Trip into Town

On the road, journey in, cargo boxes with P&O logos on the side, something I didn't expect to see here, although, Dar is a coastal city.

More cargo

Wirey trees on the tidal shore-line as we cross the river on the road into town. You can't see but the tide was out and but the wind was bringing in the sea air.

Ocean road

View from the bajaj, the driver was crazy. Traffic rules here are pretty flexible, but this guy sped down the central reservation to get us past the worst of the traffic. Monster-like cats eyes or metal bumps in the road nearly through us our of the vehicle we were going so fast. Got us there in record time, bit of a roller-coster ride.

Rows and rows of post office boxes at the main post office in town, many people here use these boxes rather than their home addresses to get things delivered to.

See these kinds of carts everywhere, wouldn't like to have to push or pull one in this heat

An old building

Docks in the distance

Guy cycling with a cart on the back

German colonial building

Breadfruit, big mudguards on the back with Swahili sayings are very common

A pretty cool tree

More colonial German buildings

Backed up traffic, congestion as people queue to get into town

A Greek Othodox Church, there is a sizable Greek community here in Dar

First trip into town was slightly marred by a nasty encounter with an angry military guard at the State House. I took a photo of traffic posts outside, not knowing that I was anywhere near the State House nor that it was forbidden to take photographs. He was on a huge power trip and made me delete the offending photo and some others. He barked at us that we don't have permission to do so. I thought for a moment that we were going to get marched off for an interview with the police. It's common to have to bribe people here and I wasn't particularly happy at the idea of having to part with money to get him to leave us alone. I also worried for a brief moment that he thought I was some kind of security threat, but honestly, if that was the case would I be so open about taking photographs?

We escaped his angry, evil grip and went on our way. Got some first impressions of the town centre and stopped into the Alliance Francaise to see what cultural events they had in the pipeline.

Got incredibly, horribly, nastily sweaty and melted in the process!