Dar Arusha Video Coach Fast Express

MEMORABLOG: 21.11.1998

We woke up early. Yep, mosque effect... Actually, we started taking it out easy... we decided not to catch the first bus, but the one at 8:30 am. Why should we go so early, as everybody says its only 7-8 hours to Arusha... Oki, at least we can have a proper breakfast.

Of course... bus didn't leave at 9am. It left when full, at 9:30am... We got the best seats, thats infront, either because we overpayed them, either because nobody wanted to seat infort and look at the road :) More probably both. It took us long time to travel out of Dar. Not only that we were constantly picking up the passengers, we had several stops to buy food and supplies. It looked like we were going on a trip for several days. And the bus driver knew where to stop for fresh bananas, pine apples (heh, he bought LOADS of pine apples). And finally we we on the road... speeding, being the kings of the road!!!

Road out of Dar was BAD, full of potholes, but later on, on the plains it was just good. To good, as the driver though he is Ayrton Senna (but thats a common belief everywhere in third world). At first, I was quite uneasy sitting in the bus, as everybody looked at us. Not looked, stared... But when the TV programme started, two mzungus were just not interesting anymore. How to describe the TV programme? Well... it started off with some music videos (funny people dancing even more funny dances, everything filmed on an amateur camera by an amateur) and then with a couple of bloody and violent movies. Don't recall the movies, but I remember to see a title of Missed in Action, number unknown... :) But it was, good... after 30 minutes nobody cared a bit of us...

After a few hours of driving... tire bust... heh, probably we were just too fast. But it was a good chance for "discovering the bushes" and emptying our bladders. In meantime all the male passengers tried to help changing the wheel... Except us... :) Funny...

When coming nearer and nearer to Moshi, sun slowly went down... Then we figuered out, that either we are terribly late or just they forgot to add a few hours on the "travel time" that they mentioned to us... Anyway, but coming late to Arusha was not the worst thing. What worried me was... well... our headlights were not working... OK, from time to time, they started working, but most of the time we were just driving in the dark... damn, now i know why they let us sit infront...

In Arusha we followed an advice of our friend from the airport, and we hopped off at Golden Rose hotel and not the bus station (just to avoid the hassle of touts). We went to nearby Mashele guesthouse, which was not a bad one... Funnily, the guys from Paradies safaris found us an hour later... they wanted the rest of the money for the safari, and we wanted to meet the lady... Well, the lady didn't arrive, as she had some other business to do, a safari will be delayed for one day... so... we decided to... let our 100US$ go and get lost and find a new safari company... There were some disagreement by those lads at Paradies safaries, but eventually they resigned with quite a nice bonus... And only a few days later we found out, that this was not a bad idea...

So, it was time to get a new safari company. And that wasn't difficult, as touts were like ants. The only problem was, that we wanted to go as soon as possible on a 4 or 5 day safari... even tommorow...We got someone that would take us the next day, and the price was right (it was actually lower than the one in Dar) and he got some recommendation from our language. We also agreed to pay ANY money, when the jeep comes to pick us up and when we are happy with the jeep. That was cool, but without knowing we screwed some other people, who were promised to go in "four" and then they got some extra passengers... At least beer was tasty and cheap... :)))

Well, later, much later I was browsing to get some information about our safari company - Stonechat... actually, it was on a black list and has probably disappeared and reappeared under new name... While paradies safaris is still alive... Nevertheless, we enjoyed next few days...