Travel Funk- Arusha, Tanzania

Valentine's Day Flowers from Mark

Our Internet Cafe/ Bread Shop

Muslim Parade- Birthday of Prophet Mohammed

The bus ride from Dar to Arusha took nearly 13 hours.  The further west we journeyed, the more we saw changes outside the bus window.  In contrast to the southern region of green fields and full crops, the north was dry and brown.  The skies became wet and hazy.  Contrary to our vivid expectations, Mt. Kilamanjaro was only vaguely perceptible from the town of Moshi.  Defensive locals explained that the skies were always blue (even though they appeared thick and grey to us).  Mark’s and my eyes began to water and we sneezed due to the fields burning (this is the season for burning off the old growth in the fields, making way for new crops to be planted).

We arrived in the dark which nearly always makes a town look more ominous than it actually is in the daylight.  Even so, I was disappointed.  These were the gateway towns to beautiful places like Mt. Kilimanjaro and the famed Serengeti, but they somehow weren’t meeting my expectations.  I skimmed the Lonely Planet Guidebook and settled on a budget hotel for the night, Monjes Guesthouse.  Our taxi driver delivered us to the Manjes Petrol Station and when I insisted that we were looking for a guesthouse, not a petrol station, he gave me a free lesson in pronunciation.  “Moooohhh-njes, not maaahhh-njes,” he intonated.  I was tempted to quip about applying common sense (“gueeeeesthouse, not peeeetrol station”), but just nodded and slumped down in my seat.

The $13 hotel was clean and had a king size bed.  Other than that, I was again disappointed.  The corner sink was miniscule, the tv didn’t work, the walls were paper thin, the first floor window was located next to a noisy parking lot, there was no fan, and worst of all, the vapors from the bathroom squatty potty made the room stink.  To top it all off, the power went out.  I decided to tough it out for the night; we could get a new hotel in the morning.  Morning came and I was going to need some sunlight to face the day, so I opened the drapes, but Mark was concerned about privacy, so he closed them.  I felt deflated.  Why was this so overwhelming?  As we walked into town, I started to nit-pick with Mark about which direction we were going, how we were crossing the street, little unimportant things that were getting under my skin.  I communicated to Mark that I was feeling overwhelmed and needed a decision-free day.  He agreed and suggested we blow some time at an internet café.  I downed two lattes, two hours of internet, and one pack of peanut m&m’s.  I was still overwhelmed, but we came up with a game plan.  Instead of traipsing all over town for another hotel, we’d ask for a bucket to cover and contain the toilet stink, and we’d request a working television.  That helped.  Then we went looking for some pirated DVD’s to kill time.  Along the way we stopped for ice cream and cheeseburgers.  It was all helping, but I was still feeling travel funk, that crappy negativity that can creep up on a person and leave them feeling disoriented and uncertain.

Throughout town, relentless touts followed us around, shaking our hands and thrusting Serengeti business cards into them while filling our ears with chatter about how we should follow them to their tourist office.   Sometimes I can be too direct with salesmen, but I somehow managed to remain indifferent this time around.  I wanted to take a second safari at some point on the trip, but the price tag for the Serengeti was looking like $150/person/day, and it takes a minimum of three days.  Yes there’d be lions, wildabeasts, zebras, giraffes, and big cats, but spending $900 USD on a three day excursion was more than I could manage, not to mention I was a little scared of camping with all of the animals.  I told Mark I needed another day of no-pressure sales to gather my bearings.  Queue the pirated copy of Matt Damon vs. Leonardo Dicaprio laptop DVD’s, HBO’s edited version of “The Hangover” and “17 Again,” some fruit and yougart, and a nap.  We spent a significant portion of each day lounging in bed.  Mark bought me belated Valentine’s Day roses which I put on display in my red Nalgene bottle, and we found a local hole-in-the-wall restaurant with cheap masala chai tea.  The restaurant was a good find for our newly adjusted budget of $29 per day.  Much of the world lives on $2 per day, and here we’d been managing to spend $60 per day.  Our lifestyle was still extravagant by local standards, but from our perspective, being on a new budget kinda sucked.  No more all day snacking and Western meals.  No more unlimited wifi internet at the café.  No more shopping for trinkets and clothing.  On our new budget, food felt scarce, and I nearly growled at Mark when he reached for a sip of my latte splurge.  We both recognized that we were feeling travel fatigue, so we decided to hold off on making any decisions, and just lay low for another day in the dump of Arusha.

Slowly, the travel funk started to fade.  We gathered information about the Serengeti tours, looked into potential routes and destinations.  We had been thinking about going next to Brundi, Rwanda, Uganda, and Kenya, but there was also a possibility of returning to Dar and flying straight to Turkey.  We considered nixing the Middle East entirely.  We threw out the idea of scrapping Turkey due to the cold temperatures.  We debated about heading overland north, but the thought of being landlocked by Sudan, Somolia, Chad, and Congo was a problem.  Neither of us was willing to spend two weeks on a boat heading up the Red Sea or White Nile-  I mean, let’s face it- there are only so many books and movies a person can entertain themselves with on a two week boat ride.  We explored the possibility of getting dropped off north of the park and slowly making our way to Nairobi.  There were too many options and nothing seemed desirable.

We ventured to the Tourist Information Office to confirm the legitimacy of Focus, the company we were looking at for the Serengeti Tour, and stopped next door at the posh Africafe.  As we sat in plush chairs under modern lighting and cherry wooden ceiling beams, the skies magically parted and the sun streamed through.  Instantly, our spirits felt lifted.  We realized it was the first stream of sunlight we had seen in over three days.  I felt like I could sit up straight again.  In honor of the sun, we ate supper outside in the courtyard- gouda cheese on multigrain crackers, salted cashews, papaya, bananas, and an apple.  Again, I was feeling more restored, stronger, normal.

The following morning, I woke up smiling.  Mark woke up joking.  We both teased each other and laughed.  The power was out, but sunlight streamed through the drapes.  The travel funk had finally lifted.  We went to breakfast next door at Pizzarusha and enjoyed reading the newspaper and gabbing about our travel experiences, and our friends back home.  After three days of travel funk, we were finally free to enjoy ourselves again.