After climbing Kilimanjaro, we needed to put our feet up for a while. What better way than sitting on a bus ... so on Sunday we took the 10 hour journey from Arusha to Dar es Salam. We were pleasantly surprised. Unlike our other bus experiences in Africa so far, this one was entirely on sealed roads in a late model air-conditioned coach. Very comfortable and we both slept a lot. But the scenery we passed by was worth staying awake for. The landscape was very diverse. Hot, dusty plains merged suddenly into fertile rice paddies and then into plantations of various crops that we couldn't always identify. And there seemed to be bush-clad mountain ranges in abundance. We soon realised that our expectation that the whole of Tanzania looked like the Serengeti was very much misconceived. It is a far richer landscape than we had assumed.
We reached the outskirts of Dar after about 9 hours. Dar is Tanzania's largest city (though not the capital) and it spreads for miles. We finally reached the city centre in darkness and found somewhere to stay for the night.
Next day we were able to appreciate Dar a little more with the benefit of daylight. As we moved around the city in pursuit of various tasks such as onward visa applications and flight bookings, we began to be attracted by its cultural diversity. The people in the streets were of all colors and religious beliefs and dressed in a wide range of clothing - from the most conservative robes to the most fashionable jeans and T-shirts. Unlike Nairobi, there were virtually no suits. The downtown area was a collection of colonial period low-rise and modern high rise buildings and bordered a large district of embassies and NGOs. There was even a building for the state Parliament although it was unclear what it was doing in Dar when the capital is in Dodoma.
Once we were done with our tasks in Dar, we boarded a fast ferry for the 2 hour trip to Zanzibar where we arrived late on Monday evening.
Simon
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