When I was trying to decide on where to go for my last adventure before flying home to Australia it was a toss-up between Greece, Croatia and Slovenia or Tanzania and Malawi. In the end Africa won out, mainly because of the ‘do it while you’re young’ argument. One day I’ll make it back to Greece to see where my grandpa is from, but I wasn’t so sure about Africa. I also wanted to go there because it felt like I had let myself have negative thoughts about Africa after Ghana and I wanted to give it a second chance. After some consideration Paul decided to join me and I’m really glad he did – wouldn’t have wanted to be there with anyone else :)
So this is how it went. On Tuesday the 16th of March 2010 we flew Edinburgh-Amsterdam-Nairobi-Dar Es Salaam with KLM, Kenya Airways and then Precision Air! Landing in Nairobi at sunrise was absolutely stunning, and then we had an entertaining flight with Precision Air during which the pilot was announcing things throughout the flight such as ‘the weather in Dar is now..’, ‘if you look to your right you’ll see Mt Kilimanjaro’ (WHICH WAS FREAKING AMAZING!!), ‘there are many national parks to visit in Tanzania such as..’ and finally ‘after this flight we’re flying to *insert place-name here* and you’re welcome to join us, all you need to do is buy a ticket at the airport!’. It was like having our own personal tour guide, hilarious.
As usual, arriving in a new country was daunting. It was hot and sticky, we were tired, the ‘queue’ to get visas was more of a crowd milling around the few barred windows with a guard-looking guy wandering around taking money and passports from people, while the immigration staff behind the bars seemed to be doing not much at all. It was 9:30am and it was already boiling hot. We did the whole try-to-get-out-money-from-an-ATM-without-anyone-noticing-or-realising-how-much-money-we-were-getting thing and then caught a taxi from the airport to a hotel we chose out of our Rough Guide, the aptly named Holiday Hotel. We arranged a room for 20,000 Tanzanian Shillings, or 10 pounds, and then headed out for lunch and a walk to the Kisutu Market where we bought lychees and bananas. After an afternoon nap we tried to find a place for dinner and ended up at New Zahir Restaurant just around the corner. It’s a busy place owned by 2 friendly brothers. We ate some form of chicken and rice dish and halfway through Paul started feeling really sick. Still not sure what that was – the heat, the food, the tiredness, the new country – but he went off to the (disgustingly smelly) bathroom for a few minutes. Meanwhile a friendly man, whose name I learned was Chaki, came up and spoke to me. I know you’re not supposed to talk to strangers but, after sharing a chai and a good chat, we ended up letting this guy take us to the roof-top of a nearby hotel so we could see the view over the harbour. Chaki’s one of these lovely people who wants to take you everywhere and pay for everything, and try as we might we couldn’t convince him otherwise.
The following day Paul and I woke up early, mainly because of the incredible heat, and went to ‘A Tea Room’ for breakfast of chai, boiled eggs and a dough ball they called a doughnut. We went back to the top of the hotel for a day-time view of the harbour, and then walked 45 minutes to the Kivukoni Fish Market. I’d almost say it was cooler than Tsukiji in Tokyo! It was split into the land-side market and the sea-side market. We checked out the sea-side first – dhows and fishermen in the water, hundreds of people milling around the tables and benches of fish. They were having auctions on the big ones, with 20-30 people shouting and pushing money around tables with huge fish in the centre. It was a smelly place! We walked across the road to the land-side market where there was a range of fruits and veg and other things being sold, and further inside was a huge shed with loads of people cooking up fish in MASSIVE wok-looking things. The rest of the day was interesting enough – a trip to the National Museum, fish in coconut sauce for lunch, dinner in the dangerous area of Dar called Kariakoo where we were offered a lift from a dodgy character and chatted up by a Masaai while we waited for a taxi, and then ended up with a chai with Chaki and I nearly stepped on a rat that ran under my feet as we walked back to the hotel! Gross.
On Friday March 19th, Chaki had offered to take us for a day trip to Bagamoyo, an old slave trading port. We met him at 6:30am for a fantastically greasy breakfast of chai, Spanish omelette and a sweet, deep-fried rice ball called kitumbua. As we stepped on the hour-long bus to Bagamoyo I heard a familiar tune – Alhaji, a song that I had heard a thousand times in Ghana! (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MXE1zBoQgHU – this is the only video I could find of the song, so probably just shut your eyes and listen to the hilarity given the fact that I was told the word Alhaji means ‘a man who has returned from Mecca’) We arrived and walked to his friend’s house to ‘order lunch with his wife’ as he put it. The family that we visited were lovely. Chaki’s friend called a tuk-tuk for us which we used for the rest of the day to visit some old ruins, a slave trading museum, an art centre and the beach. We went back to the family’s house for lunch of pulao rice and chai and then took a daladala (minibus) back to Dar which was falling apart and smelt of petrol..
Posted from Adelaide
So this is how it went. On Tuesday the 16th of March 2010 we flew Edinburgh-Amsterdam-Nairobi-Dar Es Salaam with KLM, Kenya Airways and then Precision Air! Landing in Nairobi at sunrise was absolutely stunning, and then we had an entertaining flight with Precision Air during which the pilot was announcing things throughout the flight such as ‘the weather in Dar is now..’, ‘if you look to your right you’ll see Mt Kilimanjaro’ (WHICH WAS FREAKING AMAZING!!), ‘there are many national parks to visit in Tanzania such as..’ and finally ‘after this flight we’re flying to *insert place-name here* and you’re welcome to join us, all you need to do is buy a ticket at the airport!’. It was like having our own personal tour guide, hilarious.
As usual, arriving in a new country was daunting. It was hot and sticky, we were tired, the ‘queue’ to get visas was more of a crowd milling around the few barred windows with a guard-looking guy wandering around taking money and passports from people, while the immigration staff behind the bars seemed to be doing not much at all. It was 9:30am and it was already boiling hot. We did the whole try-to-get-out-money-from-an-ATM-without-anyone-noticing-or-realising-how-much-money-we-were-getting thing and then caught a taxi from the airport to a hotel we chose out of our Rough Guide, the aptly named Holiday Hotel. We arranged a room for 20,000 Tanzanian Shillings, or 10 pounds, and then headed out for lunch and a walk to the Kisutu Market where we bought lychees and bananas. After an afternoon nap we tried to find a place for dinner and ended up at New Zahir Restaurant just around the corner. It’s a busy place owned by 2 friendly brothers. We ate some form of chicken and rice dish and halfway through Paul started feeling really sick. Still not sure what that was – the heat, the food, the tiredness, the new country – but he went off to the (disgustingly smelly) bathroom for a few minutes. Meanwhile a friendly man, whose name I learned was Chaki, came up and spoke to me. I know you’re not supposed to talk to strangers but, after sharing a chai and a good chat, we ended up letting this guy take us to the roof-top of a nearby hotel so we could see the view over the harbour. Chaki’s one of these lovely people who wants to take you everywhere and pay for everything, and try as we might we couldn’t convince him otherwise.
The following day Paul and I woke up early, mainly because of the incredible heat, and went to ‘A Tea Room’ for breakfast of chai, boiled eggs and a dough ball they called a doughnut. We went back to the top of the hotel for a day-time view of the harbour, and then walked 45 minutes to the Kivukoni Fish Market. I’d almost say it was cooler than Tsukiji in Tokyo! It was split into the land-side market and the sea-side market. We checked out the sea-side first – dhows and fishermen in the water, hundreds of people milling around the tables and benches of fish. They were having auctions on the big ones, with 20-30 people shouting and pushing money around tables with huge fish in the centre. It was a smelly place! We walked across the road to the land-side market where there was a range of fruits and veg and other things being sold, and further inside was a huge shed with loads of people cooking up fish in MASSIVE wok-looking things. The rest of the day was interesting enough – a trip to the National Museum, fish in coconut sauce for lunch, dinner in the dangerous area of Dar called Kariakoo where we were offered a lift from a dodgy character and chatted up by a Masaai while we waited for a taxi, and then ended up with a chai with Chaki and I nearly stepped on a rat that ran under my feet as we walked back to the hotel! Gross.
On Friday March 19th, Chaki had offered to take us for a day trip to Bagamoyo, an old slave trading port. We met him at 6:30am for a fantastically greasy breakfast of chai, Spanish omelette and a sweet, deep-fried rice ball called kitumbua. As we stepped on the hour-long bus to Bagamoyo I heard a familiar tune – Alhaji, a song that I had heard a thousand times in Ghana! (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MXE1zBoQgHU – this is the only video I could find of the song, so probably just shut your eyes and listen to the hilarity given the fact that I was told the word Alhaji means ‘a man who has returned from Mecca’) We arrived and walked to his friend’s house to ‘order lunch with his wife’ as he put it. The family that we visited were lovely. Chaki’s friend called a tuk-tuk for us which we used for the rest of the day to visit some old ruins, a slave trading museum, an art centre and the beach. We went back to the family’s house for lunch of pulao rice and chai and then took a daladala (minibus) back to Dar which was falling apart and smelt of petrol..
Posted from Adelaide
Nairobi airport at sunrise
MOUNT KILIMANJARO!!
Our little hotel in Dar
At the top of the Harbour View Tower
Paul at the land-side market
Kivukoni
Kitumbua and chai. Mmmm..
Chaki's friends in Bagamoyo
White white sands, and the little boy poking his head over the wall kept edging closer and closer and eventually begged for money..
Me, Paul and Chaki in our tuk-tuk
Me, Paul and Chaki in our tuk-tuk
1 comments:
I don't know about for you Lee .. but this all seems a little surreal now - reading about these times while you and Paul are back in normal little ol' Adelaide..
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