29 July 2009

29 July, Day 46: Wild wild East

Annelie and I spent the evening after dinner till well into 01:00 repacking a bag for Zanzibar. We settled on one of the big luggage bags and one bag with my camera gear. We started off a bit late though, 09:00, about an hour late. No matter, good road and good weather. I realise now that I was right about Tanga, it’s quite a beautiful city. And most of the way we drove to the hotel is actually next to the ocean. So very scenic views on the way out.

The road to Dar was very packed with all manner of trucks again. Annelie was driving and she did me proud, she managed to duck and weave our way through all the chaos with determination and gusto of an F1 driver. We reach the city just after 13:30. And then full stop, as we enter gridlock. The route into the city we took also runs past a big mutatu rank, so a great many busses and taxis are pushing into the stream from the right. The GPS eventually guides us to were the ferries should be, but so much chaos! We decide to go back around the block and park to find out what the deal is, while Marietta and Annelie wait with the cars.

I read about the papasi in the lonely planet a few days ago. I think it’s quite a coincidence that “papasi” sounds almost like “paparazzi”. Papasi means “tick” in Swahili. Mattie and I are swamped by at least 15 people all talking at once! In all the noise it’s very hard to figure out where we need to go or what to believe, as each of these guys want to lead us off into another “office” where we can “get all the information”. Sheesh. And in-between this I need to calm Mattie down, before he rips someone’s head off. They certainly are persistent. Eventually after some run around to one papasi “office” (which we didn’t enter since it looked like a cave) we turned back to what seemed like the main offices (at least they have signage!!). Lots of frustration from the papasi, “we don’t trust them”, “this is not South Africa” and just getting very aggressive. Man, even the fucking guy in the official office instructs us to come in and “wait, just wait” while he phones someone. Again, ALL we wanted was freaking information!! And this guy was clearly phoning a friend for some kind of commission. We manage to just talk to a new girl as she arrives at the office (not knowing why we are here) and she spills the beans. The other dude says something to her in Swahili afterwards, which I didn’t understand, but the gist was that she spoiled his business opportunity.

Off to another office to find out what it will cost to take the cars over. Too expensive, and they can only accommodate us on Friday. No good. It’s 15:20 already. Back to the cars, meet with the girls (more papasi trail us). Another guy wants to take us to a campsite and then sell us ferry tickets for tomorrow and he’ll bring us back here and and and. Annelie runs off into one direction (without telling me... grrrr.) and finds out about storing the 4x4’s in a hotel parking lot. In the end we call it a day, since we still need to find a safe place for the cars and we’re tired and it’s late. We aim the GPS for the Makadi campsite, which one of the papasi mentioned before (but we know how to find it, so we don’t need his help). We drive a few blocks down to another ferry since the camp is on the other side of the bay.

By 16:30 we roll into the camp and it’s a small oasis compared to what we got stuck in. It’s also still so hot and humid. The camp is situated right next to the beach, little bandas perched on the beach. We take a time out and take a swim to cool down first in the sea and rinse in the pool. Setup our tents just beyond the bandas. There are quite a few overlander trucks here (about 8). We organise that we can leave our cars here, for 2000 TSH per day and get a taxi for tomorrow at 08:00 so that we can get back in time, over the ferry, to the ferry to Zanzibar at 11:00.

Have another braai to rid ourselves of the last bits of meat we have in the fridge, since we’re switching them off while we’re on the island. We left the tent cover off tonight so that we can lay on the stretchers and look at the stars.

In the end I think it worked out ok, since come to think of it we would have arrived in Zanzibar at around 18:00 had we taken the 16:00 ferry. So it would have been dark already and we don’t have any hotels booked. And now we are quite pleased with a nice camp where the cars are safe. We still have about 7 days in paradise, so one less day isn’t a train smash! :)

Highlights: Knowing when to call it quits and not forcing something that wasn’t to be

[G & A], out

What am I supposed to do?

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