Bug-Out Day

Before Godliving took the rest of the group to the airport last night, I ran our plan for today past him. We would take a taxi to the Impala Hotel in the center of Arusha and buy tickets for their airport shuttle. We'd check our bags and go to the central market, and later the Tanzanian National Museum.

The market was like most developing nation markets I've been to. It was a zoo. The trouble when you don't blend into the locals is a lot of people swarm you. One fella was trying to be our "guide". We told him there was no money for him. He persisted.

We saw spices, meats, fish, etc. My Lovely Wife bought what she was told was saffron. Caveat Emptor.

The museum was quite good considering it appeared to be under-funded. It's in the old German boma. A boma is a structure of thorny branches the Maasai build around their village to keep predators out. The Germans used the word to describe a fortress.

The museum was divided into three buildings and covered the history of the country including the evolution of humans, the German occupation, and the wildlife. No mention of the British occupation is made (just that they won the country at the end of World War I). I wonder if the Brits are largely left out because Tanzania is a member of the British Commonwealth, and has chosen not to criticize the country their monarch comes from.

While we were in the museum, I was approached by a man who wanted to sell me a safari. This continued while we ate the picnic lunch the hotel had packed for us. I took his business card and said we'd look at his website when we got home. Then he wanted to be our taxi driver.

This does bring up a touchy subject. I really don't like constantly being pitched when I walk down a street, or in a museum. I like to be left alone. But this is the way in many developing nations. Saying, "no, thank you" doesn't seem to work.

I was surprised to see how clean Arusha was. In most of the developing nations I've been to, there is little infrastructure to remove trash. You usually see it laying everywhere. There's no trash on the ground in any of the cities we've been to in Tanzania. We mentioned this to a local who told us that there are stiff fines for littering.

On the way to the airport, we met a couple who had traveled from Kenya. Their safari wasn't nearly as cushy as ours, including the vehicles they traveled in. Her description of the van they had ridden in reminded me of the bumpy roads the bus from Hanoi to Saigon traveled on.

I was surprised that we were finger printed in the airport before we were allowed to exit the country. We hadn't been finger printed on the way in. There was a departure tax of 30 dollars. This was built into our airline tickets.

Our hub, again, was Schiphol International in Amsterdam. The Nude-O-Scope operators weren't as polite as they had been on our way to Africa. Finally, we arrived at home sweet home.