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.

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….

In praise of Schmanz

Schmantz are my name for those hideous shorts/pants with the zip off lower legs. They are universally unflattering and are usually only seen on foreigners kitted out for the “safari of a lifetime!!” Schmantz are for posers.

Well, as I mentioned in my earlier post, I am down to 2 pairs of pants. A seemingly sturdy pair of cords fell victim to an Aleppo (Syria) sidewalk mishap. A pair of brown cotton slacks gave up the ghost after a slippery Algeria staircase-induced seat seam tear, a bad patch job and the cumulative effect of many hours of being vibrated apart by buses of various nationalities. My jeans are hanging on but have begun to unravel in immodest places. The only thing left in my backpack that is anywhere close to intact are the schmantz I bought as an emergency backup in case I had to do any hiking. They are olive green ripstop nylon canvas and ugly as all get out, but they have so far survived a trip up and down (and up and down and up and down and up) a Ugandan hillside tracking gorillas, a clinging-for-dear-life boat ride on Lake Victoria and any number of double digit hour public transit rides. They are (relatively) odor resistant and dry quickly, so I have been wearing them for 5 days non-stop.

Schmantz makers of the world, I owe you an apology. Also apologies to anyone I will be encountering during the rest of my trip because I don’t know that those things are getting washed any time soon.

Good Sign or Bad Sign: Transit Edition

Qatar Airways, which ambitiously bills itself as "the World's Five Star Airline", has an interesting flight path from Doha, Qatar to Dar-es-Salaam, Tanzania.

Our captain announced the flight path over the PA. North from Doha to Bahrain, then turning west to fly over Riyahd and Sanaa then south over Addis and Mombassa to Dar. Not the most direct path through the air. I am no expert in aviation routes,but it seems like the planners are expending considerable effort to avoid Yemeni and Somali airspace.

I would guess that our geographic meander adds about 20% to the flying time. Not the biggest hardship fo me since I managed to snag an exit row with empty adjacent seats. Since I have no status with Qatar Airways and do not look like a typical Qatari frequent flyer, I wonder if it is just the luck of the seat lottery or my reservation somehow got flagged since QA's corporate twitter account is following my blog.

Fuulhardy

So add to the list of things not to eat on the road fuul from the roadside stand in the Sinai during an 11 hour bus trip from Cairo to Dahab. Tastes like diesel and pidgeon droppings.

Defense of package tourism

I am sure this will have legions of former Let’s Goers turning in their hand-sewn hostel-friendly bedsheets, but I am going to mount a defense of package tours and (gasp) cruiseships. Just got back from a trip to Upper Egypt (upriver/south of Cairo, the monument territory) for which I booked a package tour with an agent in Cairo.

First issue: cost. Surprisingly cheap trip, all in. Sure it could be due to the global economic crisis, tourist turn-offs like the relatively frequent reports of bombings in Egypt, and the fact that Luxor and Aswan are SCORCHING anytime but the dead of winter, but the agent was able to find some pretty amazing deals. For the cruise, the cost (which included a spacious and frigidly air-conditioned stateroom, all meals, site tickets, local transport and an English-speaking Egyptologist guide) was round about $100 per day. Not bad given that some of the site tickets alone were $20. The ship was also a nice haven from the ever-present taxi/souvenir touts and camel/horse/carriage jockeys that line the streets of all the tourist towns in the south. I probably saved a good deal of money on useless tat and I would have gladly paid at least $10 extra a day to have a hotel in a tout-free zone.

Second issue: the itinerary. The standard assumption is that package tours are for lazy punters who just want to show up to a location, jump out of the megabus to have their picture taken next to it in a culturally insensitive pose (see Spinx, kissing; pyramids, leaning; scarcophagi, dead miming; hieroglyphics, Egyptian walk-liking) for two minutes then jumping back on the bus to head for the next location on the list. Two things here. First, most tours are accompanied by pretty decent guides. Guides that know enough to do as much of the explaining and orienting as possible in the air-conditioned and quiet environs of the bus or ship. We could jump out of the bus pretty well prepared to see the most interesting carvings/paintings/statues/columns/etc. Second, the sheer volume of things to see means that overload sets in pretty fast. Our guide’s advice was to see only a couple of things at each site so you can see enough of them to have intelligent questions and observations. Also, as mentioned, it is HOT AS HADES, so only a determined masochist or professional archeologist (or, okay all the locals who live there) would spend more than an hour or two outside. Elderly Japanese were dropping like flies in the Valley of the Kings, so I was totally content to head back to the bus after seeing only a couple of the dozens of tombs in the area.

Third issue: the people who tend to sign up for package tours. Again, a bit of a surprise there. Turns out it is not so unique for otherwise savvy, independent travel types to break up their minibus taxi-jumping, guesthouse-staying, Lonely Planet-following trips with a few days on a tour. My group of 13 on the ship was at least half people my age (ish) whose passports bore stamps from places off the cruiseship path. Even the “Middle-America” (-Australia, -Britain, -Canada) types in the group were pretty interesting. After all, when would I ever have the chance to spend that much time in close contact with trip-of-a-lifetime-before-my-hips-give-out retirees? I have plenty of opportunities to interact with locals in the tourist trade (and believe me there are NO locals not in the tourist trade in these cities) and hardcore backpacker types. It was kind of refreshing to visit these places with folks whose dinner table conversation does not feature “That was great but it was nothing compared to the time I…” (fill in name of exotic/dangerous country and foolhardy activity here). Egypt’s sights may be well-trodden by tourists, but they are still spectacular and it was refreshing to see them with people not jaded by having (or pretending to have) seen it all already.

Fourth issue: the gigantic environment-destroying waste involved with giant air-conditioned vehicles of land and river. Okay, I really don’t have a defense of this except to say HOLY CHRIST IT WAS HOT and anyone who wants to try to brave the Egyptian south in summer without climate control is asking for heatstroke.

Now I’m off to take my 12 hour budget bus ride to the Sinai to atone.

The worst cabbie(s) in Syria

I must have met the two worst cabbies in the Levant. Exhibit A hangs out at the train station in Aleppo in a tiny Fiat that is more bootleg replacement parts than original equipment. Witness the replacement from passenger seat. It is literally a chair-not of automotive origins-bolted loosely to the floorboard and missing some springs. The tires might also not have been of automotive origin (wagon? bicycle?) and had a tendency to go flat during the ride which didn't alarm him as much as it should have. Luckily there were roadside stations where he could pull over and reinflate. Add to this his exceptionally poor directional sense and test-and-learn approach to determining my desired destination. I told him the name of the hotel and the street, but his preferred method of navigation was to take me to the largest, most western hotel he could find, point at it and look at me hopefully. We finally passed by the right hotel, which I think was more a function of having driven every street in town more than any specific effort to find that location.

Exhibit B is the taxi driver I picked up on the Syrian border with Lebanon for the ride to Beirut. Navigation wasn't an issue (point south and follow the coast until you see the designer boutiques and McDonalds franchises), but he seemed to take a "what happens in Lebanon stays in Lebanon" approach to life. Just over the border from relatively dry Syria, he pulled over to buy us a couple of Heineken tallboys and spent the ride violating any open container laws there may have been on the books and trying to convince me that I needed a Syrian boyfriend. Goes to show I should have sucked it up and walked over the border so I could get a Lebanese taxi.

Backpack detritus

I have gotten a lot of questions about what I am bringing on this trip. As little as possible is the most concise answer. Everything is jammed into an old Osprey pack I bought before my last round the world thing in 1999.

The good news is that the pack has a lot of theif resistant nooks and crannies. The bad news is that those nooks and crannies accumulate a lot of travel junk. I am in the midst of the backpack equivalent of a high colonic. Expelled so far:
1 50 cent peice from the Cook Islands (acquired 2002)
2 brochures from a safari lodge in South Africa (acquired 2008)
3 airport luggage tags (acquired 2004-2006)
2 passport pictures (hairstyle indicates 2006)
sand (acquisition date unknown)
raffia ribbon (?!?)
lipstick cap (I don't wear lipstick)

There's an appropriate metaphor in here I think...