Continued from part 2. Technically we are now in Tanzania, but Stripey and Claw 9 happen to be Kenyans, so I'll finish our bit about travel under this subject heading.
My favorite shenaigan that Stripey and Claw 9 pulled was just before we entered a weigh station we stopped at a small bus station and unloaded half of the passengers onto another bus. We passed through the weigh station and then somewhere further down the road, when we stopped for lunch, everyone else was let back on.
Speaking of lunch, we hit a roadside canteen that served up another order of rice, beans, a bit of spinach and a couple of chapatis. That held us over until the end of the ride.
The end of the ride was pretty daunting. Unlike a normal bus which makes a final stop at the bus terminal, Stripey and Claw 9 were supplememnting their income by allowing passengers to exit and then picking up other, short distance passengers. We'd hoped to reach Dar by 3pm, but didn't roll into the hot, humid capital of Tanzania until a bit after 4pm.
Unfortunately, the main bus terminal is on the outskirts of town. We were forced to quickly negotiate a cab to take us to the ferry port. The traffic was bad and we feared we would surely miss the last one heading to the island of Zanzibar for the day. As we pulled up we were pleased to hear that the last ferry was still in port, but were disappointed that it was completely full. Robert and I had each known the chances of getting the ferry were limited, but after 44+ hours of travel we were almost in shock that for the first time in Africa something wasn't falling into place with our laissez-faire attitudes.
We quickly fought off the countless touts trying to "help" us get a ticket for the following morning. We were able to secure spots on the following morning's 730am ferry and then headed to a hotel for the night.
To be continued in Travels in Africa #5 - Tanzania
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment