Showing posts with label I am too old for this. Show all posts
Showing posts with label I am too old for this. Show all posts
Wednesday, June 24, 2009
East African Private Transport Episode 2: The 4x4 Strikes Back
So I decided to take a short safari to the Serengeti…mainly to forestall repeated explanation of why I went to Tanzania and did not see the biggest attraction there. But also because going on safari involves taking a private 4x4 driven by a sober, trained, expert whose attention to your safety is guaranteed by the custom of tipping at the end of the trip. First thing to note is that the Serengeti is HUGE. Over 14,000 square kilometers. Second, its paths are unpaved and in most cases ungraded. Third, is most of the good game viewing spots in June are in the remote North and West part of the park. And fourth, the combination of the previous three means that normal expectations of safe driving do not apply. What do you think is a reasonable speed going over rough, winding roads in the dark during a rainstorm? If you guessed 100km/hour, you have a future as a safari guide. Luther, my driver, also had the disconcerting/reassuring habit of not using the headlights. Sure, it probably made the drive a little more risky, but you can’t worry about the effect of running over rocks, streams, guinea fowl or small ungulates when you can’t see them. I have another full day of flat out driving to get back to Arusha, but after that, I am flying back to Dar. I mean it this time.
East Africa Private Transport Episode 1: A New Hope
So I think I have established that I really hate buses. The dust, the overbooking, the requirement that everyone purchase meat products on sticks through the open windows. My hopes for private transport were pretty high. Here is a sampling of a few typical conveyances:
“Special Hire” refers to a private sedan taxi whose driver is fittingly called a “special driver.” As in went to the “special” driving school for the lawless and slow-reflexed. Specials are usually not marked, so you have to either look for an early 90s era car with someone exiting and paying or take a chance by getting a ride with whatever random stranger pulls over and asks you if you are looking for a ride. I seem to remember that this is how johns troll for dates from Pretty Woman, so that makes the experience special in a whole ‘nother way.
“Boda-boda” are motorbikes with extra-long seats that are driven by lunatics. The advantage of bodas are that they can zip around the ever-present Kampala traffic jams and deliver you to your destination in a fraction of the time a special takes. The disadvantage is that they zip around the ever-present Kampala traffic jams by darting between cargo trucks, driving on the unpaved shoulders/medians, and taking speed bumps at high speeds. Locals ride bodas with a no-hands nonchalance borne of either long experience or fatalistic surrender to the inevitability of having an accident or being thrown from the back of the bike at some point. The women ride sidesaddle-style usually balancing purses, packages and/or children on their laps. Muzungus can be easily identified by not only their sunburns and North Face backpacks, but also my their habit of clinging to the seatback, driver or wheel cover for dear life before making a weak-kneed dismount more often than not involving an unpleasant skin-on-red-hot-exhaust-pipe flourish.
Shuttles are privately operated minibuses, usually slightly newer, bigger, slower, and better maintained than the matatu minibus taxicabs I avoid at all costs (think tiny, overcrowded, smelly versions of buses with drivers who are often somewhat intoxicated). My Impala shuttle from Nairobi to Arusha was not quite the air-conditioned luxury I had imagined during the 30-hour public bus episode, but I did manage to arrive at my destination intact, with all my luggage and not insulated by an inch of road dust. Here’s a little tip I picked up on the way…while my previous experience with African border crossings seemed to indicate that it was fastest to choose the line with the most whities and fewest locals (here’s lookin’ at you, unreconstructed South African immigration officials!), it is the opposite in East Africa. Muzungu tend to be baffled by the moneychangers, visa fees, half-mile hikes between exiting one country and entering another, and, most of all, by the need to just shove your way to the front on the line because there is no line. As a result, my local-laden shuttle made it to Arusha a full 30 minutes faster than the foreigner bus even given our frequent stops for meat skewers through the window. Plus ca change….
“Special Hire” refers to a private sedan taxi whose driver is fittingly called a “special driver.” As in went to the “special” driving school for the lawless and slow-reflexed. Specials are usually not marked, so you have to either look for an early 90s era car with someone exiting and paying or take a chance by getting a ride with whatever random stranger pulls over and asks you if you are looking for a ride. I seem to remember that this is how johns troll for dates from Pretty Woman, so that makes the experience special in a whole ‘nother way.
“Boda-boda” are motorbikes with extra-long seats that are driven by lunatics. The advantage of bodas are that they can zip around the ever-present Kampala traffic jams and deliver you to your destination in a fraction of the time a special takes. The disadvantage is that they zip around the ever-present Kampala traffic jams by darting between cargo trucks, driving on the unpaved shoulders/medians, and taking speed bumps at high speeds. Locals ride bodas with a no-hands nonchalance borne of either long experience or fatalistic surrender to the inevitability of having an accident or being thrown from the back of the bike at some point. The women ride sidesaddle-style usually balancing purses, packages and/or children on their laps. Muzungus can be easily identified by not only their sunburns and North Face backpacks, but also my their habit of clinging to the seatback, driver or wheel cover for dear life before making a weak-kneed dismount more often than not involving an unpleasant skin-on-red-hot-exhaust-pipe flourish.
Shuttles are privately operated minibuses, usually slightly newer, bigger, slower, and better maintained than the matatu minibus taxicabs I avoid at all costs (think tiny, overcrowded, smelly versions of buses with drivers who are often somewhat intoxicated). My Impala shuttle from Nairobi to Arusha was not quite the air-conditioned luxury I had imagined during the 30-hour public bus episode, but I did manage to arrive at my destination intact, with all my luggage and not insulated by an inch of road dust. Here’s a little tip I picked up on the way…while my previous experience with African border crossings seemed to indicate that it was fastest to choose the line with the most whities and fewest locals (here’s lookin’ at you, unreconstructed South African immigration officials!), it is the opposite in East Africa. Muzungu tend to be baffled by the moneychangers, visa fees, half-mile hikes between exiting one country and entering another, and, most of all, by the need to just shove your way to the front on the line because there is no line. As a result, my local-laden shuttle made it to Arusha a full 30 minutes faster than the foreigner bus even given our frequent stops for meat skewers through the window. Plus ca change….
Rafting Redux
Drinking Nile water was so fun I decided to do it again! I had a few days in Kampala before I was scheduled to head out to Tanzania again and it came down to either taking another long bus ride to Murchison Falls (the appeal of which was described to me as “great for people who like to see water falling off stuff”) or getting shuttled back to Jinja on the Adrift Rafting Company shuttle to hang out at the river camp and do nothing. Plus there was the added bonus of signing up for another day of rafting. Perfect for people who like to be on virtual spin cycle in water falling off stuff. I chose Jinja. Day One was pretty relaxed…talking with a Red Cross pilot on leave from her station in Chad, making the resident cat go crazy by teasing it with a guinea fowl feather, watching the bungee master fix the rope (note to self, do not attempt bungee), getting mysterious insect bites, and drinking Nile Special beers.
Nile Special is the beera franca of Uganda. Brewed right there in Jinja and presumably incorporating the river water someplace on the way to its 6% alcohol concentration, it advertises that one can enjoy it in the “new 500ml experience.” For those who have trouble with metric conversions, that is roughly 50% bigger than a standard can. It does not take many Niles to start to black out on that 500ml experience.
Day Two: not so relaxing. Went river rafting the next morning. My group, a cross section of typical Uganda budget travelers – backpackers from the US and UK, 20-something NGO workers and missionaries (referred to by the preceding groups variously as Godies, Thumpers, and Jesus People) – was guided by Tim, the America I met my first time on the river. Tim was now about 10x as experienced on the Nile which showed in several ways. We were treated to a lot more lifejackets-and-helmets-off stretches, made some of the tougher lines through the big rapids (including a 10-foot waterfall…backwards) and, best off all, he managed to sweet talk the safety boat rower into letting us tie on and get pulled through the flat places on the river in lieu of paddling. As a result, we had enough energy left over at the end of the trip to really go after the Nile Specials provided by the support crew at the take out point BBQ. The crew headed back on the truck to Jinja to spend another night at camp consisted of myself, Fleur (the press officer for the US Embassy…in Kabul), and Tim and Liz (a brother-sister pair of bungee-jumping, Kili-cllimbing young Brits…UK Tim was all of 18). The river guides heading back were the muzungus Tim (who after my Nile special #2 increasingly started to resemble the love child of an Ewok and Pauly Shore with his hoodie, teeth showing through facial scruff and somewhat nasal surfer dude laugh) and Tom (a St. Louis native living the life of a jet set rafting guide in Uganda and New Zealand) and the locals Tutu (the safety boat hero who was approximately .01% body fat) and Juma (head guide and referred to by Ewok as “the Mack Daddy of the Nile,” a claim he backed up on the dance floor after my 6th Nile Special).
Instructions for boarding the truck consisted of “don’t forget your shit on the raft and grab as many beers as you can carry.” As a result, by dinner I had consumed over 2 liters of beer. Fleur, whose State Department postings have included Kabul, Baghdad, Darfur, and a few others in the scary category, drank like beer was an endangered commodity (which I guess it is in some of those places) and was the unofficial pace car of the group. The Brits dropped out early, but after that things got a little more determined. All I remember of the night after Nile Special 9 (may not have been my last) and a few shots of improbably colored local liqueur called Zappi, is stumbling back to my cabin and sleeping the first hour in a camp chair outside my door until I could figure out how to disarm the padlock again. I may have also dropped/thrown my shirt off the balcony into the Nile. The entire experience was capped off by a wake up call from the Ugandan scout troop camped across the river singing and dancing in harmony at 6am the next day. I stumbled down to breakfast in time to hear Ewok give a semi-coherent pre-trip briefing to 25 Thumpers and thank my lucky collection of empties that I was not going to spend the day getting my innards agitated by class 5 whitewater.
Nile Special is the beera franca of Uganda. Brewed right there in Jinja and presumably incorporating the river water someplace on the way to its 6% alcohol concentration, it advertises that one can enjoy it in the “new 500ml experience.” For those who have trouble with metric conversions, that is roughly 50% bigger than a standard can. It does not take many Niles to start to black out on that 500ml experience.
Day Two: not so relaxing. Went river rafting the next morning. My group, a cross section of typical Uganda budget travelers – backpackers from the US and UK, 20-something NGO workers and missionaries (referred to by the preceding groups variously as Godies, Thumpers, and Jesus People) – was guided by Tim, the America I met my first time on the river. Tim was now about 10x as experienced on the Nile which showed in several ways. We were treated to a lot more lifejackets-and-helmets-off stretches, made some of the tougher lines through the big rapids (including a 10-foot waterfall…backwards) and, best off all, he managed to sweet talk the safety boat rower into letting us tie on and get pulled through the flat places on the river in lieu of paddling. As a result, we had enough energy left over at the end of the trip to really go after the Nile Specials provided by the support crew at the take out point BBQ. The crew headed back on the truck to Jinja to spend another night at camp consisted of myself, Fleur (the press officer for the US Embassy…in Kabul), and Tim and Liz (a brother-sister pair of bungee-jumping, Kili-cllimbing young Brits…UK Tim was all of 18). The river guides heading back were the muzungus Tim (who after my Nile special #2 increasingly started to resemble the love child of an Ewok and Pauly Shore with his hoodie, teeth showing through facial scruff and somewhat nasal surfer dude laugh) and Tom (a St. Louis native living the life of a jet set rafting guide in Uganda and New Zealand) and the locals Tutu (the safety boat hero who was approximately .01% body fat) and Juma (head guide and referred to by Ewok as “the Mack Daddy of the Nile,” a claim he backed up on the dance floor after my 6th Nile Special).
Instructions for boarding the truck consisted of “don’t forget your shit on the raft and grab as many beers as you can carry.” As a result, by dinner I had consumed over 2 liters of beer. Fleur, whose State Department postings have included Kabul, Baghdad, Darfur, and a few others in the scary category, drank like beer was an endangered commodity (which I guess it is in some of those places) and was the unofficial pace car of the group. The Brits dropped out early, but after that things got a little more determined. All I remember of the night after Nile Special 9 (may not have been my last) and a few shots of improbably colored local liqueur called Zappi, is stumbling back to my cabin and sleeping the first hour in a camp chair outside my door until I could figure out how to disarm the padlock again. I may have also dropped/thrown my shirt off the balcony into the Nile. The entire experience was capped off by a wake up call from the Ugandan scout troop camped across the river singing and dancing in harmony at 6am the next day. I stumbled down to breakfast in time to hear Ewok give a semi-coherent pre-trip briefing to 25 Thumpers and thank my lucky collection of empties that I was not going to spend the day getting my innards agitated by class 5 whitewater.
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