And so it begins. With approximately 2 weeks ahead of us traveling East Africa we started on a very early foot (up at 4am) this was made even worse by the fact that my mind was wondering all night long giving me a dark complextion around the eyes. It was a relief though to know that the heat of Dar was to disappear with promises of a cooler Ugandan climate not to mention the fact that i was actually about to begin exploring a country I had never planned to see. So again we bargained our way to the jam packed bus station, paying to much by local standards but just keen to get there. Sounding like a broken record the organisation of the bus station leaved alot to be desired as we struggled our way through manic early morning madness, verbal arguments breaking out left right and centre. We located our bus amongst the many, insisted our bags were labelled as they were thrown inside and reached our assigned seats only to find that one of those verbal arguments had made its way into our compartment.... I thought a scrap was going to break out, it was fairly heated, the sound of these fellas trying to make headway mixed with the repetitive blasts of the big bus horns was enough to make my morning!
40 minutes into the bus ride i had to go for a short call due to the copious amounts of water id been consuming i had to get my friend to stop the whole bus, everyone watched this white guy run from the bus off to the bushes it took them a few minutes to realise what was going on , then many others scrambled to join, hilarious. soon enough the silence of the road left our worries behind, as I drifted off to sleep African jazz/calypso was playing quietly over the radio, lulled into a false sense of security little did I know just how far we had to travel. To put it in perspective Tanzania is the same size as the whole of western Europe, Uganda and Kenya ain't small and we were traveling about half the length of Tanzania a decent chunk of Kenya and a massive portion of Uganda, put together is no small feat..
The roads we travelled could hardly be given such a name, deadly pot holes were felt regularly throughout the bus and that was when the roads were actually paved. The bus true to Tanzanian style had no worries passing in the face of on coming traffic, it felt somewhat relieving to be in the larger vehicle, our driver would just toot and carry on....I do love travelling foreign countries by road you get to see so much, the scenery took up the leading role in entertainment as we watched and pointed our way to the Kenyan border, Tanzania has large mountains surrounded by palm trees, bright outcrops of bush and shrub, arid sands and grassland, typical safari style trees, many birds, brilliant patches of shanty towns, busy, more formal stops and very colorful congregations of people and animals, usually in the form of markets. There are so many birds nests on each tree some clever birds craft theirs in the form of spheres with small openings so they can stay warm completely immersed inside. when these birds do emerge they are bright yellow with a black head fascinating things to watch. At every stop people would swarm the bus trying to sell all sorts of fruit, water, biscuits, chicken on a stick, they would try to make transactions through every window, if you decided to partake you had to produce the correct amount otherwise your change was never seen again etc. when we passed the huge form of Kili it was cloud covered but still made it's presence felt, mount Meru another close volcano could be seen, if Meru is 2,900m smaller than Kili I'm really up for a challenge in Jan.
A couple of days before we started our trip a friend of ours had warned of the freezing temperatures we may face overnight travelling through Kenya and advised us to take jackets. I took those warnings with a grain of salt, my thinking was that she was African, used to extreme heat and I'm a kiwi used to the Wellington cold, i was sure we'd even each other out. I decided to dress liberally in a shorts and a thin cotton dress shirt.
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