As soon as we get through immigration, we're picked up by a Range Rover (lots of Range Rovers and Land Rover Defenders here, which is my personal favorite car). Tanzania is very tropical. Lots of green forests and palm trees. The Airport is an open air airport similar to what you find at some Caribbean islands. Weather is warm and humid at all times. The toughest part of these trips is that there's never down time, as soon as we land, we get started with meetings.
As we pull out of the airport, the first thing that you notice is the amount of traffic in every direction. While lots of people ride bikes and take "very full" buses, there are a ton of cars. Locals complain that the road infrastructure does not exist so traffic is a way of life and you plan on it. That said, our driver in the Range Rover makes his own lanes of roads (going over hills, sidewalks, whatever it takes to beat the traffic.) Impressive how he cuts a commute time in half.
After a first day of meetings, we go to the National Stadium to watch the Tanzania National Team play. I'm blown away by the the number of football fans (soccer fans) in the country. Everyone is wearing a soccer jersey (lots of Barcelona, Madrid, local clubs but majority are sporting English Premier League teams; Chelsea, Liverpool, Man U are the most popular). Also, I'm impressed by the amount of advertising using Soccer (Didier Drogba who is from Ivory Coast is very popular here and he's in a lot of advertising for Pepsi, Samsung, Others).
After a long day that felt like a couple of days due to the jet lag, we check into our hotel which is an incredible resort overlooking the Indian Ocean, called the Sea Cliff. Absolutely beautiful hotel with open air restaurants, great pool, nice shopping village next to it. We eat our first dinner at the Sea Cliff restaurant. I have shrimp as appetizer and a Portuguese Seafood chowder. Both are amazing, nothing better than fresh seafood accompanied with a Serengeti (local Tanzanian Beer) and ocean breezes as you overlook the ocean. This is my first visit to Africa.
What's amazing is the friendliness of the people and their spirit. Met incredible people. Swahili is the official language but English is the business language in Tanzania. There are over a hundred tribes who all speak their own dialect of Swahili. Country is about half Muslim and half Christian. We hear the call to worship every evening from the Mosques around Dar es Salaam which is really a cool experience.
