Travel days aren't the most fun part of vacation, but they are necessary. So today we traveled. I had Ali call the cab dude for 10 for Andy and Maura, and 10:15 for me. I packed last night, so I had enough time to go for a quick breakfast at this place that was recommended. The spiced coffee was really good, and I had a couple bready pastry kind of snacks. They had other food, but it was octopus and such, which is a little much for me at 9 am. When the time came to go, I gave Ali a $20 tip - I felt a little cheap since he found my luggage and my vacation would have been significantly less fun without it. Plus, I had been having all this first world guilt about the guy having to just be there all the time. His face lit up like a Christmas tree, he was so psyched! I hope he gets himself something nice with it. He said no visitors for a few days, so he gets some time off.
The airport in Tanzinia was hot and crazy. For some reason the woman at the airline desk wanted to see my credit card that I used to pay for my ticket, but the stupid credit card company cancelled it because I bought the ticket. Finally she said she would be ok with a copy of my passport. Thankfully I had one. No idea what the deal was, but they let me through. Once inside, it's tricky to figure out where to go. It's one room with 4 doors ("gates"). There are no signs about the planes, if they are late, which one is currently departing, nothing. This guy just announces the flights, in English and Swahili via a crackly mike. Then you go though the gate, possibly onto a bus, and climb the steps onto your plane (in our case another prop plane).
At the airport this woman from Israel apparently told security something to the effect of "I don't have two half-drunk bottles of cheep wine in my carry on", when in fact she did. They tried to take it away from her, and she was arguing about it. The next thing, they took her out of the security area to another part of the airport. First, being from Israel, you would think she would understand the importance of airport security. Second, who argues with airport security in a third world country??? Esp over cheep wine?
We're only in Arusha for a couple days, which is ok. It seems crazy and chaotic. We went out to dinner and after this guy said he was a taxi driver and knew where our hotel was. Well, he didn't kidnap us, but he also didn't really know where the hotel was. He took us down the wrong dirt road, bouncing along, nearly killing bikers and pedestrians, country music blaring, and it turned out to be the wrong place. So, out we went. At the end of the road he called a friend and, as we were sitting there, suddenly he locked the doors. But he was just scared by the people outside. From now on, whenever I hear "you picked a fine time to leave me Lucille" (which I guess won't be that often) I will try to think of bombing through Arusha, lost, driving way to fast, almost hitting pedestrians walking behind us....
Tomorrow we have our safari orientation!
No comments:
Post a Comment