We arrived at the bus station at 4:30am—as instructed by the agent we called—to make sure we had a seat. Like most of the bus stations we’ve visited from New York to Nairobi, this one was in one of the shadier areas of town. By 6:00am the bus hadn’t arrived. At 7:00am we were still waiting. Finally, at 8:00am the bus pulls out of their tiny Nairobi office. We’d pulled an all nighter the evening before, thinking we’d be able to sleep during the bus ride.

When the bus arrives it is crammed full with people continuing on to Dar from Kampala, Uganda. We’re forced to squeeze into two seats in the very back of the bus, with people on either side of us.

The whole ride was a comedy of painful experiences — a nearly 350 pound women sat next to us, the odor of people who had traveled all night hung in the air like a fog, we couldn’t recline our seats and there was almost zero leg room. Welcome to traveling in Africa, we thought to ourselves.

Soon, the coaches staff realized they wouldn’t be able to fit all the luggage under the bus, so they decided to pack the entire middle aisle with bags stacked on top of eachother. Keep in mind that we were in the back of the bus and the luggage prevented any sort of escape route if we should crash.

And just when we thought it couldn’t get worse, it did. The driver drove so erratically that we later thought he must have been drunk, stoned, or completely insane. Danielle thought cocaine, I voted for alcohol. The bus was flying over the unpaved roads and because we were sitting behind the back wheels we felt every single bump and wild turn of the wheel. At times, the bus was airborn as it flew over bumps and up and down hills. Both of us were jolted out of our seats on several occasions.

We begged them to stop — just to let us use the bathroom — about four hours into the journey. Bernie had to tell the staff that Danielle was pregnant (she’s not) to get them to stop. When they pulled off the side of the highway, they told her to just “walk behind the bus”—where any passing cars could see.

After that, we'd finally had it.

When the bus stopped in Arusha, Tanzania (the first feasible destination for us) about seven hours into the journey, we just got off. Enough was enough.

Kampala Coaches is one dirty, dangerous, disaster…