Safari!

Wow, so a lot has happened since I left Kiganza. I flew from there to Dar es Salaam a week ago and was surprised to find that all but one of the seedy hotels near the bus station were full. The availability in the one that wasn't was limited to a ridiculously expensive double room with A/C (didn't work, and cost extra), hot water (ditto), and a grainy TV picking up a handful of god-awful Indian music video stations. I sucked it up and paid for it, and spent a sweaty night lying flat on my back (on a double bed, though) in my underwear, musty mosquito net flopping irritatingly against my face, trying to stay cool. It was funny seeing the city for a second time. When I first landed there six weeks ago, the first thing I noticed about Dar es Salaam was its dirt, chaos, and lack of what we as Westerners would call "development." After five weeks in a villlage, though, I was stunned by how modern Dar suddenly seemed. There are cars on the roads! Billboards! Women in--can it be?--pants!! I felt infinitely more confident navigating my way around and dealing with the inevitable attention I attracted.

I left by bus at 7:00 the next morning. There were some minor hang-ups--my ticket had been sold, or transferred, or something, to a different bus company than the one I'd chosen, and there was a 5000 Tsh (about $4.25) "luggage fee" (i.e., rip-off), and all the passengers had to change buses only about half an hour into the trip, but otherwise the 10-hour journey was pretty smooth. We had one 15-minute lunch break at a funny little roadside restaurant, and two bathroom breaks en masse in someone's cassava fields (sorry, farmers). The clouds that I'd woken up to in Dar that morning followed me all the way to Arusha, which is about halfway across the country and to the north, and at a much higher altitude. I spent a chilly night in my teeeeeny little hotel room (so small that the bed blocked the door from opening all the way and I had to take my backpack off and push it through ahead of me to get in), and woke up the next morning to a cold drizzle. My first stop, the tourist info office, proved very helpful, in part because of the passel of safari company hasslers who sprang on me the instant I exited. At first I tried to ignore them, but then I grudgingly had to admit that they were pretty useful for showing me around to all the safari offices (doubtless trying to collect a tip from whichever company I chose), and were saving me lots of time standing around in the rain with a map. So my five new friends and I set out to visit tour companies all over Arusha, and by the early evening I was booked as the last member of a 5-person safari, 4 days, 3 nights, leaving at 8:30 the next morning.

My ride (a pop-top Land Cruiser) arrived, as expected, at around 9:15 the next day, and we spent the next two hours driving around the city so that the guide could run some errands (grab his sleeping bag here, visit the ATM there) and buy our food (as if he somehow hadn't known in advance that he was leading a safari that day.) We finally left Arusha a little after 11 am for the 6-hour drive to Serengeti National Park.

At this point I feel I need to explain myself. I am not the safari type. I do not have a silly khaki hat with a chin strap. I do not have a billion-millimeter zoom on my camera, nor do I fantasize about sampling champagne and caviar under a baobab tree. I did not come to this country to spend ten thousand dollars getting shuttled around in style. But as I learned while researching Tanzania's northern national parks, "safari" simply means gaining access. Walking in these parks, for obvious reasons, is not allowed. Therefore, to get in to the Serengeti, Ngorongoro Crater, and all the other breathtakingly astounding natural places here, you must hire a car and guide, and by that point, it's cheaper to go through a tour company so that you can join a group and split the cost. That needed to be clarified.

So where was I? Yes, the drive to Serengeti. Unfortunately, it's Sunday, and this internet cafe is closing, so I'll have to finish later.