| | |  Travel & Outdoors 
Peter Engel's World Cup Travelog Part 1
 Peter Engel - PVNN
October 21, 2010
| | Leaving Puerto Vallarta, Arriving in Switzerland and Entry into Africa | |
After months of planning and preparation the day of departure had come. Already for the third time in this century I went with my Swiss friend Markus to a major soccer event. Once again we wanted to make it an unforgettable trip, like the World Cup 2002 in Japan when we traveled from Zurich, Switzerland to Shanghai, China by train and later on flew to Tokyo, Japan.
We first wanted to catch a freight ship in Italy and travel through the Suez Canal in Egypt and from there to Dar-Es-Salaam in Tanzania. However, as there had been a lot of piracy in the north eastern part of Africa we did not want to take too many chances and decided to fly to Dar-Es-Salaam from Zurich.
My trip began on April 20th when I flew from Puerto Vallarta to Switzerland where I still had to organize a couple of things and also get our visas to enter Tanzania and Zambia. We also needed some vaccinations, and all of these things take time.
However, on May 10th we boarded a plane in Zurich and landed the same evening, after a brief stopover in Nairobi, Kenya, at our starting destination Dar-Es-Salaam in Tanzania. It was planned to travel across Tanzania, Zambia, Botswana and Namibia by public transportation before reaching Cape Town in South Africa, our starting point for the Soccer World Cup 2010.
Little did we know about most of those countries even we read several travel books. We started this trip with mixed feelings because we had only been in South Africa before. But this Republic is much more developed than Tanzania or Zambia and therefore we had no idea what to expect in regard of security, food, illnesses or friendliness.
The 5 countries we traveled through are very different from each other but have one thing in common. At a certain time in the past they were all occupied by the English Kingdom and therefore the official language is English. Also, they all drive on the left hand side, something which is unknown on the American Continent except for some small islands in the Caribbean.
For those who have never been driving on the left hand side I can guarantee you one thing. When you rent a car you are going to miss the steering wheel because you automatically sit in the passenger seat, which of course in our world would be the driver seat. When driving yourself you will wash the windshield every time you make a turn because the windshield wiper and the turning signal are on the opposite side of the steering wheel.
When you call a taxi, the cab driver will ask you whether you want to drive yourself, because you want to enter on the wrong side. Perhaps you are smarter than me, but all this happened to me for several days before I got used to it.
Tanzania, with 945,000 km2, is a large country by European standards, and with 40 million inhabitants one of the most populated ones in Africa. Even the official Capital is a small city called Dodoma, all the Ministries, Embassies etc. are located in Dar-Es-Salaam. It was hot and sticky upon arrival, no wonder because this city is located directly at the Indian Ocean at sea level.
It did not take long to realize that we were on a different continent. Passing the point of immigration we were inspected by local businessman who wanted to sell us just about everything. After some discussions to change money, their local currency is the Tanzanian Shilling and is 1300: 1 against the US dollar; we had to negotiate our taxi fare to the hotel.
The taxi was not only old and in bad shape, it also had one particularity. The starter was broken and it needed our help to push the vehicle in order to start it! But we arrived safely at our hotel and enjoyed a couple of beers on the warm terrace of the hotel bar before going to bed. By the way, the beer was cold and good and they are rather innovative with the name of their brands. Safari, Serengeti and Kilimanjaro were the first ones we tried that night.
The next morning we realized that we were about 10 km outside the city center, but right on a sandy beach. We caught a taxi to the center and could not believe the dense traffic. When we arrived the night before it was late and there was no traffic jam. However, this morning we would have done better walking, but of course we did not know which way.
Dar-Es-Salaam must be one of the worst cities in the world to get around. The city has grown to a population of around 2.5 million, but nobody ever thought of building adequate highways. As a result it is a huge chaos on very bad roads with extremely high air pollution.
On the other hand, we were surprised to see how friendly people were towards tourists. Like in most of the third world countries many people are selling their goods in the streets. But I was amazed to see how organized these street markets were. Muslims with long dresses and beards were next to Christians and Indians. Dar-Es-Salaam is a multi-national and cultural city but people live peacefully together and talk to each other.
I think that we Europeans could learn from them in this respect. Muslim women are dressed colorful and one rarely sees somebody with a "burka." They say that 45% Christians and 35% Muslims are living in Dar-Es-Salaam, most of the remaining 20% are Indians. They settled in Tanzania mainly because of the island of "Zanzibar" which was one very important trading port some centuries back. About 99% of Tanzanians are native Africans which come from over 130 tribes.
The most spoken language is Kiswahili but because there are so many different languages they mostly communicate in English. Even it is the official language many people only know basics and it is common that they misunderstand you, whether intentionally or not I could never figure out. But whenever we asked a question we often got strange answers which made us think about their language skills.
Generally speaking we were surprised about Tanzania, but there is a drastic difference between city and country people.
People in rural areas are shy, very poor, hard workers but seem to be happy with their lives, whereas the ones in the cities try to make a living with all sorts of small businesses but struggle much more to provide food for their numerous family members.
Dar-Es-Salaam is a lively city with little crime, but you always have to look out for pickpockets. Hotels and food in decent restaurants are far too expensive for the standard and quality offered, but I would imagine this applies for many other third world countries as well and tourists are a prime target to make money from.
We did also make some excursions, but mainly by taxi because there are hardly any organized tours available. It is best to find a taxi driver that speaks good English and negotiate a daily fare. We did so to visit the city of Bagamoyo some 100 km north of Dar-Es-Salaam. Bagamoyo was the landing site of Dr. David Livingstone, the first white man to discover this area as well as the famous "Victoria Falls," which he named after the English Queen at that time.
When we returned from Bagamoyo to Dar-Es-Salaam, being blocked for hours in the traffic jam again, there was one policeman at every intersection. The whole traffic was stopped and 25-30 limousines and patrol cars, accompanied by many police motorcycles were passing at 100 km per hour through the traffic. As we later found out the President of Tanzania was in one of the vehicles and my friend's comment was: "I believe you have to be the President if you don't want to get stuck in a traffic jam in this country!"
One of our negative visits in Dar-Es-Salaam was a local market with its own chicken slaughter house. I believe it took several weeks before we ordered chicken again! But wherever we went people were helpful and friendly and Tanzania as a country or Dar-Es-Salaam as their major point of attraction was much cleaner, safer and more developed than what we had expected before leaving for this trip.
Tanzania is among the poorer countries in the world, but tourism has jumped considerably in the past years. In the north and east of the country are many National Parks with a tremendous variety of wild life. Who has not heard about the Serengeti, the Victoria Lake or the Kilimanjaro? This mountain was formed by three volcanoes, forms the border between Kenya and Tanzania and with 5,895 meters the highest peak on the African Continent.
Tanzania's main export goods are coffee, cotton and several minerals. Unfortunately, and like many other African Countries, they have a very high percentage of HIV infected people.
After just 5 days in and around Dar-Es-Salaam we had to move on because our deadline was June 8th in Cape Town, South Africa and this city was more than 4,500 km away from our actual location.
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