Wednesday, November 30, 2016

Leaving Tanzania

After breakfast, we weren't in a hurry, so just slowly packed and then headed back to Arusha. Ernest arranged a day room for us at a hotel before our bus to Kampala, Uganda, which is scheduled to leave at 4:00pm.

The hotel was in the downtown area, and it was bustling with activity, so we walked around the area. The locals were very friendly saying hello to us whitey's. We had a lunch at the hotel, then got a pickup from Ernest and Danford to take us to the bus.

The bus was over 2 hours late, and we didn't leave until after 6:00pm. In order to make up time, the bus driver was going at incredible speeds on the highway, reaching 140kph (most people drive around 70-80kpm). We arrived at the Kenya/Tanzania border in the evening. I had pre-purchased our transit visas before going, but I had made a mistake on mine, and put the date of entry and date of exit as Nov 30. But we weren't going to he leaving Kenya until tomorrow, Dec. 1. I told the immigration dude I made a mistake, and he's like "Oh, your visa is already expired! You have to pay $20 US dollars", with a big grin on his face. He was just joking around and it wasn't a problem. We had to haul all of our gear off the bus and take it through security, which was nothing more than someone going through your bag. It was a big pain in the ass, and I don't usually remember having to do this at border crossings on buses. Tracy had to the go to the bathroom, and she got there, and found out that you had to pay. Fortunately there was another local woman there that was on our bus, and she paid for Tracy to go to the bathroom.

At Nairobi, we changed buses. The bus company held that bus back so we wouldn't miss it. I think there were also other people on the first bus that also needed to be on the second bus. The bus from Nairobi to Kampala only left about 30 minutes late.

When we got on the bus, they were playing local rap videos with women shaking their booty in front of the camera, wearing not much.

We tried to get as much sleep as we could on the nighttime bus.


1 comment:

  1. Great to hear from you guys again! The highway speed, oh man!

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