World racers hear a lot of stories about African travel days.
We’re told not to be surprised if on an African bus we’re asked to hold someone’s chicken or child, or if a drunk man passes out next to us. We’re also told to expect our bus rides to last significantly longer than we’re told they will be.
Yeah, right. Teams Azar Ignited and SOAR and our Squad Leaders set out on a travel day to get from Nairobi to Dar es Salaam, where the two teams would leave the SL’s and head to Morogoro, Tanzania. Our bus from Nairobi was scheduled to leave at 6:30am, would arrive in Dar es Salaam before 7pm, we would spend the night in Dar es Salaam and hop on another bus that would take us the three hours between Dar es Salaam and Morogoro.
Hahaha.
Here’s what actually happened:
5:00am – both teams and our squad leaders are packed and hop in a van to head to the bus station
6:30am – nothing happens.
7:30am – we’re all camped out laying on top of our packs on the sidewalk, already feeling exhausted, and none of us have any idea when this bus is going to arrive so we can get on it.
10:30am – the bus leaves the bus station. We assume (our mistake) that, since we should’ve originally arrived in Dar es Salaam around 7pm, we’ll now arrive around 11pm.
1:30pm – we get to the Kenya/Tanzania border, pay a ridiculous amount of money for a visa, invite about twice as many passengers back onto the bus, and continue.
4:00(ish)pm – a woman and her daughter board the bus
4:15(ish)pm – said daughter is asleep on my lap holding my hand. I still don't know why, either, because there were plenty of open seats…
7:00pm – we arrive in Morshi and are instructed that we have to get off the bus, another will come to take us the rest of the way. We’re also informed that the bus is at the border that we left 5 ½ hours ago…
so we assume we have about 5 hours to wait for this bus.
Math tells us the bus will now be leaving in the middle of the night.
7:30pm – we set up camp on the front stoop of a firestone station (yes, an auto repair shop next to the bus station, how comforting). The red concrete is radiating heat, but some of us manage to nap either on sleeping pads or sprawled across 2-3 packs.
9:00pm – we learn from some safari guides across the street that it’s illegal in Tanzania for public busses to run between the hours of midnight and 5am. Perfect, our bus is supposed to arrive around midnight.
10:00pm – the aforementioned safari guide takes us to eat some dinner, we end up at some restaurant called the Taj Mahal (haven’t I had enough of India?!), and we’re served some crazy delicious pilau (brown or coconut rice with stewed vegetables in a tomato broth with some sort of meat…it actually is incredible).
10:40pm – I set up my tent on the firestone step. It’s hot, there are 900 mosquitoes trying to attack me, and I’m exhausted.
12:00am – I wake up to shouts indicating that the bus is here, rush to break down my tent and shove it back in my airporter, we all drop our bags outside the bus to be loaded, and board the bus to the very back.
(the bus did, in fact, run the entire night…so there's no telling what that law was about)
12:20(ish)am – the two women who found seats at the front of the bus from our group are asked to move to the back, and the two seats up front are left empty the rest of the ride while the two women end up crowded with the rest of us in the back.
12:40(ish)am – everyone in the two back rows of the bus is asked to stand in the aisle in the front of the bus as we cross a weigh bridge. This happens two more times in the course of the evening.
4:00am – we stop for a bathroom break, as the lights are on we discover that the entire bus is absolutely infested with cockroaches of every size (freaking sick). We've been traveling for nearly 24 hours at this point, though, so we manage to sleep anyway.
[[Christian the Squad Leader at some point during this interval stands up and counts 7 white people with mouths wide open and makes a mental note of how much Americans let themselves go during travel compared to our African bus mates who are all sitting up straight and are relatively well dressed for a roach bus]]
11:30am – we arrive in Dar es Salaam. We’re hungry, sweaty, smelly, covered in dirt, and exhausted…so we post up next to the bus station against a wall and take turns sitting in the dirt or scoping out food.
1:20pm – Teams SOAR and Azar Ignited say goodbye to our Squad Leaders and board yet another bus to get to Morogoro. We’ve been assured several times that this ride is only 3 hours long.
…
4:50(ish)pm – we arrive in Morogoro, meet our contact, and are shown to the guest house where we’ll be living for the month.
In short: one 11 hour bus ride followed by one 3 hour bus ride ACTUALLY makes for a 36 hour travel day, on a total of 3 busses, and at least one of those is roach-infested. Only on The World Race.
