Travel to Tanzania : Buses Boats and almost Trains

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  Shinyanga, Tanzania
Tuesday, February 3, 2009

so the day after our epic and brilliant safari, we clambered on the Gaagaa bus (we now know itz named after a bird that makes that sound) with heavy hearts to be leaving so many good friends in Arua, and Uganda itself which we fell in love with. as for me i had become disgustingly ill the night before and barely wanted to move, let alone take a bumpy and cramed 8 hour bus journey. nevertheless we made it, the lovely hana allowing me to fall blissfully asleep on her should for the majority of the trip, including the bumpiest bits - hehee! This is Hana reporting on the bumpy bits. They happened not to frquently witht the exception of a large chunk of road works. the road hadn't finished being sealed so to protect it enormous speed bumps had been placed every 50-70 meters for kilometers!!!! we had to go sooooooooooo slow and it was soooooooooo bumpy. I was not best pleased.
we stayed overnight in Kampala, at the YWCA. the only eventful happenings were that Hana got whatever i had (not surprisingly) we both tested negative for malaria but high for 'neutrophiles' (whatever they are), took some druges (the legal kind) and made ready for the next leg of the trip. it was, by the way, bucketing rain all through these happenings. the cruel and ironic thing was, arriving in kampala we had the first access the abundant and delicious western foods that we'd had in 2 months... and due to yucky tummies were unable to enjoyable any of it!! ahh cruel fate!

So next morning we bussed to Bukoba, Tanzania, on a bus which had a box of the cutest baby chickens, and also about a million (give or take a few) large boxes of condoms beings transported on it. Literally upwards of 20 boxes each containing 20x40x3 condoms. as soon as we got there we fell easily into the hands of a friendly tourist operator in a cowboy hat, and they booked our ferry tickets, looked after our bags, and arranged a taxi, while we ate (and later wished we hadn't).
So leg 3 was the night ferry across lake victoria, from bukoba to mwanza. this sounds very exciting, but was actually very uneventuful. it was a pity it was dark, as it wouldn've been great to see scenery, but as it was we were happy enought to climb into our tiny two-berth cabin, on the surprisingly nice smallish ferry, and sleep through to our arrival time, at 6am. The only real point of intrest was the ridiculously loud and iritating happy welcome aboard music and the squtty that when flushed poured water all over the bathroom floor much to Hana's distress.
on exiting the ferry we (of course) were acccosted by taxi drivers, and having accecpted one (it was still dark) to take us to the train station, we had barely made it two steps before her turned arund and began punching a teenage boy behind us! having finished thouroughly boxing the young mans ears, our driver turned to us and explained that he'd been trying to pickpocket us. that was a rather startling welcome to the city! we arrived at a creepy looking, very much closed train station, seated ourselves and our packes, and waited for daylight. it came, along with a trickle of people, but no-one to open the office. mwanza turned otu to be fairly big, with some shinny tall buildings and a fair amount of traffic etc. when at 8:30am someone official finally turned up, we found that the train to Shinyana (our next leg, which we needed to make that day) didn't go till thursday. ahh! so we hoisted our packs onto our backs again and wandered down the street. after some typically vague instructions from a couple of sources, we found help in an unliekly place. 2 begger boys accosted us for money, so we accosted them for instructions. the level of english here seems to be much less than in uganda, so they spoke in a stream of swahili (all we've learnt so far is 'jumbo!') and we followed them at a ridicuous pace down several streets. miraculously we ended up at the booking offices for several bus companies running to shinyanga. here we feel into the hands of another random man who organised us a taxi to the bus station, and came with us to organise our ticket onto the bus.

on the taxi ride our to the bus station, 11km out of the main centre, we discovered that Mwanza is incredibly beautiful! it is actually one of the bizarrest, most striking and fascinating landscapes i've ever seen. it's on the lake, and around the edges, and islands int he middles, it is comprised of incredibly steep, emerald-green lush forest covered slopes, with ENORMOUS rounded oblong rocks sticking up above the trees. It's impossible to describe but very wild looking. in the town part, there are buildings and houses perched between these. we were gutted to be leaving wihtout exploring it further! neverthless, after purchasing THE BEST samosas that have ever graced the earth (our stomachs are finally settling, woohoo!) we got on a very short (only 3 hour) busride to Shinyanga, finally having time to soak up the exciting fact of being in a new country (yay Tanzania!). As it turns out, its really beautiful here! it feels different to Uganda, bu we can't put our finger on any particular way to describe it. After the green and grey-stone hills, came vast, vast, vast grassy flat plains, with lots of agriculture.

Our purpose for being in SHinyanga is to visit my World Vision Sponsorchild, in a village closeby (closeby turns out to be 120km drive from here lol). World Vision had booke dus into somwhere called 'Hotel Karena' - so on disembarking our bus, we picked on of the pushy taxidrivers and headed there. our mouths dropped to roll up at a GORGEOUS hotel with perfedctly trimmed gardens, ornate white-painted apartments, a bigscreen tv in the foyer, and a man who carried our bags! wow. we felt very very VERY travel scruffy and out of place, and also wonder4ed how we could afford this place. luckily or unluckily as it were, there were complications (it turned out the government had claimed the use hotel for the weekend, or something) and we were relocated to a nice, but more modest 'Hotel Shinyanga.' our room has running water, electrcity, beds, and a small tv!!!! we are thrilled!
We are also just down the road from the world vision office, so we popped in and met our contact, and are all ready for tommrrws visit - exciting!
so thus completes this epic 'tween country overland african excursion. day after tomorrow we have to travel some more though.

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