Lushoto, Usambara mountains
So after a few days in Dar es Salaam, which is the capital of Tanzania, we headed to Lushoto, a town 5 hours by bus away. The bus station in Dar was CRAZY! Luckily we had a good cab driver that worked primarily for the YWCA (where we were staying) that found our bus, told us how much to pay, and had us get on. But as soon as he leaves and we get to our seats, the bus company guy hits us up a “baggage fee” since we put luggage in the boot. So we had to pay 5,000 shillings for that otherwise he would have kicked us off – 20/20 hindsight, we should have just gotten our money back and gotten off but, well, we were only a few days into a new country and hadn’t quite gotten the hang of things yet.
Anyway, when they say Express bus, they mean Express bus. I mean like I have never seen trees and bushes fly by so fast. I think they were going like 150 km/hr. And that’s in a huge bus. It was okay until we started going up into the mountains on those windy mountain roads – they weren’t going as fast, but wow, had to just breathe a lot for a while. The Express bus went as far as Soni, a small town about 16 km from Lushoto. From there we took a Dalidala (mini-bus) with about 25 of our closest friends to Lushoto. We heard from a guy that he heard that in Kenya that they shove 50 people in those minibuses but I’m not sure how – I mean, we’re already talking almost clown-car with people hanging out – 50 would be out of control.
TOTALLY OFF THE SUBJECT – John is tall here! I mean, the beds are short on him. Can you say hormones in the food in America? Because in Lushoto they eat way better than we do – like lots of veggies, a bit of grain and a small amount of meat. And the average height is like 5’6″.
Anyway, we stayed at the Karibuni Lodge and it was really nice – the man who owns it worked as an auditor for the government but now he is trying to help people get loans from banks, since most people around here don’t know how to show why they need loans, etc.
From Lushoto, we organized our 4-day trek through the mountains which I’ll talk about in our next entry since I’ve babbled way too long on this one…
Cheers
Tags: RTW Trip, Tanzania, usambara
JohnCin
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