Bus trips to Dar es Salaam and Nairobi

I recently had to renew my passport and renew my visa (long story). My passport is not only full, but also expiring early next year. Many countries require at least six months of validity on your passport and I had delayed getting a new passport for too long considering it would take two trips to Dar es Salaam; one to apply and one to pick up. I finally had to bite the bullet and took two quick trips to Dar es Salaam.

Nice sized Dar Express bus. 

The bus trips to Dar es Salaam were painfully long at 10 hours one way. On consecutive weeks, I got on a bus Sunday, rode all day, went to the embassy in the morning, got on a bus and rode ten hours back. That's twenty hours of bus riding in just over in 48 hours if you're counting.  It's only 560 km (350 miles) and exactly one hour by flight, but I had to opt for the cheaper option as the flight times did not line up with my schedule and are obviously a bit more expensive than the bus. The bus is about $30 and flights average $150 round trip though the taxi costs to the airport put flights at around $200.

My bus trips to Dar es Salaam were somewhat uneventful though there was some excitement on my first return trip to Moshi. There's a variety of different buses you can take to Dar es Salaam, all varying by size, comfort, speed, reliability, and pretty much every bus/travel related factor you can think of. The most reputable company is called "Dar Express" and they have decent sized buses that have one TV in the front that play plays movies and they even give you a soda and biscuit. The bus stops one time about four hours in for a small pit stop where you can buy food and go to the bathroom. It's known to be both comfortable and reliable.

Baby on board! There are not many safety regulations other than the fact that people standing in the aisles is frowned upon, though traffic officers can look past this for a small fee. 

I had never been to Dar es Salaam before but I had heard the hype to take Dar Express. I took them on the way down but on my return trip they didn't have any buses running. I had to take a different bus company with a similar bus. I figured it wasn't so bad, in fact, they seemed to have the exact same movie selection as the first bus. From what I could gather the driver has a USB drive that he sticks into the stereo and it plays a mix of music videos, action movies, and local east African movies. I deduced the first bus had it on shuffle since we watched a four part Tanzanian movie out of order and I only realized this was not an artistic effect about midway through. I also had viewings of the action classics Rambo and Commando, as well as multiple "Fast and Furious" installments, which are great movies to watch when you can't exactly understand the dialog over the creaking of the bus.

Stopping for a fruit plate. Mixed of watermelon, papaya, apple and orange was about a dollar. 

All seemed to be going well on my return journey until about eight hours in, two hours from home, the bus broke down. It was dark and I was tired. The bus driver gave me very few details on the bus saying only that it was broken and they were going to try to fix it. I asked some other passengers and they seemed to think the bus was broken and not going to be fixed so we would have to wait for another bus. Great, just what I wanted, jockying with 50 other people for standing room spots on an already crowded bus. Luckily I've had a lot of experience and after about a half hour a bus came. I elbowed and pushed my way to the front and got a standing room only spot, leaving some disappointed and dejected passengers to wait for the next bus.

When I took my second trip to Dar I thought I was back in the comfort and reliability by taking the Dar Express. Turns out this bus didn't have any windshield wipers and the windows were leaky. I wouldn't have noticed this had it not been a torrential downpour for nearly the entire bus ride. In lieu of the windshield wipers, the drivers assistant crumpled up some newspaper and wiped of the fog from the interior of the window and frequently discussed (hopefully encouraged?) with the driver about how poor the conditions were. The driver must have had a sixth sense for "vision in the rain" because I was in the seat directly behind him and at points I couldn't see more than 5m in front of us. In addition to this, the windows were leaking in a way I thought defied physics by somehow accumulating water in the base and projecting it upward and into my face. I eventually stuffed it with some of the newspaper I borrowed from the driver's assistant and it did the trick.

Aside from those two tidbits, the trip was relatively painless and straightforward. I found there is typically less "excitement" on well-traveled routes and one can only hope for entertaining movies, an old school traveling salesmen giving speeches to the passengers, or just plain old fashioned taking in the landscape!

Nice mountains. 

More iconic landscape.