Adventures with Jeff, Part 2

Dar es Salaam was pretty much the same as always – hot, chock full of people & cars, noisy, lively, and (in its own way) lovely. Dar never gets old for me – as hectic as it is, I still think it’s a great city ... and it was especially fun to get a chance to show Jeff around. Granted, when I say “show Jeff around,” I really mean “drag Jeff around on all the errands I had to run.” Apart from the errands, we did manage to have some fun though – we caught the tail end of the July 4^th fireworks show at the embassy (where I was reminded once again of how small the world is ... not only did we meet up (as planned) with the Princeton in Dar crew, but we also met from students from Carnegie Mellon University AND ran into my good friend from the first Princeton in Dar session back in 2007!)

After several days of running errands, meeting up with friends, tying up loose ends at the office, and sitting in some truly horrendous traffic, we were off! Or at least, we thought we were off (notice a pattern???) ... TAZARA had other plans for us – plans we didn’t discover until we arrived at the train station Tuesday afternoon. A 24 hour delay was (as they say in TZ) a bit of a spanner in the works, but after a year of traveling around East Africa, they would have had to throw the entire toolbox into the works before I ran out of backup plans :-) In this case, our luck held and the train actually did leave the next day (and more or less on time, too!) So Wednesday afternoon found us rather comfortably settled into our own little compartment, armed with a small traveler’s arsenal of books, toilet paper, and canned vegetable curry. The 24 hour delay notwithstanding, the TAZARA train turned out to be a pretty neat way to travel. The train itself was a little worse for the wear (the days when its faucets actually dispensed water were certainly loooooong gone), but it was pretty comfortable, the scenery was beautiful, and we had lots of fun getting to know some of our fellow passengers.

A quick two days later, we disembarked at Kapiri Mposhi, Zambia and were pleasantly surprised to discover that the train to Livingstone was due to leave in just a few hours. In other words, the delayed departure had actually worked in our favor – we left Dar 24 hours late but still ended up getting to Livingstone on schedule (or we would have made it on time if the train hadn’t broken down for several hours in Choma ... close enough to being on schedule per African time, though!) This second train wasn’t nearly as nice as the first – no compartments, no bunks, no blankets, and not nearly as much speed. In fact, we found out later that we’d opted for a 30+ hour train ride over a 9 hour bus ride! Still, the scenery was great, and we were in good company (two guys we’d met on the TAZARA train ended up joining us, so we had quite the little traveling gang).

Next up, Victoria Falls!

Pictures (from top): the TAZARA train making its way through a mountain range in Southeastern Tanzania; goofing around with Nuru & Emmi (2 little girls from the neighboring compartment); the view from the TAZARA train; sunset from the Zambian Railways train