New Car!

We have debated long and hard about purchasing a car here in Tanzania. Since I have a motorcycle and Ana rides a bicycle, we easily navigate Moshi and take many trips around Tanzania. However, it would be nice to have for longer trips, moving stuff around, and going out with friends that don't have transport. Plus, as much as I love off roading with my non off road motorcycle, it would be nice to have a vehicle to tackle some of the roads. One of the more positive aspects is that cars that are over ten years old tend to not depreciate and nearly everyone whom maintains their vehicle well sells their vehicle for nearly the same price they paid. So we were always on the lookout for the perfect deal.

We knew that if we had a car we'd want it to be four wheel drive, though we didn't want some massive ridiculous safari vehicle. Mid 90's Rav4s are a popular car here, as are Suzuki Escudos. However, these are frequently priced at around $5,000, which seems a bit too much to pay for them. I would prefer to spend a little more and get a real capable vehicle.

And we were in luck, we finally found a vehicle that suited our needs. A 1990 Toyota Landcruiser, basically a short version of the beastly Landcruiser line. It has a diesel engine, which I've been is a particularly awesome feature. Apparently if you rebuild and work on them every 300,000 miles, the engine can go for something ridiculous like 1,500,000 miles. I'm sure our future adventures will wear out the rest of the car before the engine!