African Overland Holiday...Part III

Third Time’s a Charm: Tanzania – “Hakuna Matata”

We are walking through all the money exchangers, hoping to catch a glimpse of this bus. The sun has set and it’s getting dark quicker than we were expecting. Finally the booking agent points, ah see there it is. Well, he was right, it was there waiting for us just as he had promised, no problem, no problem. As we approach I begin asking, “where are all the people and when is it leaving?” The agent kinda avoids the questions and leads us on the minibus, the empty minibus. Wait, when is this leaving? The agent chuckles, “Oh, no buses are not allowed to drive at night in Tanzania, this bus isn’t leaving until the morning.” What? Morning? It’s 7:30pm, you’ve got to be kidding me! So, where are we supposed to sleep or stay until it leaves? The driver points to the bus (like a game show presenter), “here, this is where you can sleep, no problem, no problem.” Oh, sir we have a very big problem.

It’s pitch dark outside and to make it even darker there is no electricity in the village tonight. Everyone watched the white people walk on this bus and have begun to gather to “visit” with us. As we are trying to explain to the agent how we CANNOT possibly stay here, men a jumping on the bus to proclaim their love for us, others are trying to sell random goods, ugh, this is kinda a nightmare (still thousand times better than if we hadn’t crossed the border). Smash tries to explain how it’s not safe for us to stay here, the agent returns with an 80 year old security guard who can barely see. The guard waves and points to the darken shack he’ll be sitting at; this doesn’t make any of us feel better.

After awhile the agent shares that there are some other accommodations available. JNaw and myself go and check out these accommodations and well lets be honest anything was better than the unsafe minibus. Happily we give our 2USD each for our rooms and with no money, nothing to eat except some old moldy-ant infested bread (not kidding) and peanut butter we decide it’s best to just take a shower and go to bed, this day is finally over and we are still alive. At this point we are certain we won’t make it to the airport to meet our friend but there’s not much we can do. We have NO money, local currency or other and we’ve already paid for our tickets so we just have to take the ride and pray we’ll get there.

The minibus doesn’t leave until 10 or so, it’s a 14-hour bus ride so it’s confirmed, we are not making it to the airport. The first two hours of our trip the driver doesn’t go past 40kph, seriously. At this rate we will never get to Dar. Once we finally arrive in Mbeya the driver and another guy begin to argue. The guy jumps into the bus and takes the keys out and runs off, of course, it’s kinda expected at this point. An hour later the guy returns, he’s now our driver and we continue with our trip. This guy is determined to make up for lost time and we are flying through Tanzania, we might just make it to Dar after all.

The scenery is amazing. Classic Africa and like Namibia each turn or hill provides another completely different view. As we are going through this wonderful canyon I can’t help but think gosh I’m glad I didn’t fly over all this. But, somewhere along the trip our fast but sensible driver disappears and we are left another reckless trip. I mean we are in a canyon, cliffs on both sides of the road and this man decides that passing 3 semi-trucks in a row on a turn is a great idea. As the hours pass it only gets worse. I luckily can’t see anything because so many extra people have got on our bus that I have two ladies kinda on my lap and a man’s behind next to my face, nope can’t see the road that’s for sure. Smash is right behind the driver and doesn’t have the blind is bliss opportunity that I have. I begin to attempt to just close my eyes but moments later we are air born. Beads yells “Well now we know what happens when we don’t slow down.” The Tanzanian roads are filled with speed bumps in and out of each village and our driver normally slams on his brakes to slow in time but not this time. Mach and I are just looking at each other in shock (both of us had our eyes closed) and sure enough we are in the air again, wow, this is just getting better and better. I look over at Smash and she’s in tears and JNaw is beside her and trying to comfort her but she’s frightened too. I put on worship music on my ipod and decide I will spend the next 3 hours in prayer, literally.

Somehow we arrive to Dar es Salaam, or at least the outskirts. We jump out of the bus when our new friend (guy sitting next to Beads during the trip) tells us to hoping he’s correct. We negotiate a taxi to the airport. At this time it’s around midnight but we figure maybe our friend either hasn’t got in yet or is just getting through customs and waiting for us. There are two people at the airport besides security, neither is our friend. We negotiate another trip with the same taxi driver to the YMCA. In case she’s following the itinerary I sent her she should think that’s where we are staying. We get to the YMCA and the guard not only won’t let us in (who can blame him it’s 1:30am roughly) but he is not really trying to help us out, like talking to us, just kind of shrugs. Well since there is nothing to do this early in the morning we ask the driver to take us to Safari Inn, we know it’s open late and we are praying they have rooms, which they do. When we get out the driver now has increased his price by 20,000 shilling, roughly 20USD. So yet another argument begins between us and someone dealing with transportation. The security guard for Safari Inn is trying to help us but really he’s not. To be honest I figure we will have to pay close to his ridiculous amount because although we agreed on a price (with a language barrier) if he’d left us at the YMCA or the airport we’d have to pay even more to get here. I lower him just a little and we all agree and I just want to sleep so I pay him and we’re off to our beds. Mach and I have an early morning ahead of us as we search for her friend.

At 8am Mach goes to check her email. Her friend is here, waiting at YMCA and terrified (wouldn’t you be if you just arrived in Africa and no one was there to meet you). We get a taxi and rush over there, Mach is crying and the driver keeps saying “no problem, no problem”, I try explaining to him what that phrase means to us by now and he’s not helping. We get to the YMCA find J and I just stand around for a few minutes as J and Mach have a very tearful reunion (what’s with our trip at tears?). We all head back to Safari Inn for breakfast and to plan what to do next.

It’s unanimous that we will be taking the slow ferry to Zanzibar. Our nice taxi driver from before walks us to the ferry and gets us VIP seats at no extra cost to us, such a nice man. We board the ferry unsure what VIP actually means in Africa. We board the ferry and make our way through the many, many people to the VIP section, just as crowded and a lot stuffier. The VIP section is suppose to have air conditioning I guess (doesn’t really work) and no windows that open, ugh it’s not great at all. As soon as the boat leaves the dock we realize the extra 15USD would have been worth it. This slow ferry feels every wave that hits it and I am overcome by extreme seasickness, we all are. J passes out some Dramamine and I pass out. Each time I attempt to wake up/get up I’m sick again so I just sleep through our entire trip. The slow ferry luckily isn’t too slow and we arrive at Zanzibar in three hours.

After the chaos of getting our bags going through customs (weird I thought we were still in Tanzania) we walk to where the “cheap” accommodations are, street touts have decided to accompany us for this journey, yea! Starving we settle in our rooms and immediately head out to look for food, a lot of food at that (we really haven’t eaten more than pieces of toast in days). We attempt to go to Mercury’s but they won’t serve food until 7, it’s 5pm…we continue looking. Finally we find this great place that has decent food for a good price and we pig out.

The next day we go on a classic Zanzibar Spice Tour. It was actually really cool. You get to see some of the island and learn a lot about spices and herbs that well I would have never really cared about but was glad to have been there. The best part about the Spice Tour was eating all the native fruits; they were DELICIOUS and well worth our 12USD. After a traditional lunch (was I eating tree bark in my rice?) we headed to a beach north of Stonetown to relax. Wow, the water was so clear that I could see 10 feet below me. The reef was amazing and home to such beautiful fish. It was exactly what I thought Zanzibar was going to be, white sand and crystal clear waters; I was finally on vacation.

That evening once we had returned some when to explore the town. Smash and I relaxed, did some laundry and did a casual stroll around the outskirts of town finding the best gelato on the island (we did check other places before arriving at this decision). We were really enjoying our peaceful afternoon stroll with ice cream, Internet and Obama sightings (his face and name are on everything). (We walked to dinner and for personal reasons I won’t go into detail but after this moment the trip/day went horrible. I won’t try to explain/justify or understand but needless to say that our entire group had a culture misunderstanding/lesson that we will never forget and unfortunately has not been forgiven.) We ate at Mercury’s whose food is sub par and atmosphere could not uplift our shaken attitudes.

The next day we got on a dalla dalla to a beach on the south eastern coast of the island called Jambiani. Dalla dallas are an amazing local experience and when in Tanzania I recommend everyone ride at least one way to their destination in one. We arrived in Jambiani without reservations on New Years Eve and decided to start at the south end of the village and just go to each accommodation and pray there is some vacancy, if not we have tents and there is lots of beach. The first five places led us to believe it was hopeless cause but a nice man pointed us to an inn that he figured would be the only place with any vacancy. It was our lucky day and I’m not sure if they actually had room but they gave us two, sorry if we took someone’s reservation. This place was perfect, cheaper than we expected and right on the beach. The only downfall would be no fresh water but we were only staying there for few days and who needs a shower when you have the ocean at your door?

I convince Beads and Smash to walk with me out to the water, its low tide so the water is like almost a mile off shore. As we are walking we realize we are not getting anywhere closer to the water yet farther away from the shore, ok it was a little farther than we all thought. Once we arrived at the water like 45 minutes later we thought it best to start heading back in case the tide comes it we don’t want to be way out here. Walking back took some skill and determination. The muddy reef like ground made it difficult to pick your feet up. Smash and I decided to go bare foot cause our flip flop straps had made our feet bleed with the many hard attempts to pull our feet out of the earth. After walking barefoot for a while Smash starts saying how her feet are really painful. I didn’t want to mention it but I was constantly stepping on something sharp. We couldn’t see anything in the mud so we kept walking. Finally it was unbearable and I start searching in the mud and find little starfish which I thought were cute until I realized that’s what we were stepping on. We didn’t have a choice but to continue to the island so we kept walking. As if Smash couldn’t regret this walk anymore we come across a large family of sea urchins. We had to make our way through the maze of sea urchins back to shore, and we did, just as the tide came in.

New Years we went to a hotel having a seafood buffet and once again made a fool of ourselves by stacking our plates, shoveling food into our mouths only to get stuffed in two minutes, so sad really. Beads, Smash and Mach stayed for the countdown but the rest of us walked home to hit the sack, tomorrow we had an early call time.

Swimming with the dolphins sounded like a great idea. Even after all I had read about how tourism has terrorized the dolphins on the southern tip of Zanzibar (yeah, I’m sure terrorized is the appropriate word) when asked if I wanted to go, I didn’t hesitate, of course. Early in the morning we headed to the southern tip to catch a motorboat to the dolphin conservatory offshore. We approach an area that already has five or so boats and we stop. Our guide informs us that there are dolphins around here. “When I see a dolphin I will get close and when I yell ‘Go” you jump in.” Unsure what he meant we agreed.

Dolphins. Our boat pulls to kind of cut the dolphin’s path and our guide yells, “Go, go, go!” Without even thinking I (ungracefully) fall into the water with my snorkel around my forehead. Beads is in with me and both of us are still unsure what we are in fact suppose to be doing. J jumps in with Mach’s chitange (cloth wrap) around her face and Mach goes in with her clothes on, we were all a little caught off guard. I fix my goggles and go under, dolphins. There were six of them at least, bigger than what I was prepared for. I attempted to swim above them as they dove deeper and deeper until I had lost sight of them. Above water the guide was yelling at us to jump back in the boat.

We get in (not quickly as it requires some skill to climb a ladder with fins) and wait to see another fin emerge from the water. In time it does and once again we are chasing after the dolphins. This time they are staying closer to the surface. Before the boat even stops I’m in the water. Beads is debating what to do when the guide yells, “Go, go, go!” Beads looks at him, “On top of them?” Yes, if we all did as our guide wanted we would be literally jumping on top of the dolphins, luckily some part in our brains was still working and none of us did it. This second jump was by far the best. I was able to swim next to wild dolphins for a good moment in time. At one point I come up for air at the same moment all 6-10 of them come up for air. I was literally an arms length away and when I realized this I was overcome with fear. What am I doing this close to a wild animal, even if it’s a dolphin, this doesn’t seem smart. Rather than try to grab on to the dolphins as our guide would like us to do I just sit there starring at them, wow, amazing. I’m not sure what I was thinking a dolphin looked like but from that distance I was just amazed. I was only distracted when I looked up and noticed another boat taking photos of the dolphins and me, haha I had to pose right? We (the dolphins and I) dive back into the water and I swim with them until they were out of sight again. I realize only now that I’m further from the boats than I expected. The swimmer in me kicked as hard as I could to keep up with the dolphins forgetting all else. When the boat gets me I once again ungracefully board. The guide tells me “Oh, you are a fast one, you swim with the dolphins.” Is this what they meant my swimming? Ok. J and Beads are discussing the large amount of jellyfish they saw on the last jump. Great, now instead of the dolphins on my mind I’m going to be thinking about jellyfish. We go for 1.5 more jumps, the .5 alluding to the time our guide yelled go and only J jumped in the water (I wasn’t jumping in if I didn’t at least see a fin). The last jump I have one eye on the dolphins and one eye on the water ahead of me, scanning for jellyfish. Although I once again “swam” with the dolphins I couldn’t enjoy it as I was more afraid of getting stung.

We start the trip back to the island, seasickness now overcoming all of us. When we get close to shore the boat stops and we go snorkeling for not nearly as long and we would’ve liked. I still can’t believe how clear the water was and that even in low tide there was such an abundance of things to see. I had two favorites, one the huge bright blue starfish, they were real cool and the second were these thin fish that looked like eels but super thin. These fish were hard to see, as they were kinda transparent or like a light blue but they were paper-thin. I kept trying to show Mach but there would never be anything there when she looked. Beads finally saw some so at least I know I wasn’t crazy.

That night we went to a near by place that we knew had cheap and delicious pasta. We ordered and expected a long wait even though we were the restaurants only customers (probably all day). Two hours later our food finally arrives, I’m not making this up. We think they had to go and buy the food and then find some women to cook the food. I’m guessing this is pretty accurate based on the fact that these new women were all of the sudden in the kitchen and our food came shortly after. JNaw is served chicken and chips, she is served an entire chicken, like with the head still attached. I can’t go into details about what happened next just that it was the funniest dinner we had the entire trip, Beads and I were crying for at least 15 minutes we were laughing so hard. It’s safe to say that all our cultural appropriateness that we’ve learned after being in Africa for a year when right out the window, it was a bad day for Americans, but it was hilarious.

The next day we waited for the dalla dalla and half the village’s children sat beside us. This little boy kept rubbing his penis and trying to touch Beads, without really knowing that others might not want to touch his hands. Beads finally turns to the kid (who knows no English) and says, “no I don’t want your penis hands rubbing me.” Haha, we had a lot of good one-liners on this trip.

Back in Stonetown we get ferry tickets, the fast ferry this time and go to the best gelato place to eat. I pigged out and it was totally worth the money I spent! We ran into other PCVs from our group who were doing the same trip as us, more or less and they had decided to fly back to Namibia. They had just as difficult of a journey getting to Tanzania and had no intention of seeing what the return trip offered. I went to the internet café and checked what tickets were that day and well I couldn’t part with 700USD or N$7000 (that’s more than I make in a quarter pay period) so return trip here we come.

When we arrived in Dar we checked into the YMCA and four of us attempted to find tickets to Lusaka. We had decided to cut our trip short and rather than heading north to Arusha the next day just decided to get home. Scandinavian Express sadly no longer went to Lusaka (it was the only bus company I trusted in Tanzania) so we went to the Ubongo bus station to see what we could find. Just as expected it was chaos and some booker gave us tickets even though I had a sense of de javu I knew we had to get out of Tanzania somehow.

The morning we were leaving the YMCA we had all forgot to tell reception that we would be leaving at 6am, oops. I jumped the fence/stair case and went to get the guard. He seemed very surprise to see me. After getting the rest of my friends out and into a taxi, we were a little snug in one, we headed to the bus station. Our taxi driver was really kind and tried to help us find our bus or the bus that would be taking us since our bus wasn’t actually showing up today, naturally. We got on the bus and prayed it would leave semi-on time, not kill us and somehow get us to the Zambia border. Most of the ride was fine. He was a fast driver but not crazy or reckless. We seemed to be making good time and might even make it to the border before it closes, I didn’t want to think about what happened if we didn’t make it again. This driver although safer did not have the keen knowledge about where each pot hole was on Tanzanian roads as our other one did, it was well a bumpy ride.

10-12 hours later we arrive in Mbeya. Whew, the hard part of the journey is done. We just had like 200km to go and it was still early, this was all very promising. After taking the scenic tour through Mbeya and stopping every few seconds we depart Mbeya as the sun has set, ok, don’t freak out yet, you are still ok. This is when the driver becomes another person, another person that I fear I’ve seen just days before, a crazy, reckless Tanzanian driver. He’s booking it, I mean I have no doubt the border will still be open at the rate he’s going. He’s trying to be the first bus from Dar to reach the border (there’s like 14 other buses he’s competing with). We come to a part in the road where six or so semi-trucks are pulled over on the side of the road, weird, but they all are waving us by so without breaking we continue on. BREAKS!!!! A semi-truck is flipped on its side in the middle of the road. Blocking both lanes and well there’s no shoulder. At one side of the road is a cliff, a big one and the other side is a mountain. Without even asking if people want to get out or plummet to their death the driver decides to driver around the truck. People are on the cliff throwing rocks under our tires and attempting to give us something to drive on. Holy crap. If we would have had a second to think I would have been out the window in no time. Instead the entire bus jumps to the driver’s side so that we don’t tumble down the cliff. Beads and Smash figured if they were going to die they’d want to see it so they looked down the cliff as we pass. Tires slipping. I’m sweating profusely just now recalling the story. I grab JNaw’s arm as if I could pull her higher on my side of the bus and that would prevent us from falling. We hold our breath and the 10-20 second nightmare is over. We made it. The only other driver to get around that truck jumps out and gives our driver a high-five. All of us settle back into our seats, speechless and just look at each other. Did that really just happen? Then all the stuff we had wanted to say in those 20 or so seconds just comes out and we are all in shock that we just survived that. I mean it was “seeing your life face before your eyes” close to death. Holy crap. For the remainder of our travel to the border I’m basically in tears. Not only is he now driving reckless I know how far he will go to get us to our destination (dead or alive?) and that terrifies me. I just spend the rest of the time in prayer and silent tears. I want to go home, I want Namibia.

We get to the border, shocker it’s closed. We are once again fighting off taxi drivers (not sure where they think they’ll be driving us to) while wadding through the mud, did I mention it’s still rainy season. Finally the “new” booking agent asks us what kind of accommodation do we want him to find us. We all yell “CHEAP.” He shows us the cheapest place that has room, luckily, only we don’t have enough money, haha. We thought we were going to be on a bus traveling thru Zambia at this moment we had very little shilling left. We scramble, count coins and realize we have barely enough, if they give us a nice discount. They do and so we finally have a bed, no shower, no water, no food and a squatty potty, oh Namibia how I miss thee. I fall asleep to the office on my ipod, dreaming of simpler times. Times where all I wanted to do was to be a doctor-in America, ugh that seems so far away from where I am in this crap border town hotel room. Well at least I know I’m crossing the border in the morning and Zambia is a country I understand and am ready for, and it’s the last stop until I’m home.