I wrote my notes for this while on the shuttle bus from Nairobi to Arusha (Tanzania), where we will be spending the night. Hillary is off to Mpala (Kenya), and Annie, Doug, and I are on our way to Karatu (Tanzania). Originally, the plan was for the three of us to drive to Arusha, but there is an impossibly vast quantity of gear (or something in boxes and suitcases) so Doug is taking some of it with him in a car with a driver and Annie and I are taking a bunch more with us on the bus. All of the luggage is strapped up top in a somewhat precarious looking fashion. Annie and I are sitting near the back, so if our stuff falls off, at least we'll probably know it happened?
Around 8am this morning, we said goodbye to Hillary at the bus stop, where we were instructed us to text her often and to remind Doug that we need to eat and sleep and do more than science sometimes. Annie and I will be in Tanzania for three weeks with Doug, and then we're going to relocate to the Mpala Research Centre in Kenya, where I'll stay for a month and Annie will stay for a week.
The bus is a great way to see the countryside, and I befriended four Aussies (two from Sydney, two from Perth) and two Brits. The road is pretty dusty and bumpy, punctuated by sudden stops and swerves to avoid stray goats and cows. The drive took maybe six? hours and the entire time, there was a show playing on the bus’s screen which can only be described as a Kenyan telenovela.
There are tons of flat-topped acacias, which are exactly what I picture when I think of Africa, courtesy of the Lion King (I'm a cool kid, I know). Closer to Nairobi, there were huge storks in the trees but as we got further out I stopped seeing the storks and started seeing hornbills and iridescent blue birds with bright orange either on their sides or under their wings. Doug says they were probably starlings [note: they are superb starlings]. We passed tons of villages and saw people in beautiful traditional clothes, often herding cattle. You can see my best attempts at photos when I post them on facebook, but they're pretty bad. With my photography skills and my slow camera, coupled with the bouncing speeding bus, I didn't stand a chance. (although Doug, in the car, evidently saw an elephant in the distance. Jealous!).
Speaking of cameras, mine is totally outclassed. Annie and pretty much everyone else on the bus have beautiful SLR cameras that make that impressive camera clicking (shutter) noise when they take photos. Annie has been taking lots of photos as we go so I'm going to try to get them at some point.
Continuing onward, our bus came to a halt at the border crossing, where we had to get out in Kenya to give them our departure forms. While waiting in line, Annie spotted Doug, so we joined him since he knew what he was doing and we very much did not. At the departure gate, the Kenyan officials randomly took my photo and not Annie's or Doug's. I guess I look sketchy like that (it might have something to do with my passport photo in which I like someone you would not let young children near).
After finishing with the Kenyan officials, we walked through a gate into Tanzania and waited in line forever to get our Tanzanian visas. They look extremely fake. They're a stamp and, handwritten in my passport, it says "multiple" [entry] and a few other notes. Huh. We then got back onto the bus and continued into Tanzania, all along the way getting texts from cellphone companies welcoming us to Tanzania and wouldn't we please consider using their services?
At first Tanzania looked the same as the part of Kenya we'd seen, except with more women balancing baskets on their heads. Further into Tanzania, we started seeing more agricultural fields (little farms known as "shamba"s). There was a lot of corn, a good amount of banana, and a few fields of sunflowers (which I later asked about and learned are planted for the oil). Mostly it was corn. I waved hello to some eucalypts that were planted as tree fences.
Once we got to Arusha, we were told to get off the bus, which was perplexing because Hillary told us that morning that the bus should take us directly to our hotel, the Natron Palace. Immediately we were surrounded by taxi drivers and people trying to sell us safaris. We were overwhelmed but then--Doug! Doug was conveniently at the bus station too and convinced the driver to take us and all our stuff + action packers full of equipment to the hotel.
We got to the hotel and washed a couple hundred kilometers of road dirt off our faces and went out with Doug in search of an ATM. While Doug went to a vodaphone store to fix his internet "dongle," Annie and I explored Arusha's main market. Annnie has way more photos that really better show the chaos of the main market, but here are my pathetic ones:
We were the only "mzungu"s (Kiswahili equivalent of "gringo") and, if we weren't already obviously enough tourists, we sealed the deal with Annie's camera and my GPS/compass (I was logging where the hotel was and how to get back). We were everyone's favorite people as they tried to convince us to buy stuff. We let one guy show us to his "mama's" fabric shop, which he claimed was a mere five meters away. Fifteen minutes of walking later, we ooh'ed and ahh'ed over some legitimately beautiful cloth, including a bolt of cloth with giraffes on it. I actually kind of want it, but we weren’t about to buy anything before going to do fieldwork and we were both feeling overly hassled. At least I know to be on the lookout now.
Afterwards, Annie and I meandered back to our hotel and decimated a bag of salt and vinegar potato chips. At around 4:30, Annie passed out (we really hadn't slept much). I puttered around the room until Doug got me for dinner around 5:30?
No place here is terribly safe after dark, so we opted to eat at the restaurant in the hotel, which in Tanzania is both an affordable and usually good/delicious option. Intrigued by what I assumed was a typo (and it was), I ordered "potato and pear." Service took forever as we were the only ones there and Doug said that the hotel staff was probably going to the market to buy ingredients. So Doug and I had a nice hour+ chat while we waited for our food.
Immediately after dinner, we crashed.
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