Tanzania 2011, Day 10

I'm writing this from Zurich airport, where I have a 7 hour layover. But they do not even publish the flight gates until 90 minutes before takeoff times so we are left to wander around in the rather large shopping are. Once you have browsed the endless expensive duty-free shops, there's not much else to do. At least it gives me the time & the impetus to write.

Yesterday (was it only yesterday?) was indeed a long day. We left Arusha by 7 & started driving for Dar es Salaam. Kanuth predicted about 8 hours for the trip & most of that was mercifully uneventful. We drove for a while alongside the base of Kilamanjaro -- or at least we were assured that the mountain truly was there even though camouflaged deeply in cloud. We drove east for an hour or so & then turned south, through country more lush than we had grown accustomed to in Dodoma or on the Maasai steppe. We drove through many communities, large & small, past thousands of schoolchildren, women carrying water on their heads, stalls of potato sellers, chickens, cows, goats, & sisal plantations. We stopped for gas (10 minutes), for a very quick lunch at a roadside place that caters to travellers, bus passengers etc. with a Tanzanian equivalent of take-out food (kuku choma & chips), & one more 10 minute stop to buy cashews. Other than that, all we did was drive. I think fatigue must have been catching up with me because I drifted in & out of sleep for most of the trip & my memory of people & places & landmarks is all mixed up with snippets of dreams.

Kanuth's travel time estimate would have been more or less correct if you count only the amount of time it takes to get to Dar's city limits. But once inside Dar, still 10 or 20 km (hard to tell exactly) from the city core, we slowed to a painful crawl. True, we were arriving at a bad time of day (3:30 or so, people starting to leave work) but Dar is always like this. There are very few traffic lights & movement seems to be maintained largely by roundabouts & very brave traffic cops who stand in the centre of the busiest intersections & control the flow. It is so much hotter in Dar, & very humid on top of that, so it was a real endurance test to sit, dripping sweat, breathing thick exhaust fumes, listening to horns honking, after a full day of getting there.

Eventually we got to the Southern Sun hotel & dropped Doug off. Then I hopped back into the car with Kanuth for the last stretch to the airport. Fortunately my flight wasn't scheduled to leave until 9:15 pm so it seemed we had lots of time. After all, it's only a couple of kilometers from the Southern Sun to the airport & we had made the trip in 15 minutes when we arrived last week. Sigh. Have you already heard enough about the reality of traffic in Dar??? Then I won't drag you through the excruciating details of the 2 hours that followed. By the time I entered the airport they were already doing the passport control for my flight. Wow, I reflected; Kanuth was wise to leave Arusha so early. Eight hours to travel the 600 or so km from Arusha to Dar: 4 hours to navigate 2 stops within the city itself. The mind boggles.

The rest was pretty uneventful, with one minor blip: just as we were all through security, waiting to board our flight, the power went out all across the airport. I suppose it was part of the country's electricity rationing program because it didn't seem entirely unexpected. Anyway, the entire airport went black for a minute or so & then the generators kicked in & we once more had (reduced) light. It delayed our flight by 25 minutes or so but otherwise, it was routine.

So here I sit in Zurich, far too tired & dopey to reflect much on the trip as a whole. We were in Tanzania for only 10 days with a work stint that seemed much too short. Maybe next time?