On Safari Day 7
Wednesday, December 6th, 2006Ok, sorry for keeping y’all waiting… Internet access is not as easy to find here as it is at home.
So… December 2nd was day 7 of our African Adventure. Today, we made our way to Lushoto, a town in the Usumbara Mountains. The thing I like about this tour is that we get a semi-real feel of the country because we use public transport to some of the places and some of the places are more remote than a lot of the touristy destinations that we go to.
Today was one of those “real deal” days… we took a public bus to Lushoto from Arusha. This bus was bigger than the one that we took to Arusha, it was actually a coach bus but it definitely wasn’t more comfortable. John and I had the front row, and I was in the aisle. Now normally, this wouldn’t be bad because coach busses generally don’t make a lot of stops but this coach bus stopped many times picking up people off the side of the street everywhere! So, as all the seats filled up, the aisle started to get fuller and fuller… Oh, busses here also have an enterage (sp?) of people who collect money, count people, or just sit and look cool so this bus had an enterage of about 4 people who sat in the space by the door of the bus. Now, being in the front row was not so comfortable… the enterage blocks the whole view in front of us… and being in the aisle of the front row is even worse. I pretty much spent the whole ride with either someone’s ass or crotch in my face… and these asses and crotches needed to be showered… shudder… I like my space but I guess when the population is as dense as it is here, that becomes a luxury.
Finally, we reached Lushoto. At first glance, it looked like a dusty, semi-run down, small town… well, at any glance, that what it looks like. The roads are not paved, some of the shops still have tin roofs, there are people sitting doing nothing around the shops… I love these little towns. Our hostel was actually reallly nice and there was an internet place nearby (this is where I made the previous posts). The afternoon was spent relaxing and packing for our 4 day trek through the Usumbara Mountains.
cheng.ev