Arriving in Dar

While we could easily have travelled to Dar es Salaam on Saturday with plenty of time to catch my 11:30pm flight, I was happy to drive here with Godfrey (my host father)today. Given my experiences with driving in Tanzania, I figured my anxiety level would be significantly lower if I arrived here with a full day to spare.

That turns out to be a marvelous idea, given how many times my heart almost stopped on my trip down here. Before I begin, I will emphasize that I am perfectly safe, happy, content, and writing this blog post from a nice hotel in town.

The first issue we had was crossing through a small town that requires a significant reduction in speed upon entry. There was a police officer with a radar gun who pulled us over for going 75 in a 50 kph zone. My host father, always ready for a good battle of the wits, managed to talk his way out of it by claiming that he only had as much money as the ticket cost, and would be SOL if he had any real issues between here and Dar es Salaam given that there are no ATMs between the two cities. With a fully elaborated limp from his accident several months back and very erratic outbursts of emotion, he was able to talk his way out of the ticket and was allowed to pass without any trouble.

While getting a good laugh about the story as he retold the whole thing (in English this time), he got distracted from the road with our eye contact and we almost found our way into the grill of an oncoming bus.

Our next close encounter was at the next police stop. We were not required to stop (the checkpoints along the road are usually random) and passed all the cars along the right side of the road. Everyone is usually eager to get waved passed the stops, including this very big bus that didn’t see us as he jutted out to pass the bus in front of him, almost smashing my passenger’s side door and sending us off the road.

I thought I was being a bit dramatic about insisting on driving to Dar es Salaam a day early, but I now feel as though it was a completely reasonable decision.

On a different note, we'll be heading out to a Tanzanian mall soon and then have an early sushi dinner before hitting the hay and resting up for a full day of touring Dar and a late night plane flight tomorrow.