Two weeks ago Joe and I went to Bagamoyo, on the coast north of Dar es Salaam for their annual Arts Festival. Bayamoyo is the home of the only arts college in Tanzania. We left Sunday morning on a bus to Dar. We got to the outskirts of Dar around 4:30 and thought we'd be able to make it up to Bagamoyo, another hours ride on a mini bus, that day. The traffic was so horrible though... we didn't make it to the bus stand until 6:30 and decided to stay in Dar for the night.
Monday morning we got up early and headed to Bagamoyo. We found a nice guest house to stay at which was only a five minute walk from the arts college. The opening ceremony for the festival was that evening, and the arts and crafts exhibition we thought we would occupy ourselves with that day took us only about 20 minutes to peruse.
We wandered through the small beachside town and explored lots of small carving shops. Bagamoyo specializes in heads!
We had some time to kill, so we decided to try to rent a motorcycle! We ran into a young guy we had met at the tourist center earlier and asked him if he knew of a place to rent bikes. He happened to be riding one and offered it for immediate use. Perfect!
We road out on nearly empty, sandy roads along the coast to the Kaole mosque ruins.
That night we went to the opening show where we saw a great rendition of Thriller and a very strange play that seemed to have the moral of "prostitution is a bad kind of tourism". The next day had performances scheduled throughout. We enjoyed a lot of traditional drumming and dancing.
The dancing, with a few more incomprehensible plays thrown in, made for a full day of interesting performances! We had to get up bright and early on Wednesday to make it back to Moshi in one day. Two days of travel for two days of vacation is a tall order, but it was definitely worth the trip.
