The Journey Inland

After the relatively expensive Zanzibar, I was keen to get back into the cheap life on the mainland. So when a family friend offered me a bed in Dar for a couple of nights, I would've been crazy to turn it down. I ended up having a really good time there, living the high life - electricity, running water and good TV - poor Chileans by the way!! And they turned out to be really nice people - very funny!

Well it was really nice there, but apart from meeting up with the Brits again after they were done with Zanzibar for a couple of drinks, one crazy Mexican themed party at the Irish pub (random? yes, but the tequila made it seem perfectly natural!) and a wander around the big market full of Chinese knock-offs of famous brands; nothing major happened.

After about four nights at this guy's place, I got a bus to Tanga - one more stop along the coast before heading inland. It was extremely hot, but otherwise a very nice town. I spent two nights there before moving on to Moshi.

Moshi, famous for being pretty much at the base of Kilimanjaro, was full of "flycatchers" - people who earn money by shoving tourists into offices where they can book a safari or climb Kili and getting commissions. They are extremely persistent too, offering everything under the sun. Eventually they all resort to selling "Bob Marley cigarettes".

Anyway the first night in Moshi I spent in an extremely foul place, with bare live wires (luckily the power was "finished" so there was no real danger!) and no water at all, not even buckets! So I stayed one, horrible night there and, after by early morning walk to catch to sunrise over the mountain - which was fantastic - I packed my stuff and left.

The next place was miles ahead of the other - it was a Lutheran mission hostel thing, also pretty close to town, but very quiet, peaceful and clean. It only cost 1000Tsh more and included breakfast - it came to 7000Tsh a night (about 35 sek). It was well worth it.

I spent the rest of that day just walking around the town and in the internet cafe. The next day, on a friend in Sweden's insistence, I went to check out the International School of Moshi. It looked so close when I looked at it on the map! I pretty much spent the whole day walking there and back - I stayed for less than 10 mins... Thanks a lot you know who you are (Mati!)

Anyway the following day I jumped on a dalla dalla to some waterfalls in rivers from the glacial melt off of Kilimanjaro! Very beautiful area, so green and lush! The one waterfall had a 5m jump into the pool below - which I did without thinking about. Then I went for the big one - 8 or 9m, and you had to really jump pretty far out - a couple of metres, to avoid the branches and rocks in the way. The adrenaline had me shaking all the way back to Moshi (though the local banana beer - tastes a bit like champagne, we stopped for on the way helped to settle me down a bit!)

I said "we" - I met some American guy there at the falls who was also going to overnight in Moshi - he's doing some research in a village on the other side of Arusha. I got him to take some pics and even a video of the jumps - I'll try and get them up when I can!

That night - Saturday - we went out looking for where the party was... it wasn't! We went to pretty much every bar in Moshi that was open!

Anyway the next morning I spent in the internet cafe getting pictures and the blog post about Zanzibar up. We then jumped on a bus bound for Arusha, where I stayed the night with some more family friends - very friendly and welcoming people (and I'm not just saying that because they might be reading this - she writes her own blog about life in some hills around Arusha - which you can check out here!!!). That night we went to the neighbours (more family friends it turned out - such a small world) for sundowners which was great.

Staying also staying with us was a Spanish guy - Carlos, who runs eco and adventure safaris in western Kilimanjaro - horse riding, mountain biking etc. The next morning he was heading back there - about 3 hours away and offered to let me tag along. Sounded like such a great opportunity to spend some time in the bush - these things are hugely expensive for someone on my budget, and there isn't many places that you can just go and camp in any more. So that is where I am right now, it's really beautiful, cool and apparently there are a pair of elephant orphans (now big) that are really tame - can't wait to see them and maybe even feed them.

All running on solar here so I can't be too long, will put the pics up when I get back to Arusha!


Edit: Still here and have had the time to resize and put up some pics - it's been sunny!