November 6 and 7th, 2018
Harrowing Travel.
Time to leave France and begin our trip to Africa to visit two children on that continent.
I have never been to Africa and I was both curious and a bit apprehensive about going there. I have been to developing countries before and have been to places where I was a minority, plus I have two children living there without incident, so there was no objective reason for my concerns. I know it is utterly romantic, but, hearkening back to my high school readings, I feel a bit like Marlow in Heart of Darkness (a Joseph Conrad novel) preparing to go into a mysterious (at least to me) and uncharted space.
So much for feelings. We had to get up early, 6:00 am, to be driven, by our son-in-law to the Amboise train station to catch an early train to get us to the Paris airport early enough for an international flight. We arrived at the station in plenty of time, but noticed as we entered the station a lot of people milling around. The electronic train information board showed a lot of delayed trains. It was hard to get information, but we finally were told that there was something wrong with the infrastructure at the station and trains were not stopping there. Needing to get to the airport, we tried to rent a car. There were almost a dozen rental car companies at the station, but until we got to the last one, none had cars available. An expensive one way rental, but we had to get there, so we took off on to the very expensive French tollways. Then we had to fill up the tank with expensive French gasoline. It took a lot of work by the son-in-law to get a refund from the railway.
We arrived at the airport later than the train would have gotten us there, but still with plenty of time. I subsequently learned that I had received a speeding ticket during that drive. I did not think I was speeding and many cars passed me along the way. It seems as if I always get a speeding ticket every time I drive in France.
We are flying on Egypt Air to Tanzania via Cairo. The reviews of the airline were OK and so I picked that airline rather than selecting what I thought might be more reputable airlines, Turkish or Qatar, because they had more circuitous routes, via Istanbul or Doha, that took longer.
The flight to Cairo was uneventful, food and in-flight service was fine, and we arrived on schedule. The interior of the Cairo airport was pretty good, better than LaGuardia, but not as nice as Doha, and large. I misread the time of our connecting flight and while we were looking for an airport lounge to decamp into, we discovered that we better get to our gate for the flight to Dar es Salaam. I was also confused about our arrival time in Dar given the time zone change and the change in the departure time.
It was strange being on a flight where most of the passengers did not look like me, dress like me or speak like me, but again the flight and service were uneventful. We arrived in Dar about 4:00 am local time. I think we have been up and traveling for about 24 hours. We passed through Immigration fairly easily after paying $100 in dollars for our visa, but I then was faced with the fact that my luggage had not arrived. It was a laborious process filling out the claim forms in longhand with a person who was not an employee of Egypt Air.
After the lengthy process we met Frank, the driver who our daughter had arranged to pick us up and deliver us to our daughter's apartment. Fare was $25 in dollars. As we drove from the airport into Dar in the early morning sunlight we saw Dar begin to wake up. Many pedestrians, even more people cramming the buses on their way to their daily activities. The city has an impressive skyline and a beckoning harbor. Lots of trash and not too much greenery. Even at that early hour the traffic was beginning to build and as we made our way through the downtown area to go to our daughter's neighborhood in northern Dar, the incoming traffic, particularly approaching the Selander Bridge was approaching a standstill. After the bridge we drove along the bay for a brief time and took in a glimpse of nice beaches.
Our daughter lives in a luxurious, (not by NYC standards) high rise, gated, apartment complex. She is there through a friendship with a European diplomat. With a balcony, pool and expansive views of the bay it was not something that she could have afforded by herself on her NGO salary. I had not seen our daughter for 15 months since she had left for Africa so we had a joyous greeting. She went off to work and we had some breakfast, unpacked (no need for me to do that) and then took a nap in a room that had been temporarily vacated by a diplomat who was on extended travel.
Our daughter picked us up at the apartment in mid afternoon. She made some calls about the luggage and learned that the luggage had not been located, but that Egypt Air flew into Dar only twice a week so even as they located my luggage, the earliest it would arrive would be on Sunday. We walked over to the site of her Swahili language teacher. With her working at a local organization and the language lessons she has become pretty fluent in Swahili. We took a one hour lesson and picked up some basic phrases. I left with a cheat sheet. Next we went to a street vendor our daughter knew so I could get some clothes. After much bargaining and searching through piles of clothes I left with two European club soccer jerseys, orange track pants, a bathing suit and a pair of shorts, all used, for $15 (our daughter would not let me bargain hard) and all seemingly from western countries. (I recall that when we were in Haiti I saw the same phenomena, lots of athletic branded western clothing, even some with championships that were not attained.) We then walked over to a harbor front restaurant at the Best Western Hotel where we drank "sundowners", a common activity among the affluent.
Beautiful sunset over the bay.
We took a "taxi", a three wheeled "brajyi" out of there. We finished the evening with dinner at a local restaurant, Jackies. There was a power failure so we ate outside from a limited menu, but the meal, conversation and local beer were all good.
Harrowing Travel.
Time to leave France and begin our trip to Africa to visit two children on that continent.
I have never been to Africa and I was both curious and a bit apprehensive about going there. I have been to developing countries before and have been to places where I was a minority, plus I have two children living there without incident, so there was no objective reason for my concerns. I know it is utterly romantic, but, hearkening back to my high school readings, I feel a bit like Marlow in Heart of Darkness (a Joseph Conrad novel) preparing to go into a mysterious (at least to me) and uncharted space.
So much for feelings. We had to get up early, 6:00 am, to be driven, by our son-in-law to the Amboise train station to catch an early train to get us to the Paris airport early enough for an international flight. We arrived at the station in plenty of time, but noticed as we entered the station a lot of people milling around. The electronic train information board showed a lot of delayed trains. It was hard to get information, but we finally were told that there was something wrong with the infrastructure at the station and trains were not stopping there. Needing to get to the airport, we tried to rent a car. There were almost a dozen rental car companies at the station, but until we got to the last one, none had cars available. An expensive one way rental, but we had to get there, so we took off on to the very expensive French tollways. Then we had to fill up the tank with expensive French gasoline. It took a lot of work by the son-in-law to get a refund from the railway.
We arrived at the airport later than the train would have gotten us there, but still with plenty of time. I subsequently learned that I had received a speeding ticket during that drive. I did not think I was speeding and many cars passed me along the way. It seems as if I always get a speeding ticket every time I drive in France.
We are flying on Egypt Air to Tanzania via Cairo. The reviews of the airline were OK and so I picked that airline rather than selecting what I thought might be more reputable airlines, Turkish or Qatar, because they had more circuitous routes, via Istanbul or Doha, that took longer.
The flight to Cairo was uneventful, food and in-flight service was fine, and we arrived on schedule. The interior of the Cairo airport was pretty good, better than LaGuardia, but not as nice as Doha, and large. I misread the time of our connecting flight and while we were looking for an airport lounge to decamp into, we discovered that we better get to our gate for the flight to Dar es Salaam. I was also confused about our arrival time in Dar given the time zone change and the change in the departure time.
It was strange being on a flight where most of the passengers did not look like me, dress like me or speak like me, but again the flight and service were uneventful. We arrived in Dar about 4:00 am local time. I think we have been up and traveling for about 24 hours. We passed through Immigration fairly easily after paying $100 in dollars for our visa, but I then was faced with the fact that my luggage had not arrived. It was a laborious process filling out the claim forms in longhand with a person who was not an employee of Egypt Air.
After the lengthy process we met Frank, the driver who our daughter had arranged to pick us up and deliver us to our daughter's apartment. Fare was $25 in dollars. As we drove from the airport into Dar in the early morning sunlight we saw Dar begin to wake up. Many pedestrians, even more people cramming the buses on their way to their daily activities. The city has an impressive skyline and a beckoning harbor. Lots of trash and not too much greenery. Even at that early hour the traffic was beginning to build and as we made our way through the downtown area to go to our daughter's neighborhood in northern Dar, the incoming traffic, particularly approaching the Selander Bridge was approaching a standstill. After the bridge we drove along the bay for a brief time and took in a glimpse of nice beaches.
Our daughter lives in a luxurious, (not by NYC standards) high rise, gated, apartment complex. She is there through a friendship with a European diplomat. With a balcony, pool and expansive views of the bay it was not something that she could have afforded by herself on her NGO salary. I had not seen our daughter for 15 months since she had left for Africa so we had a joyous greeting. She went off to work and we had some breakfast, unpacked (no need for me to do that) and then took a nap in a room that had been temporarily vacated by a diplomat who was on extended travel.
Our daughter picked us up at the apartment in mid afternoon. She made some calls about the luggage and learned that the luggage had not been located, but that Egypt Air flew into Dar only twice a week so even as they located my luggage, the earliest it would arrive would be on Sunday. We walked over to the site of her Swahili language teacher. With her working at a local organization and the language lessons she has become pretty fluent in Swahili. We took a one hour lesson and picked up some basic phrases. I left with a cheat sheet. Next we went to a street vendor our daughter knew so I could get some clothes. After much bargaining and searching through piles of clothes I left with two European club soccer jerseys, orange track pants, a bathing suit and a pair of shorts, all used, for $15 (our daughter would not let me bargain hard) and all seemingly from western countries. (I recall that when we were in Haiti I saw the same phenomena, lots of athletic branded western clothing, even some with championships that were not attained.) We then walked over to a harbor front restaurant at the Best Western Hotel where we drank "sundowners", a common activity among the affluent.
We took a "taxi", a three wheeled "brajyi" out of there. We finished the evening with dinner at a local restaurant, Jackies. There was a power failure so we ate outside from a limited menu, but the meal, conversation and local beer were all good.
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