. I had taken photographs of them and their school and they prepared presentations about themselves and their school. We invited some of the teachers in to help on the pretence of assisting me because the children would be writing in Swahili. The teachers in this school are not trained and have no experience of computers at all. The children I realized as the day went on, are of various ages. They come from difficult backgrounds and attend COBET to basically rehabiliate them into school life. They will join the mainstream school in a few years but already some of these kids are 14 years and older. Their standard of reading and writing is very basic so they were very proud to show off their powerpoints at the end when we did a class show and tell. Their school day actually finished at 12pm as it was Friday but nearly all the children stayed on for the extra 2 hours. 

In other news, I’m here minding the house while the Sisters are at a seminar for the morning. I’m going to another convent later to pick up a nun who was away. The convent is great, really comfortable and airy. A different nun cooks each night and treats so far include freshly roasted peanuts and banana bread. A man arrived this morning with a bucket of honey and Sr Annette is very proud of the cows they have on their farm. We have mangos, bananas, oranges and pineapples every day.
The electricity goes a few times a day, it went twice yesterday during our computer class but you just wait until it comes back. To have a hot shower, you have to heat water separately and throw it over you in the shower. Everything takes a bit longer but nobody is in too big of a hurry either!
And eventhough every Tanzanian tells me it is cold, and the kids are wearing their school jumpers-it’s roasting!

Wanted to go into the city. Chef brought us onto a dalla dalla - what an experience, total culture shock.
Suddenly we got landed a guide - then a second dalla dalla into the city - a lot of pointing and laughing (at us). All we could do is laugh as well. 
Internet cafe 500TS (50c) for an hour.
Dar Museum-crap
Followed by school kids. Back to hostel in taxi after walk around. Dinnner. Bed.

Interestingly dalla dallas are now regulated since 2008. Check out this link on wikipedia to learn more about these crazy modes of transport!  I remember it to be an unreal, crazy, scary experience (hence the taxi home!).  We seemed to be the only non-Tanzanians in the city that day and were a lot more interesting to the class visiting the museum than any of the artifacts!

This blog post is part of my 2004 Tanzania Diary

Sunday, so nothing opens in Dar.
Walked to university. 
Killed with the heat. Would be more killed with the humiliation if we were more nervous people!
Got chatting to Shakeria (an Israeli who is studying/working in Dar for a few months for womens rights who married a local footballer on a whim?!) and a Dutch guy. The only other person staying was sick!).

We really seemed to be the exception holidaying in Dar Es Salaam! Our hostel was on the University of Dar Es Salaam compound. 

This blog post is part of my 2004 Tanzania Diary.

As believed in 2004, we were indeed in a container ship. The Shipping Corporation of Zanzibar is still in existence however I really don't know how we ended up with tickets for the crossing. We did find it suspicious that there were no seats and we couldn't go out on deck!
Our highlight of all of Tanzania was the night market in Stone Town Zanzibar. I really hope on my return this summer, that the night markets will be as special as I remember. 
I cannot seem to find any mention of the Florida Inn on Trip Adviser or any site online. The curtain divided en-suite must not have taken off!