So sadly my trip is coming to an end but definitely with a splash. I think I last left off on a bus to Kondoa, which any one who has been to a place with shitty roads and shitty buses they won?t have any trouble imagining what happened. The road to Kondoa was dirt of course and had lovely divits dug into it by the continual traffic of cars along it. On top of this the bus company decided to make a little extra money and sell the seats twice sometimes even three times. Therefor the bus was packed with people standing like sardines in the walk way. Fortunately we were there relatively early so we got a seat, not our originally assigned seat of course. Sometimes I feel bad about this because we most likely got the seats because we are wazungus but what can you do I definitely wouldn?t have wanted to stand. We finally arrived after 6 hours of being bumped up and down giving our internall organs, a gentle squeezing which we paid fpr late.
Kondoa is a lovely little town, again seeming a bit like a ghost town. As it is very dry and dusty with few people about except in the main market area. We stayed in a rather nice hotel, once again with squatting toilets which helped our squashed internal organs greatly. Poor matt was constipated for close to five days and thought he would die. Fortunately with a little ingenuity he finally built a toilet out of a bucket, so he could sit and fully relax. But not after having a hell of a night.
Now this lovely night actually happened after two days. The day after we arrived we planned to go to Kolo by bus. But when we bought our tickets they said 6:30am boarding. But when we should up in the morning the bus had already gone (it actually boarded at 5:30am). So we ended up having to pay to take a cab which in comparison to Canada was not that exensive but for here it was. When we finally found kolo. It was a very pleasant town up in the hills and was the most pleasant cool nice, like the early morning when your camping in the summer in the mountains. We sat in a cute little kitchen house and we had chai and chapattis while we waited for the guide to come.
The walk to the rock paintings was very pleasant and definitely not as gruelin as the hike to the waterfalls. The rock paintings were very neat. There are three main sites up some large hills in a perfect place to live, with a large over hang above to protect you from the elements and a perfect view of the valley and animals below. There are two sets of paintings, one which they estimate to be about 5000 yrs old and another about 800. We made it back to town in time for the bus and got to add a third bumpy ride to our list of bus rides. And of course this topped the cake and lead to a night of horrific pain and vomiting for matt.
We stayed in Kondoa another day as matt was unable to travel and on the following day we went to arusha, making it to the bus at the proper time and adding a nother bumpy bus ride to the list. In arusha we met Joseph who had gone to Mwanza with Robert. Arusha was a strange sort of a city. Seeming very much like a western city with wide streets and many wazungus. This of course meant that we got haggled a lot to buy things which of course were far to expensive. But it is a nice to town all the same with cool weather and a much more peaceful feel compared to dar. We went and saw the natural history museum and got to see a court case for the Rwanda genocide tribunal.
We returned to Dar the next day as we had little time and joseph had to catch a plane to return home. So now it is just me and matt and I have just left him in the hands of the residence of mbande and gone to Mtwara with abdalah. But that story aill have to wait.
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