'I'm pretty sure the road has been finished'.
That's what they told us when we book our bus tickets from Dar to Lindi. Estimated it would be about 6 hours on a paved road.
They were wrong.
We left at six in the morning and arrive just after 3.30pm in the afternoon and only 3-4 hours of it was on a paved or even flat road; the rest was on a bumpy dirt road. I was lucky enough to be towards the middle of the bus so the bumpiness wasn't so bad for me but poor Alex and Emily H were ordered onto the back row by the very angry bus conductor that seemed to want people to sit on a certain seat according to his chart.
I have no idea whether people had booked certain seats or he was just on an OCD power trip.
They said every time the bus would go over a mound of dirt that because of the momentum at the back they would be thrown upwards about 2 feet higher than everyone else and there was nothing to brace themselves on.
It was sweltering because of the heat and as soon as they decided to open the windows, red dust from the road would fly up and cover our faces so we looked like we had suddenly developed a tan. They did provide food and drink free of charge but I have to question the wisdom of giving people fizzy drinks whilst they are going over large bumps in the road. I got a look Sprite down me as it fizzed up out of the glass bottle as soon it was opened- I highly doubt I'll bother taking that skirt back to the UK.
When we got to Lindi in the afternoon, we were trying to find the Adela Guest House but our temporary guide (i.e. the guy that latched onto us at the bus stop and wouldn't go away until we let him take us to our hotel) took us to the Adela Hotel which charged us 45,000 shillings per night. It was expensive but we decided we were too tired to find the other Adela right then and agreed to stay for one night. The rooms were actually very nice and I was luck enough to get my own room with the only toilet in out of the three that worked properly and it would be a while before I found other working Western toilet.
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