Pop quiz: What is the capital of Tanzania? Dar es Salaam? Nope!1 The correct answer is Dodoma.
Next question: What is there to do in Dodoma? Not much! (Sorry Dodomans, Dodomites?)
After a couple of days in the big city, we left Dar on a late morning bus heading to Dodoma,2 where we arrived just before sunset and spent the night. Our plan was to catch a bus the next morning heading further north to Kondoa and then visit some of the rock paintings in the surrounding area, which have been listed as an UNESCO World Heritage site.3
From Dodoma, we still had a ways to go before we would reach the rock art near Kondoa. We purchased tickets on a bus headed to Kondoa at 6:00 a.m., and arranged to have a taxi pick us up at 5:30 a.m. Our first kink of the day was encountered early: when we went to leave to get into our waiting taxi, we found that we were locked inside the hotel. We made enough racket looking around for potential exits (or the property’s night guard who might be able to let us out) that we woke up the receptionist. She set us free, gently suggesting we should have told her the night before that we needed to leave so early in the morning.
Unfortunately (both for us and the no-doubt sleepy receptionist), once we reached the bus station, we discovered we had left our bag of snacks in our hotel room. This was a tragedy: without our jar of peanut butter and box of biscuits, I would have perished on other long bus rides. Thankfully, Marc had time to race back to the hotel with the taxi driver to retrieve the snack bag before the ride began.
Although it is only a 140 kilometer journey, it takes four hours to reach Kondoa from Dodoma, as the road is nothing more than rutted dirt the entire distance. Bumping along that road in that rickety old bus was like riding a wooden roller coaster, if that roller coaster was held together with used gum and hope and had no safety latches.
Eventually, miraculously, we arrived in Kondoa. We (thought we) had arranged to take a rock art tour with a gentleman named Mr. Moshi (whose tours had come recommended from friends), and we expected him to be waiting for us at the bus station. Alas, when we disembarked in Kondoa, we found no one but a bunch of bus touts, trying to sell us tickets to other destinations, and taxi drivers, hoping to win our business. When we told one such taxi driver that we did not need a ride because someone was picking us up, he nodded and said, “Ah, you are looking for Mr. Moshi. I will call him.” 4
It turns out there had been some confusion, and Mr. Moshi was not available to take us on the tour (he was in Arusha) but he sent his protege to take care of us. The protégé appeared shortly, wearing black slacks and a white button-down shirt, and took us to the office to finalize the details. After much discussion and a trip to the grocery store, we boarded a minivan and set out the see the rock paintings.
We first visited the sites known as B1, B2, and B3, which are grouped together. To reach them, we first had to take a short hike uphill. The viewpoints were amazing.
The paintings at B1, B2, and B3 are thought to date back 1,500 years. There are largely in the red figure style, which I think is beautiful. I really had trouble choosing the pictures for this post:
After visiting B1, B2, and B3, we broke for lunch. Our lunch was a feast of traditional dishes prepared by some local women, and it was delicious. We were given low seats and presented with heaping bowls of rice, pap, cassava, curried cassava, sweet potatoes, cooked greens, beef, oranges, and bananas, and we also received a mug of baobab juice. In Namibia, we had tasted the fruit of the baobab tree, but I had no idea that people drank its juice. The juice was thick and tangy, and neither of us were able to finish our mugs.
After lunch, we set off for Pahi, another rock painting site. To reach that site, we walked through maize, sunflower, and cowpea fields, pausing to admire the local flora.
The art at Pahi was mostly in black-and-white style, which although not quite as captivating, or as old, as the red paintings we previously viewed, was still interesting.
After completing our tour of the rock art, the protégé showed us to our hotel and helped us get tickets for a bus back to Dodoma the following morning. Later, he walked us to another hotel where we could order dinner. The meal wasn’t anything special, but getting to walk around Kondoa at night was incredibly interesting. Because most cities in Africa have no streetlights and appear deserted after dark, we likely wouldn’t have walked around on our own – but, with our guide, we walked through the town and saw the citizens conducting their evening business: walking home, visiting with friends and family, getting haircuts. We stopped by the home of our driver to pick up my fleece that I had left in the van, and got to meet his family. It was a nice end to the day to see this more intimate side of life in Kondoa.
Where We Stayed:
☆ Kilondoma Inn, Dodoma. Two goats. This place is really basic, but the price reflects that. The double bed was small (more like a twin-and-a-half) and the shower is my least favorite kind (the kind that is literally a sprocket coming out of the wall, with no differentiation between the shower and the rest of the bathroom). Pro tip: If you have to leave early in the morning, be sure to let the receptionist know, or you might find yourself locked in!
☆ Star Brightness Hotel, Kondoa. Two goats. This place might have been Kilondoma Inn’s long-lost twin. It had the same hallmarks: absurdly small bed, bathroom-as-shower.
Where We Ate:
☆ New Dodoma Hotel, Dodoma. During our one night in Dodoma, we ate at the large hotel in town. The large menu included Italian, Indian, and Chinese food – we opted for the Indian, and found it tasty but a little overpriced.
☆ Golden Apple Hotel, Kondoa. We both ordered the chicken and chips, which was disappointing, even for chicken and chips. The chicken was mysteriously both dry and greasy, and the chips were limp and soggy and only edible once dragged through hot sauce. That said, it was fast and cheap, so maybe just try something other than the chicken and chips.
1 Don’t feel bad if you thought Dar was Tanzania’s capital. (I did!) Dar was the capital until 1973, and it still functions as the country’s de facto capital in many respects – nearly all government ministries and embassies located in Dar.
2 Travel note: We took the Shabiby bus from Dar to Dodoma, and would recommend it. It was a comfortable bus with 2×2 seating that left at a set time (we took the 11:00 a.m. departure) – instead of waiting until it was full.
3 Regular readers of this blog will recall our earlier failed efforts to see the UNESCO World Heritage site rock paintings in Zimbabwe.
4 Of the various points we have traveled to during our African adventures, Kondoa might have been the most off-the-beaten-path, even though its location is not exactly remote. We stuck out in Kondoa and it was not hard for the locals to peg why we there … to see Mr. Moshi, of course.
