the bus to Arusha

I know I have not finished my safari parks, and they only get better; but today I am in Arusha for the day, and want to talk a little about what a trip to Arusha entails.

From Moshi buses depart for Arusha all day from the bus station down town. For about $2 US you can travel in comfort (ie: with out two people on your lap and possibly with a seat of your own!) for the one and a half hours to the Arusha bus station. The buses here are mostly smaller than buses back home, they have three row seats with a fold out seat for when the regular seats fill up (and they always do), so there are about 40 seats on the bus. It is however, not unusual for there to be anywhere from 45 to 55 people on the bus. How you ask? By fitting people five or, depending on the bone structure of the people in question, six to a row and with a few people standing by the door it can be done.

Our bus this morning was early, just after 9am, so there were just exactly enough seats for the number of people on the bus. Alex, who is with me on this adventure, got a seat in the back row, and I got the fold out seat for the last row. Today has not been as hot as usual for the past couple weeks and even with most of the windows closed the bus was not overly hot. I only sweat a little, and the Tanzanians didn't sweat at all.

Once you get past the tight spaces and being the only white people on the bus, it is in many ways an enjoyable ride. Between Moshi and Arusha the landscape changes several times and often quite suddenly. Just past the outskirts of Moshi where we live the country is mostly open soft hills where farms are being tilled and seeded now in preparation for the rainy season that is about to hit. There are Shepperd's with flocks of sheep and herds of cows going here and there, and the dirt is a deep red that looks about as rich as soil can. Off to the right, depending on the cloud cover at any given moment you can see Mt. Kilimanjaro hovering over the landscape.

Soon though you find yourself in what could almost be a desert. The dirt is so dry that it blows around like sand, and small dirt twisters are always moving back and forth in the distance. I've taken a few good pictures of them and will put them up some time in the future. There are tree's but they are small and so spaced out that you would never think of them as a forest. I have no idea what the goats and sheep and cows here eat, not much by the looks of it. Still, the landscape has a vastness to it that makes it enjoyable to watch pass by. In the distance are hills and the sky is huge and blue, and often filled with sculpted clouds. You pass through small towns of mud-brick and concrete houses with rusted tin roof's, it could almost be a strange western film.

As you approach Arusha the land turns green again, the hills rise around you, and towns and villages grow bigger and busier. Soon the fields give way to banana plantations and jungle. There are several stops between the outskirts of Arusha and the bus depot in the center of town. At every one a few people get off, requiring people in the fold out seats to stand awkwardly to the side and fold down their seat backs so the person behind them can get out. At the same time street vendors come up to the windows and offer snacks and drinks for a few hundred shillings (which isn't expensive). I would probably buy some if I wasn't afraid of getting sick from the food, there is no way of knowing where it's been.

The Arusha bus depot is one of the craziest places I have ever seen. It's an open air parking lot of sorts where buses enter and exit and in between they are refueled and maintained (or so they say). All kinds of people wait around the bus station for all kinds of reasons; cab drivers stand around hoping for fare's, news paper sellers stand around hoping for sale's, old men stand around mostly for the sake of standing around. Basically, there is a lot of standing around. But once they see you (a foreigner) they all want you to use their services, what ever they may be.

Now that we are here, we'll be off trying to find what ever odd things we can buy to bring home for all those lovely people back in the good old USA. Wooden bowls, animal carvings, jewelry, illegal DVDs, t-shirts, and who knows what else. We'll get some lunch, hopefully from a reputable establishment for our stomach's sake. Then be on our way home, which of course means another trip in the bus, this time from Arusha to Moshi. The buses tend to be fuller later in the day, so it could be a long ride. It's ok though, dinner tonight is vegi-burgers, and Alex and I would not miss that for the world.