animals and beach and village

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went to bagamoyo again this past thursday for another art festival. saw some energy dancing and a man playing one of those pipes that put snakes into trances. asked all around town for ways to get to the mysterious saadani park that seems impossible to get to unless you are rich enough to hire the private car from bagamoyo which is more than 200 dollars us. and its the semi-rainy season now so the road that goes straight north from bagamoyo to saadani park (famous for being the only coastal national park, so animals are often sighted on the beach and bathing in the ocean, etc) is impassible. thought through all our options and finally just thought, we need to get closer. bagamoyo is only 60 kilometers away from the saadani village next to the park, but we took public transport inland a while to get on the main road that runs all the way up to moshi and arusha, one of the only good roads in tanzania. got off at a village someone told us to get off at, waited for another car, and packed ourselves into a pickup--actually one of those small pickups--but we fit 35 people in it, crammed on top of each other. i had a masai's leg over mine (and they dont wear any underwear) and my head was smooshed against someone's butt who was standing, and my butt was hanging off the back of the pickup. i was holding onto a bar and was like this on a very bumpy road for two hours....cant tell you now if it was funny or not. took a few more daladalas and to make it short, after embarassing ourselves playing pool with a local kid in one of the villages we stopped in and having a crazy old man spitting in my face as he rambled on in a language all his own, we eventually made it to saadani. the people there are amazingly friendly and get hardly any visitors. the children didnt even say "give me money" they just stared until i could make them smile.

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Photos

no picture can do justice to this car
we coasted on the hills the whole way in this piece of junk. but there was good loud reggea the whole time and we werent in a hurry. had to push the car, and when it stopped we had to put rocks behind the wheels because there were no brakes.