Greetings from extremely hot and humid Dar Es Salaam!
We arrived last night. The train ride was a generally positive experience. The main good thing is that we got to Dar in less than 50 hours. The other good thing was getting to see everything along the way. We passed through a game park yesterday and saw impalas, elephants, and a giraffe! Who needs a safari when you've got the train??
The not so great things:
- Large blood stains on my sheets. MMhmmm.
- Spending the evenings with cockroaches who live on the walls next to your bed.
- Being completely and utterly ripped off at the border.
2 minutes before the Tanzanian border, money changers get on and you change all your Zambian Kwacha to Tanzanian Shillings, which we did. 2 minutes after the border, the passport officials get on and tell you the visa is $50 for Europeans, $100 FOR US CITIZENS, and can only be paid in US dollars or Euros. Let me begin by saying, we've read every travel book and website on our required visas and none are supposed to cost more than $50, regardless of citizenship. Let me also say (mostly to the border guards, because I'm pretty sure everyone else knows this about me) that just because I am an American, I do not carry hundreds of dollars in US currency around with me whilst traveling in Africa.
They had "insisted" we pay in US dollars at the Zambian border too, but eventually caved and let us pay in Kwacha as it was all we had. The Tanzanian border guards, however, quickly called in a money changer with US currency who charged us about 30% interest. We ended up spending every last bloody shilling on the visas. It was that or get kicked off the train at the Zambian border. Ahhhh, African corruption at its finest. I tried my best to shower the border guard with stinging, guilt-tripping comments about how we would now starve to death on the train days as he'd robbed of us all our money and would be held fully accountable.
All I can say is, thank goodness for peanuts and Europeans. Before we went bankrupt, Ina bought an enormous bag of raw, unshelled peanuts from a vendor outside the train window for somewhere around 30 cents, and we proceeded to eat these for the next 3 days. There was also a very sweet German girl sharing our cabin, along with a Norwegian couple and a British/Kiwi couple who shared their bread with us and occasionally a slice of gloriously nutricious tomato. We are forever endebted.
We stayed at the Dar Es Salam YMCA last night, which here seems to stand for You May [Hear] Construction [Noise] Allnightlong. After 2 nights on a lurching and rolling train though, it felt so good to be still. At 4am we were woken by the mosque call nearby. I am trying really hard to be tolerant but any religion that requires not only its followers but every single person within a 20 mile radius to be woken at such an ungodly hour by such an.... INTERESTING noise is going to have a hard time converting me. The joys of staying in a Muslim area. We walked around for a while last night and Dar seems to be quite modern and mixed. It feels a bit like India with a lot of rubbish everywhere and even tuk tuks. In between all the high-rises, there's white sand and palm trees, and the humidity is mind-blowing.
Now we're off to try and sort out bus tickets to Nairobi, before catching the ferry to Zanzibar for the weekend. It's supposedly a very touristy and expensive place, but for once I'm a bit excited to head to a more mainstream location in hopes of finding something to eat besides white bread, peanuts, rice and cabbage, which I'm pretty sure is all we've had for the last 3 weeks.
Also, a word of praise about showers. When you've been having bucket baths or living on a train for many weeks combined, there is nothing comparable to soap and a shower, even if it is freezing. We were a bit hesitant to shower on the train because when you brush your teeth and wash your face, the water you wash your face with looks like the water you just brushed your teeth with. Or water from somewhere else.
But anyway. Bye for now and love to all of you!
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