DAY 81
Mosquitoes were hungry in Kigoma and we leave them behind happily. Instead of a sandwich, we try the salad for the lunchbox; cutting empty plastic bottle and using them as container (the cut head upside down to close it). This time we accept the wrapping and ask for 2 plastic bags to maximize the protection... we'll see in Mwanza :/ The bus station is much smaller here and much quieter. For no clear reason though, they're blasting some Celine Dion... wtf is wrong with them! And it's not just one song but they seem to be playing all the greatest hits. Torture!
After a moment of doubt, we find ourselves in a luxury bus. Youhou!!! It's a 2 by 2, it's clean, it has AC, leg room and we have seats not too far from the front. The journey should be better than our last two. We take a different route than last time. Instead of leaving Kigoma from the East we go North. The road is as bad but it's more scenic. The sun is rising over Burundi, slowly dissipating the fog over the forest. Very nice sight! Kids are on their way to school and people are starting their day. They don't use donkeys here but bicycles instead. The way everything holds on these bikes feels improbable and/or magical though. In short succession we then have two scary sights; one truck on its side on the side of the road followed by a group of 4-5 trucks burned down! And it clearly didn't happen a long time ago. Roads are dangerous sure but this looks more like Mad Max.
The rest of the trip is uneventful until 1km away from the ferry. That's where the bus breaks down as well as one of our cliché about African patience. As soon as they realize what's going on, half of the bus is trying to hitch hikes with passing vehicles or moto-taxi in a frightening free for all. We talk about walking to the ferry with our luggage but the bus is fixed in less than half an hour. We were secretly hoping to be treated with the sunset while on the ferry but we're too late for that. Once again it took us 14h30 to cover the 600km. With a better bus it was nicer though; less dust inside and a less tiring journey. The bags mostly survived this time, a little bit of dust but nothing compare to last time apocalypse.
DAY 81
Once again we visit the safari companies but they have nothing for us. We enjoy the rest of our day back at the hotel by the lake. Another session of internet (booking a hotel for Moshi) and bird watching. This time we don't need the policewomen to find the right “dala dala”. It's ridiculously crowded however but we make it safely back to our hotel. During dinner, we both order a soup. For whatever reason, they serve us with what looks like half a soup. In expensive fancy restaurant I could expect soup so small but in everywhere else the portion is “normal”. We first wonder if they actually had enough for just one of us and didn't bother telling us. But when we call the waitress to complain about it, she brings back almost immediately some more soup. The situation is so absurd that we giggle helplessly... The feeling we start having about Tanzania is that it's very expensive compare to the other countries we visited and the service is poor.
DAY 82
Once again we can just walk to the bus station for the 6am departure; it means we don't have to get up yet again at 4am. We're one hour into the trip when the bus stops and we're told it has a problem and we have to go to one of the two other buses waiting. I don't believe the bus had a problem, I think they consolidated 3 buses into 2. We end up on the back row... The worst place to travel because it's the bumpiest. Icing on the cake, one the bus guy even asks us (not any of the 3 Tanzanian on the back row) to share our 2 seats with a third person... Unbelievable! The least we can say is that his proposition is not well received and he does not insists. The trip is uneventful but very uncomfortable. The curse of luxury buses is the TV. We get fed a constant diet of either crappy RnB/Rap videos, Celine Dion or B movies and series. To be fair we had no Celine Dion this time (yeah!!!) but the 80s movie was so bad it was funny. Only in the 80s could you have bodybuilded guys running around topless in mini-shorts with a lion mane style haircut... :D
(Mount Meru but from Kilimanjaro as we saw it a few days after)
The impressive Mount Meru announces our imminent arrival in Arusha. This city is a hub for safari but has a terrible reputation and we're more than happy to skip it. Strangely, this is where I'll have the best bus station experience. So far, it has been anything but pleasant with people trying to sell you food, goodies, taxi rides, tours,... you name it. But here for the first time, I'll have a nice chat with a local just for the sake of talking. I was as usual cautious when he started talking to me, expecting the commercial proposal, but it never came and … it felt good to be talked to not for the sole purpose of selling something! We finally arrive at Moshi after 15 long hours (783km at a dreadful 52km/h...) The hotel we booked is full even though we received the booking confirmation. That's a great surprise at 10pm. We give them a very hard time and they scramble to find us and pay for another room elsewhere. It'll take them an hour to solve the problem. The room they find is far from great but it'll have to do for the night. Everything happens to be full in Moshi because there's a Hindu convention with around 400 people coming over from Kenya, Uganda and all parts of Tanzania to see a famous Hindu religious leader...
DAY 83-84-85
For the rest of our stay in Moshi before Kilimanjaro we had the chance to stay at the Hibiscus (they were full the first night... hence the shit show last night). An awesome B&B owned by a super nice British lady (Best hotels and restaurant we had in Africa were all owned by foreigners... shame). It was great for the much needed R&R, a little bit outside of town and super cozy. We had our gear check with one of our Kilimanjaro guide and got to meet Andreas., the guy we “recruited” online to climb The Mountain with us! We'll be a little group of 5 (with 2 Brits) which is in the right range to have fun while suffering ;)