The next morning, the Impala Shuttle managed to pick us up only 40 minutes late, a feat by African standards, and we were soon bouncing along on the ever-so-dusty road to Arusha. I have to confess, it took me a full hour to adjust to the driving style in Africa. We were basically kissing the butt of every car we stopped behind. Looking back, it is actually ridiculous that we made the entire trip without hitting anyone. Morning commute tailgaters have nothing on the Africans, so my apologies for all the times I've hoped and prayed for a cop to be around to pull you guys over. That being said, African drivers also have a much better understanding of their cars and how to use their mirrors than those in the good old U.S of A. I watched with a mixture of terror and amazement as our bus driver expertly maneuvered our bus between two other vehicles with an inch to spare on one side and probably less than half an inch on the other. If American drivers had only half of this knowledge, my daily commute wouldn't be so painful. And, on the subject of driving in Africa, it was brought to my attention that should we have hit and/or run someone over, our bus driver would have just kept going. Stopping to check on the status of the aforementioned injured individual could've gotten him stoned to death. Not sure if this pertained directly to Tanzania or only to specific countries in Africa, but I'm so glad we didn't get the chance to find out. I was also grateful that, despite the road closures, for what seemed like no apparent reason except that the locals wanted us to go off-roading, our driver was able to bypass a number of them simply by chatting up the guard and convincing him to move the tree branches that functioned as spike strips.

After a brief stop at the requisite tourist trap/last bathroom facilities before leaving Kenya, we arrived at the Tanzanian border. Since we had gotten our vaccinations back home, we breezed past the janky buildings touting yellow fever shots and headed straight to immigration. Still not having learned our lesson (we're a bit slow), we got in line at Window 3, which serviced all foreigners. The other lines had maybe five to six people. Our line? 30+ stretching out the door. After waiting for probably an hour and moving maybe three feet, our bus driver pulled us into the line for East African nationals and, voilà, we were suddenly at the window getting our passports scanned. It turns out, Tanzania is one of those countries that requires entry and exit fingerprinting. I've always had problems getting fingerprinted and, after three failed attempts and holding up the line for ten minutes, the nice guy at immigration just gave up and let me in the country. Guess he trusted me not to rob a bank.