July 29

Too tired to write much tonight. After studying my Lonely Planet I decided to head north to Harare. I found a nice hostel in an area with a lot of college students. No dorm available but I got a room for $25/night, a bit more than I anticipated but reasonable. I expect to stay here three or four days.
The bus ride from Masvingo was tight; we were crammed in like chickens one of those assembly lines that animals rights folks are always citing. I have the sore back to prove it. Luckily an old man decided to be my guide, without my asking, and he even helped me find the right neighborhood in Harare once we got here. What little I've seen of the city does not endear itself to me, but we shall see.

Wednesday, June 22

Dakar is not what I expected mainly because I never bothered to look at a map of Africa. I assumed it was a tropical nation on the Gold Coast, but it is, instead, a desert-like oasis on the Atlantic nearer Mauritania than Ivory Coast.
Every year I try not to get ripped off the first day when I'm so uncertain of the currency and the territory, and every year I squander money anyway. I'd read on the internet a complaint by one visitor to my hostel that his taxi driver was never able to find the place. So I copied down detailed directions. And my taxi driver still could not find it. I ended up guiltily giving him $7.00 since he spent nearly an hour treading with me along Dakarian streets till we finally chanced on the (unmarked) place. I also squandered a few bucks to a tout at the airport who posed as an employee of the airport but was, instead, just a hustler.
Dakar is sand. Sand everywhere. You walk in it, you get it in your shoes, everything is colored by light brown sand. The buildings here in my part of town are all one and two story cement brick buildings. Like so many places I've visited there is lots of building going on reflecting, I assume, a growing population that is sprawling out horizontally rather than vertically. Don't know what downtown Dakar looks like yet.
My hostel is a beautiful mediterranean two-story structure. Oddly I'm sharing a room with a french woman of about 35 years of age. She seemed not at all nonplussed by having me for a roommate.

The plane ride was uneventful. Most passengers were headed for Johannesburg. I sat next to a South African family with two small children who were too preoccupied with the kids to be friendly.

Expenses
$4.78 newspapers, water on plane
$23.00 various ripoffs and taxi costs to hostel in Dakar
$2.00 electrical power adapter
$3.00 bottled water
$ hostel
$10.00 laundry and guide help from young girl at hostel
$1.00 bananas from streetside vendor

Saturday, June 18

First stop on the way to Africa is.....Portland, Oregon. My usual obsession with getting the best airline deal has put me in a plane ride in the wrong direction. It will take me 12 hours to finally get to LaGuardia in NYC. A foolish economy. For $50 more I probably could have gotten a non stop or at least an easier trip.

Oakland Airport is surprisingly quiet on this Saturday morning at 9am. The smell of food is everywhere, something like a mixture of sugar and flour and coffee. Southwest is savvy enough to have a big screen playing cartoons to keep the kiddies entertained but dad is having nothing of it and drags his little boy off to explore.

The sounds are of bland jazz and humming machines. Most of the people waiting are asleep or staring into a computer screen.

The tarmac is nearly deserted with just one or two baggage guys lounging against empty baggage carts. The weather is typical Oakland cool with just enough clouds to make the sky interesting. The gaudy orange colors of Southwest Airlines seem unsophisticated, probably harkening back to the early days of trying to establish a cheap way to fly.

At the Gershwin Hotel on 27th Street in Manhattan. It's 2am and I just got here. My skinflint ways caused delays. I wouldn't pay for a taxi from LaGuardia; instead took the city bus to the subway, but I didn't have change for the bus so that slowed things. But I can boast that my expenses for the day are well within my budget:
$2.79 bottled water at Chicago Airport (the cheapskate brought a burrito to avoid airport food)
$2.25 city bus in New York
$10.00 metro card for NY subway/buses
$60.00 one night at the Gershwin
$75.04 Total for today.