We had had many warnings about Arusha and the persistent touts trying to sell you safaris. We were thus prepared with our response of "Already booked and paid with Shidolya Tours". As we disembarked the bus we were immediately approached with offers of tours and accommodation, so we quickly adjusted our response to include already booked and paid for accommodation too. Walking quickly we found our hotel and decided to give it a go for the night. It was however rather overpriced at 20,000tsh for a dodgy foam mattress, shared squat toilet that was rather smelly by the next morning and a shared shower, so we decided to check out a few others and moved two doors down to a room with proper mattress, private western bathroom and tv for 25,000tsh.... the main difference being the first place was in the guidebook, the second place isn't, so prices are more reasonable.
Surprisingly on our day looking for safaris in Arusha we were not approached by a single tout. Very strange!! Maybe word had got around that we were taken. Booking was very easy, as we had been recommended a tour company by a couple of other travellers and knew the right price and what that included. So we were all organised by 10am and proceeded to head to the Rwanda tribunal.
We were both very interested to go to the tribunal as we will be heading to Rwanda in a few weeks. This is the United Nations tribunal for the 1994 Rwandan genocide which was established in 1995 and you are able to go and watch proceedings. Witnesses are naturally protected, so you can't see them but it was still interesting to see how the hearing works. Very slowly is one way to put it (not surprising as it's been going for 13 years!! There was 15 minutes discussion on when to take a 15 minute break at one point. It took awhile for us to figure out what was going on - we were listening to the defense interrogate a witness. We hope to go back once we've done our safari and hear some more.
No comments:
Post a Comment