We’re finally in Dar es Salaam and, despite the heat, we’re leaving no street unexplored! The road from Mbeya to Dar is long, and we apparently picked the wrong bus, because it took over fourteen hours to get here (damn, do we really need petrol again, for the third time?). It was kinda unnerving to arrive here late at night, especially since the out-of-town buses stop waaaay outside of the city limits (Ubungo bus terminal). Luckily Dar never sleeps (and I’ve been here a few times before), so we yelled, “Hapana!” (no) to all the taxi drivers, hopped on a dalla dalla (public transport minibus, like Kenya’s matatu), and found our way to a nice mid-range hotel with air conditioning pretty quickly.

We didn’t necessarily have to pass through Dar to get back to Nairobi, but it’s a beautiful coastal city with lots of culture. And mangoes. Like Kenya—and Mombasa in particular—Dar es Salaam has delicious apple–mango hybrid that is orange and red in color and has none of the fibers that make eating the small, green ones a chore. They’re cheap, plentiful, and allll meat! Other than mangoes we’ve been eating a lot of chipsi mayai (potatoes pan-fried together with eggs, a very Tanzanian dish), and drinking a lot of water (it’s hot and humid!).

Like Nairobi, Dar is a fairly modern city. To me it seems like Nairobi is much more of a “city” city, where Dar is more of a sprawling city (if that makes any sense!). Lots of winding side streets with small businesses, bike taxis, mini roundabouts, people selling fruit, etc. It’s a lot more fun exploring Dar than Nairobi! We were doing the math today, and I think we’ve walked twelve kilometers since breakfast (and it’s only just after noon!). I recorded one of our routes using my phone this morning as we explored the waterfront area of Dar:

We head back to Moshi tomorrow, then Nairobi the day after that. If everything goes according to plan we’ll be back in Nairobi by January 6th.

In the mean time, here are some photos we’ve taken in Dar es Salaam (and some others from elsewhere in Tanzania): https://photos.google.com/album/AF1QipMFcT3DENyZATsszAO2KN4aUBygqO6W1-Ga5tZG