Grand Africa Cruise - Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania Day 2

Cruise Day 33

 Friday, November 11, 2022

“The impulse to travel is one of the hopeful symptoms of life.”  -- Agnes Repplier

For our second and last day in Dar es Salaam, we are taking a ship excursion to Bagamoyo, a historic city north of Dar es Salaam.  Here is a description of Bagamoyo from Lonely Planet.  

"Strolling through Bagamoyo’s narrow, unpaved streets takes you back to the mid-19th century, when the town was one of the most important settlements along the East African coast and the terminus of the trade caravan route linking Lake Tanganyika with the sea. Slaves, ivory, salt and copra were unloaded here before being shipped to Zanzibar Island and elsewhere, and many European explorers, including Richard Burton, Henry Morton Stanley and David Livingstone, began and ended their trips here. In 1868 French missionaries established Freedom Village at Bagamoyo as a shelter for ransomed slaves, and for the remainder of the century the town served as a way station for missionaries travelling from Zanzibar Island to the interior."

Today we traveled north up the coast from Dar Es Salaam to the historic city of Bagamoyo.  Its close proximity to Zanzibar (in the upper right hand corner) made it the jumping off point of explorers, missionaries and slave traders for their treks into the interior.

We both have finished reading the book “Into Africa” by Martin Dugard which focuses on Stanley’s search for Livingston in Africa, and also much of the background including previous explorations of Africa by Livingston and others.  The opportunity to visit Bagamoyo was of particular interest to us because it played a prominent part in the beginnings and ends of Livingstone’s and Stanley’s treks in and out of the interior of Africa. 

Ship excursions usually start with everyone on a tour meeting in the World Stage theater where you wait for your tour to be called.  Today our meeting time was 8:00 AM, we were up at 7:00 to make sure we got there on time.  We arrived right on time and were immediately sent out to start the tour, which was very nice as sometimes you have to wait for other tours to be called before yours is.

Our tour used three minibuses and it took a while for everyone to get there and loaded up, but we were finally on our way around 8:30.  We had a police escort on a motorcycle as well as an ambulance that led the way with sirens blaring and lights flashing as we left the port.  I guess the necessity for escorts was to get us through the traffic so we could arrive in Bagamoyo in a reasonable amount of time.  The presence of the ambulance worried us at first, but I think it was there as another thing to catch the eye of motorist to help clear the way.

It was quite a harrowing drive with our escort clearing the way before us; everyone seemed to get out of the way, but the roads were so congested that at times we barely squeezed through, sometimes driving on the opposite side of the road, and all sorts of scary maneuvers.  Whenever there was a clear spot ahead, we sped up and were going so fast that the bus’s speed warning device kept going off.

Despite fearing for our lives, the drive was very interesting and, except for the time our bus took off the mirror of a car too close beside us, without incident.  The drive itself was eye opening as we drove through the cities, towns and rural areas and got a look at everyday Tanzanian life.  The overwhelming feeling was of poverty with meager, run-down looking homes, road-side stands selling every imaginable thing, and of urban areas, teeming with people in buses, cars, motorcycles, bicycles and on foot.  It was pretty eye opening and made us feel lucky, and also, a little ashamed as here we were, relatively wealthy (by their standards) Americans, being escorted by the police making the local residents get out of our way for us.

We finally reached the coastal city of Bagamoyo and visited the Kaole Ruins.  The Kaole Ruins are the remains of 13th century mosque and tombs.  I didn't pick up many of the details as our guide had a very pronounced accent and was hard to understand.  He was very knowledgeable though, and I can’t really complain as he knows English much better than I know Swahili.  This area is not a major tourist destination, so I think English speaking guides are hard to come by.  Very few cruise ships visit Tanzania and ours is the first one since 2018.

The Kaole Ruins

Next we visited the Old Fort, the oldest building in the Old Town section of Bagamoyo.  It was built by one of the first Arab traders in the area in the 1860's and used to store and sell his merchandise.  He handed it over to a local sultan in the 1870's and it began being used as a holding area for the captured Africans before being shipped to Zanzibar where they were sold into slavery.

The entrance to the Old Fort.

Our next stop was the Holy Ghost Mission founded in 1868 by the Holy Ghost Fathers.  The original church was built in 1872, but was replace by a newer one in 1910.  Val tweaked her back a few days ago and although it’s slowly getting better, it is painful for her to walk very long so we spent most of our time there sitting in the shade as the mid eighty’s temperature and high humidity were tiring.

 

Next it was time for lunch, and we headed for a hotel where we had a nice lunch out on the terrace.  It was a buffet, and the food was good and there was a nice breeze blowing through to cool us off.  We were entertained by a group of dancers and drummers from a local school who were very good.  It was a nice relaxing lunch and we got to spend quite a bit of time here.

We were met by a group of dancers and drummers as we entered the hotel.

We were entertained during our lunch.  The group was very good.

After lunch we had time to walk out to the beach.  Val didn’t feel like taking the walk so she checked out some of the vendors who lined the walkways and found some nice things.  I walked out to the beach that was a beautiful spot.  The tide was out and there were lot of boats sitting in the sand waiting for high tide.

Just before three it was time to get back on the buses and start back to Dar es Salaam and the ship.  The minibuses seem to be the main form of public transit here, which is understandable considering the heavy traffic and narrow roads.  Although the weather was warm, they were quite comfortable and more importantly, they had fairly decent air conditioning.

With our police escort leading the way, we had another wild ride back, even more harrowing than our morning drive.  Our convoy of three buses was weaving in and out of traffic, driving through red lights, and at one point when traffic slowed, making a violent swerve onto a small frontage road, racing down it and then swerving back into the main road and through traffic.  It was very exciting and would have been fun if it wasn’t so scary.

We finally made it back to the ship around 4:30, grateful that we were all safe and sound.  It felt very nice to get back to our cool and air-conditioned room where we relaxed until dinner.  Dinner was the same as usual and since we weren’t leaving Dar es Salaam until late tonight, the casino was closed.  The evening had turned balmy, so we went out on the rear Lido deck and enjoyed the evening looking at the lights of Dar es Salaam.

Our next port is the island of Zanzibar, which is a part of Tanzania and a short ?? distance off the coast.  We have an early tour again tomorrow, so it was early to bed for us again.