On a ferry to Zanzibar

I am watching a couple of dhows glide by -- you know the Asian-looking vessels with the distinctively-shaped sails that are always shown in Indian Ocean travel ads. I definitely plan to go sailing in one.

The word sweltering has taken on a new meaning in the last two days. Clearly the high humidity is the reason I'm dripping all the time; the temperature is only in the 90s -- nothing dramatic for a Southern-raised girl who now finds Texas heat quite bearable.

I arrived in Dar es Salaam on a flight from Kampala early Sunday afternoon. After three months of volunteering in Gulu, it felt like time for vacation, and what better way to travel than to hook up with Peace Corps friends who were heading to Uganda to visit me. Just as I entered the arrivals area the local power went off. Using light from a window I was able to fill in the visa application and I handed it off to a man who disappeared into the dark with it and my $100 bill; before I had time to worry too much, he returned with stamped passport. (The high cost of the visa is an indicator of Tanzania's reliance on tourism for revenue. Almost all their national parks charge fees of $50-60 US, per day, or even more—like $180 at Gombe. A wildlife safari or a 5-day climb up Kilimanjaro is expensive before you even get started.)

The power failure also meant the Internet was down, which complicated my making connection with my soon-to-be travel companions, Julia and Danielle who were still en route from Mozambique, or with the three Peace Corps guys who were passing through Dar on their way to the Serengeti. But, after one night alone at the Jambo Inn during which I watched a fireworks display out my window (don't ask; I don't know why), and a few spare hours the next morning during which I visited my great ape uncle Zinjanthropus's 1.8 million-year-old skull at the national museum, I did connect with all five of them and we spent the next night at the luxurious home of a U.S. Embassy staffer (whom they had found on the couchsurfer website. ("Jambo," of course, is the popular Swahili welcome greeting that one hears everywhere throughout the Tanzania/Kenya coastal regions. Actually, you hear it too much from the ubiquitous street touts who make their living from tourists -- and I can see them there waiting to greet us when we dock. Stone Town, here I come.