Tag Archives: Tanzania

White Parrot Camp Site Tanzania

This is our latest camp site. I was told only to leave the camp site in groups of four or more. The tour leader said it was a safety issue. She thought the whole area surrounding the campsite was a bit "dodgy" or something. I talked to the driver and he said that this was the best place to stop between Marangu and Dar es Salaam. It looked nice, I’ll give it that. The facilities appeared to be pretty good. The bar served cold beer. I didn’t see what was wrong with the place. Then again, I didn’t leave the camp site. I didn’t have anywhere I needed to go.

Bus Stop Tanzania

They have lots of buses in Tanzania. They pass the truck all the time. I think most of the drivers that drive them were trained by ex-American crash dummies. They’re really bad. They get in a huge hurry. I think there may be bus companies that run reasonably safe buses from one location to the other, but it seems that the local companies that serve a small regional area tend to stop for every person that flags them down on the road. This makes for crazy bus drivers that drive wild to make up time because of all the stops they make along the route.

Liver In Tanzania

It was liver in Tanzania. I paid my 5,000 Shillings ($3.33) for the buffet at the truck stop only to find that the meat really wasn’t meat at all. It was cow insides – liver. Had I known I wouldn’t have ordered it, but it was the best looking thing on the buffet. The rest of the meal wasn’t anything to write home about. I wished we had cooked lunch from the truck. This means the truck stop food at this bus stop wasn’t very good at all. I should have eaten cookies from my stash of cookies.

Marangu Hotel Tanzania

It was a great hotel. Don’t get me wrong, it wasn’t up to the stadards of the the Hilton or Intercontinental chains, but it was a great place as far as the average hotel in Tanzania was concerned. The rooms were reasonably appointed. The coffee was free. They had a pool. The staff was really nice. A single was $65 and a double was $100. A camp site was $5. We had the camp sites. They were good. The water was hot in the showers. The toilets flushed and had toilet paper. There were sinks to do laundry and a place to hang the laundry. It had a nice lighted pavilion where we had our meals. We even made a campfire.

Dar es Salaam Tanzania Bar

It was the bar at the campground in Dar es Salaam. It was a fairly nice bar but they didn’t carry the Castle Milk Stout that I had become so fond of. Actually, they didn’t carry a lot of anything and what they did have was over-priced. This, however, seems the be the general trend of all the campground bars. The campground was nice. We camped very close to the Indian Ocean I could have thrown a rock into it from my tent site when the tide was high. There was hot water for showers, flush toilets with paper and a very nice salt-water pool. All-in-all, I can’t complain about the place.

Dar es Salaam Tanzania Enforcer

This is Gunner, the Dar es Salaam Enforcer on the truck. He was commissioned by Colin, one of the truck’s drivers. It seems that whenever Colin would drive through Dar es Salaam and get caught up in stop-and-go traffic there would usually be a couple of the locals that would try to swipe some stuff off of the truck. Gunner’s job was to utilize the cricket bat to make sure they didn’t get anything. Luckily, he didn’t have to use it.

Tanzanian Mummy

Is it a mummy? No! It’s one of our group trying to deal with how cool it can get in the back of the truck when the windows are down on a cool day. I’ve complained about the conditions previously. It would be nice if the windows went up part way or even covered only a portions of the windows so that it wouldn’t be so cool, but, if they do, no one is willing to fix them that way. My statement? It might be best, and certainly more comfortable, to consider a company that has a different seating arrangement or windows that are individualized to each seat if you are going to be in Africa during their winter.

Zanzibar Tanzania Hotel

This is our hotel at the beach in Zanzibar. It wasn’t bad. It wasn’t wonderful either. It had a really good ceiling fan that made me reach for a cover at night. I roomed with Dave, one of the drivers. That was good. Dave’s a very interesting guy who has done all kinds of strange work in places outside of the continental U.S. Dave was from Ohio and close enough to my age that we shared similar life experiences growing up. That’s better than rooming with someone young enough to be my grandson.

Zanzibar Tanzania

That’s me at the ferry terminal on Zanzibar. The group is about to depart the terminal and head to the ATM’s where we can get some cash to blow on a good time. The we head to the beach for a couple of days of diving and snorkeling and general beach fun.

Dar es Salaam Tanzania Ferry

This is the ferry from Dar es Salaam to Zanzibar. Actually, this is the fast ferry. There are others. It was comfortable except for the wiggle-worm behind me that kept poking his knee into my back. One thing I can say is that my Kindle had 5 bars of 3G reception all the way across the water during the trip. I have learned that I need to find some really good Kindle-formatted news sites for trips to places where regular internet service is sparse and 3G is available.

Rolling Okie

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