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Published: October 20th 2008
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After a few hours by the pool yesterday afternoon my room mate turned up. It turned out she had already done 3 Oasis trips so I got to ask loads of questions and had a fairly good idea what to expect for this morning.
At 7:00am this morning we were all up and meeting out tour leader, driver and the other passengers. We soon found out that we would be joining an already established truck that had been on the road for 3 weeks with 11 passengers. They had been traveling around Uganda and Rwanda seeing the gorillas. There were 12 of us joining them, taking us up to 23, and a full truck. Everyone seems really nice. There is a 40/60 male/female split. A few couples, and a few people traveling with friends but plenty of people traveling alone like me. Most of us are also mid-late twenties and early thirties. All seem to be having some sort of 'escaping from it all' moment and I am already booked up to give lots of careers advice. Ha ha!
We set off from Nairobi at about 10:30am for a long drive to Arusha in North Tanzania. After 2 hours
all the new passengers got quite excited as we saw out first bits of wildlife just wondering around at the side of the roads. Lots of Zebra, hundreds of Thomson Gazelles (apparently you get sick of seeing these) and an Ostrich. There were also lots of herds of cattle everywhere who must belong to someone- who knows who? The Kenyan countryside was a lot greener than I expected and the landscape altered between being very flat and very hilly. I spent most of the journey just relaxing, getting used to truck life and watching the world go by. The truck has no glass windows but instead has tarps which can be rolled right up so you get a great view. We made a few toilet stops in the bush which was an experience in itself! After 41/2 hours driving we finally made it to the border. Completing our entry forms we were then told to go over the border to pay for our visa. It was taking forever so a few of us went across the border without the truck, handed over our passports and money for the visa and the immigration official promptly refused to give us back our
passports. Each person who came through received the same response with the man saying he needed to speak with the tour leader first. Then the tour leader and the driver handed over theirs with the same result. An hour and a half of waiting and they finally decided to hand them back to us, visas in place. No one had any idea why we had to wait so long. We think they just enjoyed pissing us off!
After another hour in the truck I went up to the beach. This is the part of the truck, right at the front, which is open topped and can fit about 4/5 people up there. It's great as you can sit in the sun and see the road out ahead of you, rather than looking out of the side all the time. It was great sitting up there while the truck went about 70mph over awful roads, people waving and shouting 'Jambo' to you as you went by. It was like being on a roller coaster. While I was up there I got to see my first African sunset. Which was also the first sunset seen by all the others as so
far on the trip they had never been in a a position at that time of the day to see it.
When we reached Arusha the streets became much busier and the scenery changed from people herding cattle to people hanging out in roadside pubs and cafes. At one point a wedding party went by. A few cars had the classic wedding ribbons on them but we didn't get a look at the bride. This was closely followed by an open topped truck with 8 bridesmaids standing up in the back dressed in full length powder blue bridesmaid dresses, waving, singing and dancing and generally going mad. Finally the wedding fleet ended with another open backed truck with a 5 piece brass band standing in the back, dressed in powder blue suits, in full swing. Funniest sight I have seen so far!!
We have now arrived at Snake Park. Our campground whilst in Arusha and where the truck will be based for the next 4 nights. As the name suggests, they do actually have a snake park here but I don't think I'll visit. Snakes give me the creeps. A previous tour leader had recently helped to set
up a local school in the area and all the Snake Park bar proceeds go to the school. Our first night of the trip, and all needing to get to know each other a little better we decided much drinking needed to be done .... after all ... it is for charity.
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Chris E
non-member comment
PARP!!!!!!!!!!
Please tell me you got a glorious shot of the brass band?