13/10: Dar

Today we started off the day with a walk the Lonely Planet recommended. We went into the national Museum which was beautiful and I learned a lot. Then we continued the walk along the worst botanical garden I have ever seen. A bit after that a guy drove past us and told us we should be careful in that area. He was right. A couple of minutes later we walked past a side street. There were three boys there, they yelled something but I didn’t hear it, but Freja did and she started walking really fast. They yelled: “fuck you go!” or something when Freja told me I started to walk really fast too. I looked back and one of them was still there. And he had a stick or something in his hand. He kept up the same pace as us. We walked like that for a long time before we got somewhere with other people. But he just kept it up! Then we saw the Hyatt Regency Hotel (Kilimanjaro Hotel) and almost ran in there saying to the guard that there was someone following us. I think he could see we were serious so he let us go on. When we were at the door/entranceway we met some other employees and stood to look back telling them the same thing. In that moment our stalker walked past the gate and wanted to go to us, but the guard stopped him. We could see him pointing at us and screaming. None of us understood what we had done. We went into their café and had expensive cake and juice. Later one of the employees came to us and told us that the guy was literally crazy. That didn’t really make it better at all. We didn’t really want to leave again, but we did as we have to buy tickets for the ferry tomorrow. We asked them to go with us to the gate to make sure the guy wasn’t there anymore. Luckily he wasn’t so we walked to the ferry office. There is only one legitimate office in Dar to buy the tickets, so we went there. Back in Arusha people had told us we should leave our passports at home, Laura and I had decided in the last moment to bring ours in case of an emergency, but the others didn’t. Apparently you can’t go to Zanzibar without your passport. Though if you have a copy you can get a stamp saying it is real. But today is Sunday and tomorrow is a holiday. So what to do? We then went to Sea Cliff Village to look for some things that we need and have lunch. During lunch we called embassies to ask what we should do or when they would be open, but we could only get hold of the French one. We then decided to go back to the hostel to get the copy of the others’ passports and go to talk to the ferry people again. After a lot of talking we figured out what to do as the lady there gave us a number of a guy who could help us once we arrive in Zanzibar. Freja had said as we left the Hyatt Regency earlier that day that she wanted to buy us dinner that night at that hotel. Though we told her that it would probably be really expensive, but she wanted to because it felt like a safe haven for us. So that night we had a fancy dinner. And it was great.