First bus was about an hour later than I thought it would be, I got on it and literally cringed. Ok, fine, I'm in Africa, the second part is longer, bus is probably a little better....hahahhaha! We get to Nairobi and about 5am, bus is supposed to leave at 6; 6:30 rolls around...7, announcement - your bus will be here in 20 min, 7:30 - your bus will be here shortly....and we finally leave about 8am. The bus pulls up, you're joking right - it's totally shit, I'm thinking this bus is not gonna make it to Dar, but I'm in Africa and that's just how it is. The seats were incredibly dirty (cringing again), but strangely there was plenty of leg room and they reclined nicely for sleeping without squashing the person behind you, um, cool. We were barely outside of the city when, for some reason, we start turning around right after we pull off onto another road....um, wrong turn, wtf? Mind you, this was like a crazy 18-point turn on a very small road (in a large bus) where either side of it sloped down to a ditch. And, then the bus dies. Awesome, yet somehow not surprised. Driver and co-driver get out, then some male passengers....waiting, still no one comes back to tell us anything....then more passengers get off....a friend I met at the station tells me she thinks they're sending another bus for us.....NOT! The repair truck shows up, after a long time and several tries it finally croaks to a start. Yea/shit - it started, but that means we have to stay on this broke-ass mess of a bus, hmmm. Oh, and the technician is riding with us the rest of the way :)
You know the sound your car makes when you're shifting gears and don't quite get the clutch in all the way - yeah, that's the noise it made...alot...and on a large bus scale...really reassuring. Oh, and then we attempt to turn around again. First, he goes backwards/sideways down this incline that actually makes it seem like the bus WILL tip over on it's side - even the Africans were worried, not a good sign. We finally managed to turn around, but it was not pretty. Enter the bumpy road from hell, that also feels like the bus will tip...thankfully this stretch did not last too long.
Next stop, border crossing, where they make you be in a big hurry to get through everything, only to wait for them to work on the bus for another half hour. At this point even the other passengers are saying it will be a miracle if this bus makes it to Dar...and we are soooo behind schedule. Showing up in Dar at 9pm, not ideal, but fine; showing up to Dar at midnight is very low on my priority list - especially by myself. However, I did make plenty of friends on the bus that I'm fairly certain would not have let anything happen to me :)
We stop in Arusha at a gas station, which we thought was a quick snack and bathroom break, silly me. After a bit we pull to the side of an entrance and suddenly there are a handful of guys up in the drivers area messing with the windshield. Then there's some metal pieces, and a torch appears....really guys? we're ON the bus. By the way, it's an older guy and two kids that look about 14, that start apparently trying to weld the windshield...? At this point I just start laughing and take out my camera because this has become straight comical; there's nothing you can do about it so you may as well just laugh. The welding is not going well, then yet another guy shows up that seems to have a better grip on this business and takes charge. He wants to bend these small metal plates, so how does he do it? He places them on the buses hand rail and hammers them, duh, what else would you do? Honestly, if I was this abused bus I would revolt too.
Everytime we slowed down or stopped I was crossing my fingers that the damn thing would get going again, we did finally make it, against all odds. Oh, and whenever it was accelerating it made this horrible jet engine noise, it's a miracle I'm not deaf now.
Spent the one night in Dar, walked down to the ferry port the next day and got my ass over to beautiful Zanzibar as quickly as possible. It's been a bit rainy in the mornings the past couple of days, but it's all good.
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