We are now in the last few days of our visit to bits of Tanzania and I have learnt the following:
The visa on arrival application at Dar es Salaam airport is easily the most chaotic and confusing of any country we have visited. I was so relieved to finally get it done that I failed to check at the time how long we had been given. I looked a couple of days ago just in case we were being overstayers and it was ok.
Dar is not a grand capital city but it is busy. Actually it’s not the real capital. Any place where the local fish market is touted as an important tourist sight is looking very hard for excitement. We had two nights there on arrival and I thought at the planning stage we might need some more so there are another two to go before we leave. I have planned a diversion for one day and we are staying in one of the flasher hotels so the rest of the hanging around will be comfortable. A drunken Aussie gave me the name of a good happy hour place so we might have to go there. He was a young backpacker who was doing a very thorough Cairo to Cape, but at home he had left New South Wales only once in his life and that was to go to Melbourne.
Dar Express Luxury buses are surprisingly comfortable but in appearance don’t live up to their self-given title. We did a nine hour ride from Dar to Moshi in the north which was interesting because we saw a good slice of what it is like from the coast to the heavily populated Kilimanjaro region.
If you see the top of Mt Kilimanjaro immediately take the photo. Kay was right in doing so despite my saying it’ll be there tomorrow.
The Serengeti has a very high stocking rate of Wildebeest and Zebras. We would regularly see thousands at a time and that was repeated several times a day. They were all milling around getting ready to do a bit of migrating, and trying to keep out of the clutches of the big cats. We saw lots of other stuff, most importantly the elusive (for us) cheetah. See below.
There might be 25 rhinos left in the Ngorongoro Crater but they can hide really well.
Being the only guests at a 14 tent safari camp in the Serengeti bush was bit strange. The staff to guest ratio was 10:2 and my biggest worry over the three nights there was how much would the tip be. I carefully sorted it out on the second day; then decided it was a bit low on the last night; and then broke into the envelope half an hour before leaving to increase it again. I haven’t got a clue as to whether I was anywhere near the average. This camp was beside a drying up river and each night on the other side we would hear what we initially thought were thousands of frogs. Turned out the sounds were Wilderbeest making friendly grunts to each other – a gnuther gnu.
Stonetown in Zanzibar is the easiest place in the world to get lost in. It is an Arabic maze. It is also a major tourist destination so there are lots of young men reasonably determined to sell one tours, spices or other unnecessary stuff. One guy I spoke to about a boat trip to get a feel for the prices decided I had entered into a contract carved in stone, but to my mind I had not. Whenever we walked in his part of town after that he would materialise from some dark doorway to haunt me with tales of poverty and unused petrol he had purchased. However we were undaunted and Kay put in a late shopping sprint that even included a nativity set – Zanzibar is very moslem.
The largest denomination note you can get from an ATM is 10,000 shillings which is about $8. I had to stock up in Zanzibar because the rest of the trip was in ATM-less places and where the hotels didn’t take credit cards. This created three problems, the first was that the best bank to use was in the zone of the disaffected boat owner and his “Mister Dennis” calls, the second was that it required multiple visits over several days, and the third was that we ended up with a pile of notes about the size of a brick which had be distributed in smaller bundles over lots of pockets and secret money carrying places.
Lonely Planet said Mafia Island is like Zanzibar was fifty years ago and they are wrong. It should be at least one hundred years. We stayed in one of the nicest tropical beach resorts we have seen but close by the locals lived in mud walled and palm roofed dwellings that might be called shacks if one was not being culturally sensitive. Part of the closeby was a fishing village where huge amounts of anchovy-sized fish were cooked over open fires in pots and then dried. Walking that way down the beach was an olfactory challenge, and a bit of a mental challenge to realise this way of life still exists. The boats are dhows that I suspect haven’t changed in style or constrution in centuries, apart from the odd outboard and the drying process would only be changed by the plastic sheets they now dry the fish on instead of palm mats.
The Omani Arabs who ruled where we are now in the south on the coast at Kilwa Masako, built some pretty impressive trading places. We spent a morning on a nearby island looking at the ruins of one of these which goes back to the 11th century but the big time was in the 15th. They even had a swimming pool. The thing that impressed me most was a very large well where local women are now still dropping down buckets on a rope hundreds of years later.
Kilwa Masoko has, in theory, four resorts. Two are shut down and one doesn’t appear to have much happening and we are once again all alone in the other one which is over-priced but friendly. Kay is being staunch about there not being any hot water or wifi. On the second day we walked into town and were delighted to find a sealed road and a working internet place. The walking tour of all the commercial activity took less than five minutes and we didn’t buy anything apart from an hour of internet for $1.50 and a big bottle of water for 80 cents.
Swahili words. Without even trying I have learnt to say “thankyou”, “thankyou very much”, “slowly, slowly”, “you are welcome”, “mzungo” which means “pakeha” and the omnipresent “hakuna matata” which is the local “no worries”. And that doesn’t include “jambo” which is apparently a pidgin swahili word used only with tourists as a greeting because mzungos are too stupid to learn the right word.
As the above indicates this second part of our trip has not had any physchological thrills like the first but it has had plenty of interest and the only thing that hasn’t gone exactly to plan is that I allowed a few too many days for local exploration that have not being necessary, because there hasn’t been anything to explore. I think Kay is leading in the Scrabble competition although one of her wins was by using a Portuguese word and my protest was overruled.
BOTSWANA POSTSCRIPT.
Some of you have commented how horrible the Botswana safari must have been because of all the stuff that happened. In fact it wasn’t – it was kind of like being in a soap opera and was pretty entertaining. The guiding expertise that Jane has was even more clear after having a perfectly adequate guide in Serengeti, but he was in a lower class compared to her.
Dangerous Don spent four nights in the police cells at Kasane. He was allowed back to Jane’s place to get his stuff under police escort and is now well away from her and his case is pending although I doubt it will ever get to court. In my last email from Jane her new bit of paranoia is that she is sure Don planned the robbery we had – something that is about 97% unlikely, but also is just possible. In my brief reply I suggested she keep taking the pills.
Now enjoying carpet, hot water, aircon, 4 sport channels, real bed, insect proof ceiling, glass in the windows, bedside lights, complimetary shampoo and little men in uniform at the door.
Touch down in Auckland 5am Sunday 23rd after 18,488 kms.
Dennis