June 17 - Tanzania: Overland Trek to Dar-Es-Salaam
Baobab Tree
Up early again this morning for a long drive to Dar-Es-Salaam. We'll take a ferry to Zanzibar tomorrow morning. Zanzibar is like the Holy Grail to us right now. We'll stay in a bed and breakfast and there are supposed to be excellent restaurants and fast internet connections. We speak of it as if it were paved in gold, although any room with a door and a shower is the Ritz for me!
On the way there today, we stopped in a valley full of Baobab trees: HUGE white trees known as "upside down" trees. According to Brendan the guide, legend of the trees is like this: the Creator first planted the trees in a cold climate. But the Baobab tree turned white from the cold and complained. So the Creator moved the trees into a forest. But the rainy climate caused the trees to wrinkle and they they complained again to the Creator. This time, the Creator was annoyed with their complaints. He took them out of the forest and threw them as far away as he could. They ended up upside down in Southern Africa. And this is why they're large, white, wrinkled, and upside-down. They're phenomenal! Vanessa the guide says the the tree above is probably about 1000 years old.
The highway we were on (it was actually paved - a real highway!) passed through a National Park. So we got to see more zebras, elephants, impalas, and some beautiful storks! It's funny though, how quickly we've been jaded by these sights. Half the bus was asleep during the trip. "Oh yeah, elephants. Snore."
We arrived in Dar-Es-Salaam at rush hour and wow are these drivers crazy. Not only do they speed and cut people off (something we New Yorkers are used to), but they do this with a flatbed full of people. Jon saw one pickup truck with 19 people in the back. Unbelievable. He and the Aussie boys had a monster round of "punchbug" going on during the ride, and a city like this is the ideal place to do it. It's a monster game because they completely whallop each other when they see a VW bug. Dennis actually had welts.
Our campsite is right on the ocean, although we've been told not to venture out of the campsite or we'll get mugged. The sea is very nice, but lots of seaweed! We setup camp, and Jon and I cleaned out the truck and helped to make dinner (we are on duty today). Unfortunately, dinner was a lot of fresh vegetables that we had to cut up so the duties were duty-full today. Sometimes you win, and sometimes you lose.
After dinner, the gang started a game of beer-pong. Basically, it's ping-pong with beer bottles on the table. If you hit your opponent's bottle, then they have to drink. I haven't played ping pong since I was fifteen, so I was penalized with multiple beer-drinking for my sorry ping-pong skills. If you can even call them skills.
Jon and the Aussies have this ongoing joke where - if they successfully play a practical joke on another - then the prankster "owns" the victim. So Dennis played a joke on Jon and consequently "owned" him for the rest of the night. As a result, Jon could only talk in a ridiculous voice and couldn't use his legs as part of the "ownership". It was quite funny and had us all in hysterics. Jon and I think that this trip would be very different without the Aussies to liven things up!