A big adventure

I splashed out on a day trip to Ngorogoro to see some of the sites unique to Tanzania. It was going to be tight day with the sites to visit quite far apart.
At 6 a.m. the ShikaTours manager, Jon, turned up with his driver Bakari so that we could accomplish everything in daylight hours. They came in a Toyota Landcruiser, a different car from that planned, but I thought nothing of it, even though the windscreen was cracked.
We raced a couple of rusty buses 154 km down the road to the park turn-off in the spitting rain, exacerbated by non-functioning windscreen water jets. Everything in this region is focused on safaris: for the bus drivers the "East African Safari". The buses drive flat out between staging posts in order to be first to collect passengers, overtaking on the inside, on curves and over blind hills as the opportunities arise.
For some reason I could not understand, my driver kept drifting off the lane and hastily correcting the drift. Perhaps I thought, it was because he spent a large part of the trip dialling or answering people on the phone. Our speed would slowly decline and one or both buses would racket past showering us in a muddy spray. Then he would accelerate and pass them again to repeat the cycle further on.
His instructions were to stop for coffee along the road and eventually he did stop at a buddies trinket shop alongside the main road. He wondered off leaving me to find coffee in the warehouse, filled with the same stuff in the Arusha Masai Market. Alas there was no coffee.
The next stop was at a hotel where the company obtains lunch boxes for its clients. There it was suggested that I buy a coffee for TSh 3000 - instant coffee that is, which normally costs TSh200. The driver said nothing so we left.
We passed a Army checkpoint without stopping and then pulled up at the Tourist and Diplomatic police guard hut. Bakari disappeared inside and ten minutes later came out with a policeman who got into the back seat. He moved the car 3 metres into a parking space and they both got out. As the fourth Tourist Troopy came and went as we sat there, I wondered what was going on and enjoying the scenery.
A few minutes later I was summoned inside to find the driver locked in a cage - with our day's schedule. He told me the problem was the cracked windscreen.
I returned to the vehicle to practice square breathing: in, pause, out, pause on the count of four. It didn't really work though and when the policewomen came out in her white gumboots , (brand name "Polisi",) I was still seething. She asked me in surprisingly good English what the driver had told me was the problem.
"No, no," she replied, "he's drunk" and proceeded to tell me about the size of the numbers recorded by the breathalyzer.
"But don't worry, I will find another driver for you. Just wait half an hour."
And, mirabile dictu, she did. Another driver turned up and we set off one and a half hours late, leaving Bakari in pokey.
Another 15 minute drive and we arrive at the Park entrance. Another delay: our vehicle does not match the paperwork and there should be another person with me. Luckily, the new driver Ima was an old hand at this game and I had the receipt from Shika Tours so we lost only half an hour.
Windows wound firmly up, we gently ploughed through the baboon pack tourist watching on the road and onto the park dirt tracks. I said I wanted to go to Laetoli where the oldest footprints in the world are located, but the driver just headed off to the Leakey museum without saying anything. He claimed later that it was too far and not accessible anyway.Read more