Travel Tips: Tanzania Transportation

We are going to start a series of posts aimed for the Googlebot to digest and index, hopefully for other travelers to pick up while doing their own research.

Here are our tips and experiences getting around Tanzania so far:

Arriving into Tanzania:

If you are flying to Tanzania for a safari out of Arusha, and have your choice of airlines, try and fly straight into KIA (about 45 minutes outside of Arusha). You'll save yourself a lot of hassle.

Because of restrictions on our RTW (round-the-world) ticket, we had to fly into Dar es Salaam via Swiss. We stayed overnight at the Royal Mirage hotel (which was excellent and well priced if you are on a mid-range budget). The next morning we took a Scandanivian Express (AFAIK, the bus line is named after the Scandia buses they use. There is nothing else Scandanavian about the experience) bus to Arusha. The bus is a relatively nice coach, but the ride is very long (ours was about 11 hours including an hour of the bus being broken down). The line does have the best reputation for comfort and safety here, so besides the mechanical problem I'd still recommend it. One note: get to the bus station early and sit up front. It smells bad by the bathroom.

Taxis anywhere in Tanzania: ask a local how much the ride is going to be before hand, there are no meters. Always name your price before you get in. Never open the coveration by asking "how much". A firm bet the price named will be at least 2x what you should pay.

Getting from Arusha/Moshi to Zanzibar: It is really easiest to fly. There is a slight chance you make make it from Arusha to Zanzibar in one day if you leave on a6:30am bus. However nothing here happens on time, thus it would be wise to schedule one night in Dar before getting on the ferry to Zanzibar Town. We are taking a one way Zan Air flight for about $170 each. You'll spend about $70-$80 for a comfortable bus ticket, taxis, and ferry tickets (for the quick ferry) and have around 13-14 hours of travel time when you are all done if you take the ground method. The flight is right around 60 minutes in the air (from the Arusha airport, ARK).