East African Private Transport Episode 3: Return of the Aaaarrrrgggghhh

As it turns out, private transport is the same PITA as public transport. I found out the hard way that flying to Dar is not as simple as, say, making a booking, paying for the ticket and showing up at the airport with your luggage and passport. My "airline" which shall remain nameless (but rhymes with Derision to Spare) decided inexplicably to cancel my ticket and not inform me before I showed up at the airport having paid them an additional $10 for a 5:30am shuttle.

By way of explanation of why the ticket disappeared, the counter agent just showed me the computer screen with the letters XLD and said "see, cancelled... The computer did it." Oh, that explains it. The computer. I thought about making a HAL 2000 reference, but decided it was probably just as futile as trying to explain to fellow bus travelers that windowside meat skewers are not my thing.

I have to be in Dar to pick up my next flight by 1pm, but there was no room on any flight to Dar out of Kilimanjaro airport. No flights to Zanzibar, none to Nairobi. None anywhere close to Dar. The counter lady suggested I try Arusha airport, a small airstrip 50kms away, since they sometimes have small planes leaving for random destinations. Unfortunately, she thought the flights left at 8am (it was 7 by then) which initiated a mad dash to a special hire (actually the private car of one of the security guards driven by some guy he found loitering at the minibus taxi stage). Random driver guy spoke no English, but we eventually made mutual hand gestures to communicate my need to hurry and he burst forth with "highly speeding!" and floored it, speedbumps, police, and oncoming traffic be damned at 140 kms/hour. I put my headphones on and listened to some Death Cab For Cutie to relax. It seemed appropriate.

We made it to the airstrip with a few minutes to spare but HAL lady was wrong and there were no seats on Derision's next flight. I went next door to Coastal Air and the very helpful, surprisingly enterprising agent there went running around the airstrip trying to find a private charter going to Dar or Zanzibar with extra room. We came close to getting a bush pilot to pick me up in a puddlejumper and drop me in Dar after he ferried his safari customers to Zanzibar, but a last minute equipment issue mean the flight would get in 20 minutes too late for my connection. He did offer to book me on his next direct to Dar at noon for the discounted "local" price then used a pretty generous exchange rate to knock it down even further. The difference more than makes up for the cost of the shuttle and death cab.

Missing my Dar connection entails rebooking a flight to Doha on Qatar Airways and another to Dubai on Emirates. Both requuire calling the Dar offices, which have an annoying habit of not picking up their phones. Qatar finially came on the line and sorted their end out, but Emirates is still AWOL. Managed to get through to their Zanzibar office, who commisserated with me on their Dar colleagues' fickle record of attendance at the office. Unfortunately, the commisseration did not extend to actually heling me rebook herself.

Next time I am teleporting to Dar.