05-Feb-2005 -- Having Friday evening, we decided to start another confluence visit Saturday morning. We chose to pay a visit to 8S 39E near Ikwiriri, printed out some maps and tried to get clarification on the position of the point. Knowing that the Rufiji River is home to crocodiles and the surrounding land sometimes visited by lions, we ignored the facts and started at 8:00 a.m. Saturday morning.

The road took us south out of Dar on a good tarmac road up to 42 km from Kibiti (till here constructed by the Force Account Unit Mkuranga, managed by a good friend of us, Franz Schatz - "der größte Schatz von Österreich" - thank you for this good road, Franz). From there up to Kibiti, the road was of bad condition, but luckily not too bad, taking into consideration the rain during the last days. Just in Kibiti we got back on tarmac and had another 30 km to the Mkapa Bridge, opened in August 2003 and crossing the Rufiji River and its floodplains. Here we stopped and reviewed our route.

We realised the point had to be north of the river and east of the new road. We tried to get closer using the old path, leading to the former ferry crossing of Ndungu. Suddenly, we were just another 350 m away from the Confluence we looked for. A short view over the land we had to enter, made us hope not to get to bad into swampy area, and we asked a boy (Omari) bathing in a near water place to be the askari for our car. He looked slightly puzzled, as we two took off with GPS, cameras, and the logistic person carrying a bag with all necessities to survive the coming 350 metres(!), entering the rather muddy area between the new tarmac road and the former one leading to the ferry.

Just walking down the slope, we stood in front of a small river, but manageable to cross. Continuing walking we felt to get heavier and heavier, realising that we took with us a good amount of soil, stuck to our shoes. Since this confluence was announced as a -Type: Water- (Rufiji River and its floodplains), we did expect to get wet and crocodile-eaten. However, we did get wet somehow, but not due to water from the river.

Passing some women arranging their fields and some small huts, we reached a small area and our GPS directly led us to 8°00'00.0"S 39°00'00.0"E (with an accuracy of 7 m). Without meeting the crocodile, we managed to get it "all zeros" before noon. In the afternoon, we continued on to 7S 39E.