TRAVEL BLOG December 9th, 2021 - ARUSHA to DAR ES SALAAM

 

12/9/21- It feels so good to be back in a normal hotel as the last few days were filled with no Wi-Fi in rooms, no air conditioning of any kind and us having to cake ourselves in bug spray. We’ve been taking malaria pills daily just in case a bad mosquito decides to bite us, and unfortunately that will have to continue while we’re in Africa.

We wake up refreshed, eat breakfast and get an email with our COVID test results for our other flight tomorrow. We have some time before our taxi to the airport so I spend it trying to fix the auto-focus on my camera lens. I believe dust may have lodged somewhere as it’s slow to adjust, which has been a pain over the past few days. I have to switch to manual focus at times to get the shot I want quickly, and believe me that wasn’t easy to do when capturing action shots. After some time, I realize it’s best to wait until after the trip as I don’t want to damage the lens.

The ride to the airport is smooth and lasts over an hour. Arusha is an interesting place, far different than what we’re used to. Lambs and cows roam freely to graze, often times just inches from the main highway, there are nice houses right next to shacks, and so many people that just stand outside waiting for something to happen. Whether it’s waiting for a bus on the side of the road with bottles of water or sitting on their motorbikes in the shade scoping out what’s happening.

There's much beauty with the mountain views and red leaf trees they call “Christmas Trees”. What I definitely won’t miss is the smell of body odor everywhere, enough to make you gag.

We enter the airport and have to go through security at the door; shoes, belt and all. At the ticket counter the attendant asks about our bag that’s ripped on the side (a product of years of traveling) and asks that I sign a waiver for it, which I do since it’s made it this far. Then, we have to go through a full security check again to get to our gate. Why the need for two full security checks back to back is beyond me as what can you pick up after the first that’s not allowed through the second?

We board the propeller plane and the ride was quite nice, except for the screaming kid the entire hour long journey right behind our seat. Every single flight we’ve been on has had one of these near us so we’ve grown to expect it now.

Since it’s a domestic flight it was fast to grab our bags at Dar Es Salaam, no customs, but we’re scanned again through security on our way out of baggage claim. Seriously! Upon exiting we’re approached by a guy about a taxi, we ask how much and he says $10 USD. I know we are literally going about 5 minutes down the road and that’s too much so I say I only have half of that. He ponders around a bit before agreeing. We check our GPS for the hotel to confirm he’s going in the right direction and find two hotels nearby with the exact same name (FQ Village). The address we have from our booking only says 113 as well, which doesn’t pull up anything, so at this point we’re at the driver’s mercy that he’s going the right direction. We get to the hotel and it matches what we have on our picrure printout, much to our relief.

The outside of the hotel looks nice but the room itself is small, basic and has a freak’n window for a door to the bathroom. Literally, you can see the toilet from the bed with the door shut. What kind of freaky deaky, twisted person would even think to design something like this? We fix it by putting a sheet over it. Then, we notice a small window above our door and the hallway camera in view. Again, weird! We grab a pillow and stuff it in the window ledge to block that as well.

I’m so glad we're not even staying here twelve hours as our flight is at 3:45am. We only picked this place because it was the best option close to the airport.

We look for dinner that accepts credit card, as we have minimal cash left, and find an app for delivery. After selecting what we want we see at checkout that it’s cash only. Curious, I find another app that says the same thing. So, a restaurant makes the food and has it delivered, but what if the person they’re delivering to doesn’t have enough cash? Do they take it back… trash it? Sounds like a poor way of doing business.

We check with our hotel’s restaurant, which does take card, but the receptionist has a hard time understanding what we want, even though we point to the picture on the menu. We say we want a chicken sandwich and she doesn’t understand, even though she spoke English decently. Finally tell her grilled chicken with bread and make the gesture of it on a bun (imagine how that went) and she nods. I’m now scared we’re going to get a fish head and a roll. And of course she wreaks of body odor.

Room service brings our food and sure enough they gave us chicken on the bone and not a sandwich. She was sorry for the mix-up and says we can have it no charge. We’re good with that. To be honest it was very well made, so if they do charge us for it I’m okay with that.