30 hour bus ride

We sat in a European-style cafe in Jinja, enjoying the perfect chi of perfect decor while sipping perfect espresso drinks when one thing became unquestionably clear: we would be taking a 30 hour bus ride from Jinja to Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. Having just returned from a five day trek in the mountains compounded our enjoyment of our splurge at the cafe. However, we did not interrupt our routine lives of pleasure and comfort in Seattle merely to step into a travel life of the very same routine and pleasure we find at home. There are many ways to get from Jinja to Dar es Salaam, but in the decadence of that cafe, only the 30 hour bus trip seemed right for us.

We left Jinja (and dearest brother, Joe) on Monday afternoon at 4PM. Our Akamba bus was not special: no AC, no frills, and probably no shock absorbers. But the driver was proficient and in some respects heroic, as he bounced us tenaciously along unimaginably riveted, pot-holed dirt roads. We crossed into Kenya in a few hours and at 7PM the orange sun set, the hazy moon rose, and the Kenyan night came fast.

Those nighttime hours en route to Nairobi blurred with dozing, restless sleep, heat, humidity, and interminable bouncing, like a ship in rough waters. We reached Nairobi around 4AM in a half-asleep stupor and waited for two hours for our bus to depart for Dar. In the meantime, we found African milk tea, news on the TV, and a really nice freshly scoured Asian squat toilet that smelled like Ajax and was worth much more than the thirteen cents we paid to use it.

At 6AM, we joined our African colleagues, who were bundled up against the "cold" of night in coats, scarves, and hats, to board the bus to Dar. The conductor passed us small cakes, pea samosas, and boiled eggs for breakfast and we set off at 6:30. The sun rose at 7AM, revealing a landscape very different from the fecund, populated greenery with which we had become familiar in Uganda. Dry, flat, brown lands peppered with shrubs, herd animals, and lone herders sprawled into the distance. Time passed in arrhythmical spurts of sleep and hazy consciousness for another few hours until we crossed into Tanzania around 9AM.

After wading through touts, hassles, and confusion at the border, we boarded the bus again around 10AM. We drove on and on....it felt and looked similar to driving though Montana. Grand purple mountains rose in the distance all around us. The land appeared vast, parched, brown, and far less populated than Uganda. Herds of cows and goats grazed and mud huts were covered with metal rather than plant fibers. The villages were only slightly greener than their surroundings and the ubiquitous Ugandan farmer was naught to be seen. As the day wore on, the luscious smell of meat roasting wafted through the bus.

We stopped briefly in Arusha, where clouds obscured Mt. Kilamajaro. Each stop was brief...barely enough time to find a toilet. On one stop, Greg got yelled at for peeing outside the loo. At another, Cindy got swindled into buying two rotten bananas for $1. The sun set at 7PM. The heat was intense; sweat was profuse; all inside the bus was sticky.

Akruba was scheduled to arrive in Dar at 7PM, but we didn't get in until 10:30PM. The hyper-vigilant taxi driver who stormed us after we got off the bus informed us that the hotel where we planned to stay was closed. He knew a better hotel - just as cheap and brand new. He'd take us there.

We believed it was a scam. But we were too tired, dirty, and unempowered to care. We bounced another few blocks along unpaved roads to....a really nice, clean, cheap hotel with AC? Yes, we did. We never would have found the place ourselves. It was gem hidden amidst piles of rusty corrugated metal roof panels.

We took the room, showered, watched the TV, slept, and in the morning decided to stay another night. After a day exploring Dar, we ferried off to Zanzibar, where we now sweat by the sea - more about this decadence later.

Peace,

C & G