Day 2 – Dar es Salaam: Buying Time

The argument, if you could call it that, happened in Terminal 3 in the small hours. Lorena, my wife, wanted the reclining chairs. I wanted the Sleepover, the pods you rent by the hour, and I had the price open on my phone ready to make the case. Lorena won. We slept, or did something next to sleeping, for a couple of hours in two plastic chairs while Dubai airport carried on around us at full brightness, indifferent to the hour.

We were in Dubai that long because I had put us there. Weeks earlier, watching the news out of Iran, I had decided our original connection was too tight. If something went wrong in the airspace we were about to cross, a short transfer would evaporate. So I paid Emirates to push the onward flight to Dar six hours later. A hundred and eighty dollars each. I had bought time, and then spent the night sitting in it.

The plan had us landing in Dar in the dark. It was plain afternoon when we cleared the airport.

We had not activated the taxi app yet, so when we saw a taxi sign by the exit we took it. The car was Chinese, the windows tinted almost black, the way nearly all of them are there. Only afterwards, once we were using the app, did we realise the ride had cost us close to triple the normal fare.

The road to the centre is long. Packed minibuses leaning on their springs, bajaj threading the gaps between them, the little three-wheelers that are the African cousins of the Piaggio Ape. Engines and voices, mostly, if you had to name the sound of it.

Luther House sits in the centre, near the harbour, our room looking over the water. The receptionist seemed to resent our arrival and could not find our train tickets, which were the reason I cared about the place at all. The fifty-five dollars we had been quoted had become seventy by the time we checked in, no explanation offered. We took the suite anyway: bedroom, bathroom, a kitchen and a small sitting room.

The tickets turned up. Rama, the agent who had arranged them, had come through: small rectangles of thick cardboard, vintage, the kind of object that has not changed in fifty years. First class, a four-berth compartment to ourselves. You cannot buy Tazara tickets online, and the train is famous for running many hours late, so we had paid an agency more than we wanted to for the certainty of holding exactly these. The Tazara was the main reason we had come. Holding them, I was properly happy for the first time that day.

We changed money after a false start, twenty minutes queuing in a bank for nothing before we gave up and did it in two at an independent bureau. Dinner was not where I had planned. For months the itinerary had said Karambezi Café, fish by the water. We ended up at the Baraza Grill instead, a hotel restaurant with a pool near the hostel, beside the botanical garden. I ordered prawns, enormous ones, and a mango salad. Lorena stayed on vegetarian ground.

This part of Dar, down by the port, is ministries and wide boulevards, quiet once the light goes. We had been told not to walk at night and walked anyway, back through streets with almost no lighting, dust underfoot. I was calm. Lorena was not, and found an assassin in every shadow. Nothing happened.

We went to bed early, pleased with all the margins we had built. The first morning in Africa, it turned out, would not be ours to schedule. At five the choir next door would settle that. But that belongs to the next day.

Practical Notes

Where I stayed

Luther House Hostel, Edward Sokoine Drive, central Dar es Salaam, near the harbour.
Phone: +255 222 126 247 · https://lutherhouse.co.tz
What I paid: quoted $55, charged $70 at check-in with no explanation, for the suite (bedroom, bathroom, kitchen, sitting room). Rates change, so confirm directly when booking.
My take: Central and walkable to the Zanzibar ferry, with a harbour view from the room. Church-run, and the choir next door rehearses loud and early. Bring earplugs.

Where I ate

Baraza Grill, Café & Bar, Garden Avenue, beside the botanical garden, a short walk from Luther House. We walked there from Luther House without any problems. Pool, relaxed.
What I ate: enormous grilled prawns and a mango salad; Lorena ate a well-vegetarian meal.
Price (verify): the current menu lists the grilled prawns (300g, lemon butter) at 65,500 TZS, roughly $25. Menu prices change.
Worth ordering: the prawns.

Getting there

Emirates, Dublin to Dar es Salaam via Dubai (EK162 Dublin–Dubai, then the onward leg to Dar).
What I did: paid about $360 total ($180 each) to move the Dubai–Dar leg six hours later, buying a wider transfer window given the tension over Iranian airspace at the time. Landed in Dar in the afternoon.
Airport taxi: we took a taxi from a sign at the exit before activating a ride app. I don’t remember the exact fare, but once we started using the app we realised it had been close to triple the going rate. For us, the app’s advantage was simple: the price was set, not negotiated.
Tazara tickets: booked through Rama at Gecko Adventure Tanzania (P.O. Box 19131, Dar es Salaam · https://gecko-adventure.com/). Expensive, but efficient and professional. You can’t buy tickets online, and the train is notorious for delays, so paying to lock in a first-class four-berth compartment for ourselves was worth it.

Money

A bank was slow and pointless, twenty minutes for nothing; an independent bureau de change did it in two.

One thing I’d do differently

I would have sorted the airport taxi before landing, a ride app or a price agreed in advance. Taking the first sign at the exit cost us close to triple, and it is one of the easiest things on the whole trip to get right.