COS Trip: Moving on from Dar es Salaam to Mwanza

The couple I would go to the bus with this morning had ordered breakfast for 5:15. We showed up to find an empty kitchen. No breakfast today. :( Our taxi was right on time and we headed to our respective buses. My bus left it’s spot at 6:30am, but there was a traffic jam in front of us and we didn’t actually leave the bus station until about7:30ish. The bus trip promised to be a long one, so I rationed my water intake. After 3 hours, the bus pulled over to the side of the road for a toilet break. I don’t think I could have peed even if I had to since there were so many people just squatting wherever they found. It was about a 5 min stop for the entire bus. We wouldn’t stop again for another 4 hours. We stopped at a petrol station for lunch…10 minutes. I skipped out on finding food since I had snacks with me and found a squat toilet behind the building. I’ve never used a squat toilet before, but found it not too horrible. Back on the bus we all went. There was 1 more bush toilet stop before we arrived in Mwanza around 10pm. I found someone on the bus who spoke English and we got talking. He had family picking him up and offered me a ride to the Lake Hotel. It sounded nice enough. I arrived at the hotel around 10:45 to find my room hotter than hot, no fan, no running water in the bathroom (only a working sink in the main room), mosquitoes EVERYWHERE, holey mosquito net, and dirty sheets. Thank goodness for my sleeping bag and mosquito coil.