Rusumo falls,
Tanzania
Sunday, November 25, 2007
The next norning we headed towards Tanzania, and we planned to get over the boarder and than some. But the good thing about backpacking is that plans change every second, and all of a sudden you are heading somewhere else. After sleeping a bit late we walked to the taxi park and soon found suitable transport, a minibus on the boarder town of Rusomo, and from there we planned to see what was available. Having big backpacks we had to sit really tight and we suffered for two hours, before we had to change bus again. Everytime we take some kind of transport the price skyrocket and everytime we have to change we have to pay a new fee. Luckily it is not too expensive and we can deal with it, but it is very irritating. After the third bus we came to the boarder town of Rusumo, a small shitty town. We got our stamps on the Ugandan side and walked up the hill to the Tanzanian side, were some very helpful gentlemen came to our rescue. We got our visas (20 $ of as we got a transit visa) and started to ask around for how to get further, and they just laughed. We were stuck in the smallest shadiest place I have ever been. It was a community of about 100-150 people based on the boarder post. They have some rooms which they call hotels and they rent them out for a cheap amount of money. The good thing was that the bus which leaves twice a week left the next morning, and we only had to wait 12 hour in this crappy place. After checking in we headed to the 'pub' which was a plastic table and 5 chairs. We were really hungry so we ordered food. As this place did not have electricity we ordered ugali (close to mashed potato) and vegetables, because the meat was probably old as hell. We ordered a beer and sat down. As we sat there watching the view (the road to the boarder) we got a new reminder of why we should never order meat at places like this. The town's people came dragging 5-6 baboons, which they had killed with their bow and arrows. Bryce lost his appetite there and then, whereas I actually ate some of the food. We went early to bed as there was nothing to do, and we did not feel like socializing after a long day in busses. We went back to our room, where I slept on the concrete floor as there was only one bed. But hey, it was around 3 $ so we couldn't complain. I sat my alarm at five as we the bus left at six o'clock sharp. Little did I know that we had lost an hour as we entered Tanzania. At four in the morning I woke up and started to think, and took out my lonely planet book and I realized that we were just way too close to not catching the bus. Afraid to fall asleep again and miss the bus we woke up and got ready. We found our seats and the plan was to head towards Darussalam and then take a new bus to Lusaka, Zambia. The day before we had spend the whole day moving around 160 km due to our laziness and faith, the question was how far we would come this day as the roads apparently were very good. The latter was a lie, a huge lie
