Safari – Drive to Arusha – Friday 27 April

This is the beginning of the trip I’ve been talking about for near on 10 years. At the tour briefing last night Alex told us what the trip was going to include, plus a few warning etc. One of the things he said was that girls should put their sports bras on because the road to Arusha is VERY bumpy.

Apparently it said in the trip notes that girls should bring sports bras. It wasn’t on the suggested packing list, but apparently it was mentioned in the trip notes. I hadn’t noticed it in what I read, but even still, the one sports bra I brought with me in Egypt was completely useless by now anyway.

After all of 8 minutes in the bus I understood why Alex had recommended the sports bra – I’ve never been bounced around so much in my life.

The ride was actually quite uneventful actually. We didn’t really know each other so there was just a bit of general getting to know you chatting. Heidi is an English tourist embarking on a six month world tour. Dee and Aubrey are Canadians and they’ve just spent a few weeks in Rwanda building a church with a missionary group. Matt's at the beginning of a world trip that’s basically a few weeks in Africa and then onto a job in Ireland. Felicity and Sarah are a couple of weeks into a 6 week tour around Africa. Fiona and Huge are nearly at the end of an 8 week trip. Unfortunately only a few weeks in, Fiona rolled her ankle getting out of the bus at Victoria Falls. They spent most of the time at Victoria Falls in the emergency room spending copious amounts of US dollars on dodgy x-rays that didn’t really tell them what happened. We’re pretty sure she’s broken a bone because it was over two weeks ago that she did it and she still can’t put any weight on it at all. She straps it every day and its straight so she figures even if its broken it’ll heal ok.

I don’t know – we’ve got one guy with no bags at all and a girl on crutches. I’m not sure I’d cope if either of those things happened to me. At least Fiona had Hugo to help her out, Matt’s on his own with nothing! Colin’s starting of on a 12 month tour and he’s going to South America so luckily he’s got loads of doxy anti-malaria pills so has enough to share with Matt.

It is only about 400km between Nairobi and Arusha, but because the road is ridiculously bumpy it takes about 7 hours to get there. About halfway there, just before the Tanzania boarder, we stopped for lunch. We pulled into a bit like a rest area but there was also a shop – a tourist trap.

Our tour included a cook called Solo (I think his full name was Solomon) and a driver called ‘Hungry Man’. Felicity thought Alex said Angry Man and Matt thought he said Handy Man it took us several days for us all to realise Alex was saying ‘Hungry Man’. His real name is Alfred, but he’s been called Hungry Man since forever. He’s been driving for tour companies for about 10 years and I think someone named him Hungry Man on one of his first tours and it stuck. He’s a huge guy over six-foot tall I think.

Lunch was quite nice. It was our first on tour meal so we weren’t really sure what to expect. Firstly Alex laid out three buckets of water and told us how to wash up for meals. I know it sounds basic, but I think it was this basic hygiene that stopped any of us getting sick. The first bucket had some dettol in the water and a dettol soap bar for us to wash our hands in. The second bucket was for rinsing the soap off and the third bucket was the clean rinse. Dishes were washed using the same system. Very good.

Solo set up a table and began cutting up tomato, lettuce etc ad we had sandwiches. We also had the nicest pineapple I’ve eaten in ages. The fruit here is great. I think it’s because they only eat what’s in season, so everything is ripe. They make the meals based on what’s available, so nothing is pale and tasteless like some of the hothouse grown stuff at home.

The boarder into Tanzania was crazy. First we had to line up in the scorching sun to get into the Kenya exit boarder control building. Basically we had to fill in a form and get an exit visa stamped into our passports. While we were filling through the building we noticed a swarm of traditional women standing around outside. As we walked out we noticed a yellow line painted on the road. As soon as we crossed the line they were all over us. Pushing their bracelets in our faces, trying to get us to buy stuff. We had to walk from that building to the Tanzania side of the boarder. About a km apart I guess. 500m of it was through some sort of no-mans land. While we were walking to the edge of no mans land one of the women actually put a bracelet on Colin’s arm. Just slapped it on like handcuffs. I turned around to check on the groups progress and saw the women put it on his arm and him pulling it off. He was trying to give it back to her and she wouldn’t take it. I just said – put it on the ground. He did and she picked it up. and by then we were onto them. We were careful to stay together as a pack, keep saying no and keep walking. We were conscious of Fiona so walked a bit more slowly so she could keep up.

Once we crossed into no-mans land we spread out more. I kept suggesting to Fiona that we give her a fireman’s lift – it was a long hot walk and on crutches it was even worse but she made it just fine.

It took a while to get the Tanzania visa’s sorted but Alex made sure we were all sorted and then we were back on the road. It took a few more hours and then we were safely in Arusha.

We stopped in Arusha for about 20 minutes so we could exchange money and buy some water etc from the supermarket. Aidan and I went to the ATM and got out hundreds of thousands of shillings out. Tanzania uses shillings like Kenya but in Tanzania its about 1000 to 1 so we got about 360,000 shillings out each. When we got off the bus we were set upon again by people trying to sell us crappy souvenirs.

Next stop was the Meserani Snake park. We arrived not too far before it got dark so we set up our tents and went to the bar for a beer. Our original plan was that Aidan and Colin would share and I’d either share with a stranger or be on my own. But last night when we were triple sharing Colin snored… apparently he snored and snored and snored. I was dead to the world. Asleep before my head hit the pillow, but Aidan was still awake when Colin started snoring and as a consequence didn’t sleep all night. To say he was a little tired was an understatement… that’s two night with bugger all sleep and lots of travel – none of this a happy brother makes.

Anyways, so we got the snake park and set up our tent, went to the bar and then had dinner. Everyone was fairly tired so we all turned in early. I think we were in bed by 9pm!

A busy day, lots of bumps but all in all quite a nice start to the trip.