Now that we are safely in the sun at our resort in Zanzibar (complete with tropical drink in hand), I can write about Arusha. I will preface this by saying that I have spent a decent amount of time in dozens of third world cities. While some of the large, overcrowded ones are low on my list for return visits, you would have to pay me to go back to Arusha.
We paid for three nights in lodges for the safari, but given all of the screw-ups made by our guide, he finally claimed he ran out of money and dropped us off two nights ago at a hotel in Arusha. In addition to being frustrated with having to pay for this night, we also quickly realized that we were in the middle of the worst area of town--as in, "the State Department has warnings issued about staying away from this area of the city." To make matters worse, the hot water wasn't working and I had really been looking forward to a shower. We considered changing hotels, but it was already growing dark, and even the boys were scared walking more than 20 meters from our hotel. I honestly had never felt more uncomfortable in any area of any city in which I've been.
My stomach got the better of me, though, and we decided to set out for dinner. Needless to say, we took a cab to a restaurant that our guide book recommended, even though the restaurant was only four blocks away. It turned out to be a good decision to take the cab since the restaurant had since shut down and we ended up eating at the hotel... Jared actually didn't even venture out again until we went to the airport.
We agreed that we needed to leave ASAP, so Sam and I set an early alarm to go to the Precision Air office as soon as it opened, with the hope of changing to an earlier flight to Zanzibar. Following our then-current streak of bad luck, everything was booked, and we were stuck with our 3:30 flight.
The city was only slightly less sketchy in daylight, but at least we felt less likely to be jumped while we were walking around; we managed to kill a couple of hours while I dragged Sam into every store that could possibly sell books, since I had finished the five or so that I brought along. (The quest for one book in particular actually started back in Sapa, but by this point, I was willing to take just about anything.) Sam claims that now I am probably the most qualified person in the world to write about locating book shops in Tanzania. Unfortunately, even after finding two stores that sold English novels, it took us only 15 minutes or so to read the back of EVERY book they had, and the best I could come up with was $15 for a John Grisham book (it was seriously that or random romance novels). Zanzibar hasn't been much better for books, so my tactic for the next week--until I meet up with the Stanford kids and can hopefully borrow-- is going to be to check out what other tourists are reading and beg for their books once they're done with them.
We felt like we had been in the dilapidated city fending off over-eager locals for hours, but by this point, it wasn't even 10:00. We decided we were probably safer sitting next to the dirt runway at the "airport" (read: little shack with no roof, lights, computers, etc.), so we said goodbye to Arusha, hopefully for good, and are now enjoying ourselves at the beach. More on that later.
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