Thinking we weren't going to get on the stand-by flight...

World Traveller

While in Tanzania, I have experienced some of these most interesting travel blunders and have heard about some of the most interesting travel blunders.  Through these experiences I am now convinced that any traveling I do inside the U.S. will be a piece of cake from here forward because I actually speak the same language as the people I’m dealing with and I am much more prepared to travel abroad than the average individual...here is a short list and description of some of those crazy adventures...

My friend Heather when she arrived in Tanzania, was taken into the baggage hub of the plane she was on to retrieve her bags because every other person on her plane was going onto Zanzibar.

For my second trip to Zanzibar, we booked a hotel and then when we got to town the hotel manager told us that they gave our room away because it was a busy weekend.  Oh.  So we spent the next hour hour with the nicest cab driver on the planet looking for another hotel.  Finally at the 11th one we visited we finally found a room.

Riding a piki piki (Bagamoyo's taxis)

One Saturday my friend Lauren and I spent the night in Dar and at 3 in the morning our taxi driver didn’t know how to get to our hotel...so Lauren had to figure it out.

On our way to Arusha for our safari, I realized in the taxi that I completely forgot my passport and that the only form of ID I had on me was my atm card and my credit card...uh oh.  Luckily when in Tanzania you don’t need ID to get on a plane a.k.a if you’re a smooth talker you can convince the security people to let you through regardless of the lack of identification.

Our taxi driver didn’t know how to get us from our Safari camp to the airport.  So after we completely missed our flight and he asked several people how to get to the airport we arrive at a completely different airport than we’re suppose to be at.  Luckily (or stupidly perhaps) I was pretty sure we passed the road we needed to get to the airport and I new how to get us back.  Before we could get to far however, our taxi driver took us on a road that was currently under construction and got us stuck in a ditch...super...we eventually got out and were able to get on the next flight on standby.

While on the standby flight I sat next to a woman with a four month old baby.  At one point during the flight the mama goes “I’m tired would you mind?” hands me the baby and disappears to the bathroom for 15 minutes.  Craziness.

I’ve learned how to hail a motorcycle like a taxi at home and ride one sitting side saddle because I’m always in a skirt.

Traveling at home will be boring compared to this...