We’ve spent five weeks in Tanzania. Here’s my impressions:
The Good:
- The safari national parks are completely clean, well organized and have good infrastructure.
- The people (in businesses that you are working with) are incredibly friendly and helpful.
- There are clean beaches and good roads in Zanzibar.
- Hotels like Ramada and Holiday Inn are several levels above their US counterparts.
- Everything is inexpensive (try paying 80 cents for a coke at a restaurant in the US or $2 for a taxi ride).
- Swahili is easy to learn.
- In a lot of places the food options aren’t that great so you’ll lose one pound a week.
- I marveled at how hotels could build beautiful overwater bungalows in Zanzibar – something that would be completely impossible in the US.
The Bad:
- There are seemingly no safety standards on anything. I’ve seen more bare electrical wires in one week than I’ve seen in my entire life.
- Stair heights aren’t uniform, no handrails, no GFCIs, no adherence to traffic rules. Sidewalks, if there are any, are completely uneven and could suddenly have a one to three foot hole in them.
- The roads are terrible and many roads have a speedbump every 50 meters. The traffic in big cities (Arusha and Dar Es Salaam) is a nightmare. They make traffic jams in the US look like they’re uncrowded by comparison.
- Power and internet outages are frequent.
- None of the water is potable so you are always using bottled water.
- Hot water might take 5 minutes (or might be nonexistant in the morning if they are using solar heating).
- The cheese sucks. So omelets, pizza and anything with cheese in it doesn’t taste near as good as you’re used to.
- You have to pay $44/person just to get into Zanzibar “for insurance” even if you already have insurance.
- You have to pay $100/person just to get into Tanzania.
- Try waking up at 7 AM expecting an 11:30 AM flight only to find an email that your flight departure time has been changed to 9:30 AM.
The Ugly:
- Smog like I haven’t seen in the US in fifty years.
- Other than the safari national parks, there is trash everywhere. More than in Texas. More even than in Hawaii!
- The small towns and trains where public toilets are a small room with a hole in the floor.
- If you walk anywhere unaccompanied by a local person you are constantly accosted by locals trying to sell you something, get you to come to their shop or just guide you to whatever you are looking for to get a kickback from the owner. They start with “Hello, Welcome, How are you?” I don’t remember a lot of my Russian, but I remember enough that after a while I just started speaking Russian to anyone walking up to me. They think I can’t understand them and then they leave me alone.
- Well… there was the train that didn’t show up and was delayed by one day, the train that crashed in front of our train; the car that almost caught on fire; the hotel that did catch on fire; the Land Cruiser that had its alternator fail; the car that had a flat tire and the taxi whose engine died.
NEXT UP: KENYA