Hell Is Other People (If Those People Are in Dar es Salaam)

I've been to some shitty places, it's true. Naples wasn't very nice. I've spent an inordinate amount of time in Trenton, New Jersey. And there were moments in Managua where I was told that, if I had walked an extra block, I would have probably been robbed at knifepoint.

All of these pale in comparison to Dar es Salaam, which I think could be accurately described as the armpit of Africa.


After a 9-hour bus ride from Moshi (a slummy little smear on the face of Africa which will be addressed, in detail, later), Kelly and I got off in the Dar bus station. It's an asphalt flat filled with swirling dust and 110-degree heat, and after our crazy bus ride (also to be covered later), we were pretty weak.

Well, Dar was ready to take advantage of that. We were subjected to a classic hustle that would leave us about $100 poorer. Porters immediately grabbed our bags and we were forcibly led to a waiting cab. Each of the porters demanded TSH$1k for their services, and then the cab driver tried to charge us 250% of the going rate (TSH$10,000) for a taxi just to take us to the port. We ended up negotiating down to TSH$20k, but he was not happy, and neither were we.

After paying his tax to leave the Dar bus station, the hustling really kicked in. He told us the area by the port was really dangerous, and before the car even stopped, some random guys had grabbed our bags. "We're your porters," they shouted, donning orange vests.

Kelly and I didn't even have time to think before we were pushed into a random travel agency, and overcharged $40 for ferry tickets. Once we were on the ferry, the porters made a huge scene, demanding $20 each for the service of carrying our bags for 2 minutes. We got them down to 10 and then watched our bags in a panic for the next hour, thinking seriously that they might return to chuck our luggage into the sea.

The 1.5 hour ferry ride was so rocky that the crew passed out airsick bags.

Thankfully, we landed in Zanzibar, which was Tanzania's saving grace. Wait for future posts for a much-more positive experience on a beautiful African island that everyone should visit.

Ally Keys Runs This Town

I'll post later about Kelly and my arrival in Zanzibar and its attendant weirdnesses, but we eventually settled into a nice, safe hotel in Stone Town.

Stone Town is located on the western, port side of Zanzibar. There are plenty of amazing beaches to the north and east side of the island. So, one morning, Kelly and I decided to rent scooters and zip out to one or two sandy paradises.

We let our hotel know and headed up to the rooftop bar for breakfast. After about 15 minutes, a shady-looking character sidled up to our table.

"I heard you are looking to rent a scooter," he said. We looked at each other...how did he know? And should we trust him?

He sat down with us and negotiated modestly, showing us a cell phone video of some British tourists ineffectively driving around on scooters and urging us to rent a car to avoid making fools of ourselves.

We rented the car, he wrote us out a Zanzibar driver's permit and gave us his business card: "Ally Keys...a colourful character."

In 30 minutes, one of Ally's many minions showed up at our hotel with the car, and drove us most of the way out of town. He took the time to educate us in Zanzibar's driving laws, which rival talmudic arguments in their complexity. Then, he turned us loose, saying: "There will be police stops on the way. If too much bla bla bla from cop, just say 'Ally Keys.'"

We both thought "Yeah, right." But we were stopped 3 times. Each time, we expected to have to pay some sort of bribe, but no. We just said Ally Keys, and the police gates swung open.

When we got to the beach (1 hour away from Stone Town), a random gentleman on a bicycle saw us driving around and directed us to a parking spot. "You rent car from Ally Keys?" he said.

"Um yeah," we said. He smiled, waved and biked off.

On the way back, we couldn't figure out how to get the car to Ally Key's office, so we tried to temporarily park in a "no parking" spot at a hotel. We were immediately surrounded by guards. Kelly an I started babbling to them out of either side of the car, telling them we were lost, tourists, etc. But they were implacable, until we said: "WE RENTED THIS CAR FROM ALLY KEYS."

Then they smiled, showed us to a parking spot, and called Ally Keys (apparently, everyone on Zanzibar has this guy's number). A minion appeared in 10 minutes, took the car away, and that was that.

Anyway, check it out: Ally Keys. If it needs keys, and is located on Zanzibar: scooters, cars, houses, WHATEVER...Ally Keys is the man to call.