Dar es A LONG Drive Away!

Today we did the long drive to Dar es Salaam.  We knew that the first 90 minutes would be slow and very rough but we didn't realize it would be so BORING.  It's only about 385 Kms but its through low scrub for the most part.  The most interesting parts of the ride were the wrecks of buses and trucks by the side of the road.  Apparently they don't bother with tow trucks after serious accidents, they simply take the vehicle apart where it sits.  We saw a few of these... it sure reinforced my desire to never to take a "local bus" in Tanzania.  These guys drive like maniacs and pass on hills.  I doubt we ever saw one doing less than 140 (on roads that I wouldn't do much more that 80-90).  I for one was quite pleased our driver was quite careful and didn't over take on hills or corners like 95% of the drivers here.  We've met two people that were involved in head-on's with multiple fatalities.  The Tanzanian philosophy seems to be that if it's your time to go, it's your time... I just don't want to go on somebody else's time!

Anyway, by the time we got into Dar at 2pm, the traffic had died down a bit (and it was a Saturday) so we only took another 60 minutes to go the 15 kms to Game - a big South African department store.  We picked up 4 sleeping bags and another day pack for our camping trip and then fought our way across town to the airport.  We arrived at the airport Transit Motel down a very rough dirt road with 15' pot holes and vegetable stands, rough stores, etc. which kind of got us concerned but the place turned out to be quite nice and the fact that it was across the street from the airport when we had to be there at 3:45am, made it a slam dunk.

I didn't bother with pictures as Dar is just like any third world major city... it has its share of modern buildings sitting beside open street benches selling just about anything.  The traffic there was preposterous and it wasn't safe to leave my arm on the window sill as our driver was concerned someone would swipe my watch or BlackBerry.  His  A/C wasn't working, so it was a bit of a hot drive!  More later.