Leaving Home
Louise and I left the grey skies of England with excitement and anticipation for what may lay ahead on our African adventure... after about 12 hours of flying, a stop-over in Ethiopia and an hour wait in Nairobi we stepped off the plane at Kilimanjaro Airport and were instantly covered by a moist blanket of heat. Inside the tiny Airport I felt my stomach turn as my backpack swung by the conveyor belt minus the sleeping bag I had spent so long choosing back home. Damn it. I envisaged myself being carried off the mountain in a Shelley-shaped icicle and hoped I would be able to rent a sleeping bag in Arusha instead. To my amazement though, 10 minutes later my little sleeping bag came floating by all alone and must have just become detached. Phew. First obstacle avoided and my first highlight: realising my sleeping bag has not been stolen!
At this point we were cursing ourselves for bringing SO MUCH with us. My backpack was about to burst at the seams, not to mention the daypack, fleece AND two coats I carried as they wouldn't fit inside...We also soon realised how far Kilimanjaro Airport is from Arusha and after attempting to haggle with the taxi drivers we took the long taxi ride to our accommodation; Masai Camp. We were staying in a Masai style hut which seemed far more interesting than the cluster of hotels in the town centre. Our stay there was fun, we walked into town and along the way were greeted by almost everyone we passed, "Jambo!!" we would happily reply, this was one of the phew Swahili words we had learnt in preparation but most of the children spoke to us in English, proudly asking us "How are you?" Before giggling and chatting once more to their friends. There were a few local men who had unfortunately learnt the phrase, "Hello baby!" Oh dear. We mainly ignored them.
Arusha Town
There wasn't actually much to see in town, just lots of touts trying to get us to book a tour even though we told them a million tmes we are already on one. On our next visit into town we were very excited to find a bookshop and ended up buying 5 books just because most of them related to East Africa, Kilimanjaro or the Masai...I wasn't quite sure how I could carry all my books and in retrospect I maybe should have bought just the one. Never mind. We failed miserably trying to find a local restaurant as all the ones we wanted to go to seemed to have disappeare. We saw a couple of places to eat but didn't want to risk anywhere we hadn't heard about in case of pre-hike food poisoning. It would be just our luck.
Eventually we gave up and took a dalla dalla (local bus) back to the camp. These buses are quite small like a minivan and there's space for about 12 people. Obviously this means that at least 20 people are squeezed on. We wedged ourselves in and spent the whole journey trying not to fall on top of everyone ...Of course half way back we realised we'd taken the wrong one and at the roundabout it went the other way. We jumped off and walked the rest of the way.
The rest of our time in Arusha was spent eating, playing cards and meeting different groups returning from their safaris. The security Guard befriended us and loved when we spoke Swahili to him. One evening he watched curiously as I painted my nails and I ended up painting his little fingernail bright pink - which strangely he loved and kept on all week. That evening we spent a while trying to get rid of a drunk man who invited himself into our card game only to ignore all the rules and keep throwing all his cards down at once whilst banging his beer bottle on the table - I always attract the best ones!
Louise and I also had the extra bonding experience of a freezing cold communal shower from the first day onwards - there was the option of a hot shower but the cold one was right next to our hut and in our laziness we would rather brave the cold shower with a chance of people walking in on us than walk further to the hot private cubicles. I learnt how lazy I actually am because I hate being cold.
