Day 34: 31 August 2002 9:00 pm
The Village People were right – it’s fun to stay at the YMCA!
I’m not bothering with day 33 as it is just more of the same – shopping, etc so I’ve jumped to day 34.
It was time to pack our bags and say goodbye to exotic, spicy and costly
Zanzibar to return to Dar Es Salaam. I’m sure by this time we were
returning a day early just to prove to our tour leader and to ourselves that
we could still hack it if we travelled independently.
We arrived at the port at 12:10pm and were stamped out of Zanzibar. The
boat ride was rougher than last time and it didn’t help that someone was sea
sick in the next aisle. We had to endure WWF on video for an hour, a
prelude to some awful Japanese martial arts movie that they screened.
At Dar Es Salaam, the touts swarmed around us, but after 50 metres we had
escaped and hot footed it to the YWCA. Here, the woman was adamant that she
had no rooms even though she had a whole set of room keys on the wall behind
her. She obviously didn’t like the look of us.
We booked into the YMCA round the corner and I got myself clean and had a
good meal. The room with shared bath cost Tsh 13000.
After stuffing myself with bananas and popcorn, I realised that if it was a
choice between being on the truck and being back at work, I would prefer to
be on the truck. I need to remind myself of this whenever I feel like
screaming that I need to get off the truck.
Positives: I’m taking every available opportunity to eat as much as
possible before returning to truck rations.
Negatives: WWF for an hour? Enough to make anyone sick on board a boat.
