Arrived in Tanzania

Tanzania is far away from everything we know, that's why it deserves a visit.

We are fully aware that the Ebola virus outbreak is currently getting a lot of press, but to make it very clear, we are very far away from West Africa. There are many other illnesses that should be taken just as seriously here locally, malaria and dengue are just 2 I can think of. Malaria itself kills hundreds of thousands every year, even though treatments for it is available. Well, we are taking precautions not to get bitten by anything in the first place, so hopefully we should get through with only pictures and a lot of fund memories.

In Kilimanjaro airport we were greeted by some health workers, which would measure our pupil dilation and temperature. They do not want to introduce this very serious illness to the country of Tanzania. I can totally understand them, but do not understand people who think they can travel through the West African countries, just because they want to? That in my eyes, is an unnecessary risk for sure.

The last few weeks before the trip, we had tried to get hold of the trekking company with a bunch of questions, but received no response. I have to admit, I was starting to worry that we had been scammed. We had deposited 10% of the total amount of the trek to them a few months earlier. There was a problem with the transfer and I had to do a second one. That day the company representative went to the bank and had both transfers go through. Great... or?

I could just imagine that we show up in the airport and there is nobody there, no company by that name, nothing. Just 2 receipts for money transfers to a guy in Tanzania.

We paid for our visas in the airport, $50, at least those not being US citizens who had to pay $100. Oh, the price of being free, haha. Afterwards we found our luggage, everything was there, very good sign. We started to exit the airport building and then luckily my worries were put to shame and a guy was waiting in the airport with a sign "McSmarte", yeah.

We drove to our bed and breakfast in the near by town, Moshi, where we were going to stay a few days to get used to the time difference and recover from the traveling. The place was called Hibiscus and was located a few minutes away from the Moshi "downtown" area, but outside in a more jungle like setting.

I had not been sleeping at all on the flights, so as soon as we got our rooms, I passed out and slept until the evening. I was totally busted.

We got to meet with the trekking company owner, Evarist, he was a quite funny guy and everything seemed to be in order. We went out with him for dinner and called it a night pretty early.

The only problem now was that there was no internet at the Bed&Breakfast. Uh oh....

Tanzania, here we come

It has been a while since the last bigger trip, but yes, it is time again. Tanzania this time.

Teemu and I got a ride to the airport from Joni, who was going to leave the US in a few weeks due to the layoffs in San Diego. Must be a bitch to be caught in a visa situation and be forced to leave. Sorry man...
In the airport, after waiting for too long already, we decided to go through security and get a beer while waiting for Hyunju. She is no stranger to travelling, her ability to get lost or how confused she can be is known, but still she decided to go on this trip without a working phone. Brilliant plan.
Who do we find sitting in the airport drinking beer already? Yes, there she was with a cold beer in the hand. Starts good
We ordered some food and beers, went to the gate and took off for a transit night at a hotel in Washington, specifically handpicked for good reviews. We arrived at 21:50, and were pretty hungry. The hotel did not have a restaurant, but there were a couple of restaurants nearby that were open - open until 22:00. I was reminded why it has been more than 10 years since I last had Domino pizza, but it was the only food around.
I had to work a little before calling it a night and a few hours of clamping on the computer. This is a special working trip to test our equipment in the foreign parts of the world. That means I have to do the hard job of taking a flight around the world and do the dirty work.
The hotel had breakfast included, which was actually ok. I made my own waffles with a little help from an older lady. They were really good. Except that a few hours later I could start tasting them again. We had a flight to the biggest continent, from Dulles DC to Addis Ababa in Ethiopia, where we would change the flight after a few hours. I felt the trip was pretty fast at least getting to Europe, but on the map when we were over Nice in France, we were only half way. Africa is BIG!
The airport in Addis Ababa looks very old and what looks like temporary installations is actually permament ones and have been for many years. There were praying rooms for people, but it seemed like only men were using it, have to investigate that a little closer.
We went to the best restaurant we could find. Teemu and I ordered two unknown menu items, just to try it, while our culinary expert went for some fish fillets. Turned out that the 2 dishes we ordered were actually really good, while the fish thing was below the standard the princess requested.
The woman in the restaurant came with the bill and Teemu asked if we could pay with dollars. Yes, she said, it would be the price divided by 10. Quick math from my side, showed it would be $56. Not even in an American airport would we be charged 56 USD for this meal, so we started doing the math ourselves. We roughly added it up to $40 with tip, looking at the menu they had prices in dollars and local currency where the exchange rate was about 20. She tried to get the rate down to 10?? Signs of some interesting weeks ahead of us, haha

Moshi Town and preparations

Here we are, in the middle of Tanzania, in a small town called Moshi. None of us had ever heard about this place, before we started to look at the possibilities to climb Mount Kilimanjaro. Moshi is one of 2 "main gates" for doing Kilimanjaro climbs, the other being Arushua. Actually we are not in the middle of the country, Moshi, Arushua and Kilimanjaro are all located right on the border of Tanzania and Kenya. The altitude of the city is about 800m, which does not really matter too much in terms of having problems to breathe. However, considering the proximity to equator, I am very surprised it is this "cold", as I was expecting a more tropical environment.
People are dressed up in long pants and closed shoes, I seem a little out of the place with flip flops. After a day of walking around Moshi, I figured out why they wear shoes, it is so god damn dusty there, I was covered in dust up to the knees, even with long pants...
The city have roads, covering most of the city, but get just a little away from the main streets, the side walk is dusty soil and the road the same.
The second reason, is probably that the area is known to have malaria transmitting mosquitoes, preventing bites is better than medication. We came prepared with plenty of bottled DEET, which probably does not belong of the list of stuff you want to smear all over your body, but it is quite effective in the fight against mosquitoes. I will take the chance for a few weeks...
The bed and breakfast we stayed at, had provided us with a pretty good breakfast, but now it was time to take matters into our own hands and get our first Tanzanian meal. Since we were going to start the hike very soon, the general consensus was that there was no need to go totally crazy and risk a bad stomach already at this point.
I pointed at some random item from the menu in the local foods section, the woman taking the order translated the dish into English, beef tongue. Well, that didn't exactly sound like a cheeseburger to me, but this is one of the main reasons for traveling, trying out local stuff.
Hynju and Teemu went safe and got some regular chicken and beef dishes. The tongue stew was actually not too bad, but it seemed like Hyunju was surprised that the chicken was served on a piece of bone, not a white meat chicken breast. Welcome to the real world.
After dinner we browsed around a little more, being attacked by various sellers in the town, selling anything from old worn shoes to paintings with their initials on the canvas. Yeah right...
A lot of people speak English, or there is always someone within reach that does speak English. The main language in Tanzania is Swahili, whereas there are many tribes that have their own local languages and dialects. We have gotten hold of a basic English to Swahili cheat sheet, looks like people really like us greeting them in their own language. Nice
The remainder of the group finally arrived, Rebecca, Pehr and Fredrik. We spend the evening chatting away about things we discovered so far in this new country, having arrived 24 hours earlier than them we were so freaking clever already.
The next day we dragged them around the area we had already been covering, but then we ventured out on an expedition, until there were no more roads, no Muzungu in sight (Swahili for white man) and it got really local.
Looks like I found the local Dixie Line lumber yard. They have a lot of planks like any other lumber yard too, but also a few other items, I probably would have a hard time finding in the local store back in the US.
The local tire shop was also represented, everyone needs tires. There are a lot of minibuses transporting people around, often filled to the max and then a little more. They are all diesel and of course none of these vehicles have filters on the exhaust, so the air is constantly full of diesel fumes and dust. Delicious.
A lot of people drive motorcycles or bicycles, not exactly the same models as in South East Asia. These are 50-125cc motorcycles, Chinese or Indian models, looking very weak. They all have tubes in the tires which I guess is an indicator that things are moving a little slower here?
The bicycles look like something from an old 50's movie, with only very few newer looking bikes around. Maybe the old bikes are of a better quality than the newer "Made in China" bikes?
Back at the hotel in the evening, we prepared for the arrival of the head guide. He was going to go over some practical things for the upcoming hike, like checking our gear and tell us a few things that we ought to know.
The guys name was Mwinyi, took me a while to learn to spell that! He went over the program for the next few days, so we would not be too surprised of what was about to happen.
Since the climb would be taking us up close to the 6km limit, we would need some really warm clothes and sleeping bags. We all agreed to use their rental service instead of bringing a ski jacket and sleeping bag with us the entire way from the US.
He went through the gear of everyone of us, to see, if we were properly equipped for the hike. Of course we were prepared already, but it was kind of nice with a check from a professional. I think we had been reading a lot about this already, so there weren't exactly too many surprises.
Mwinyi left and the owner Evarist returned a few hours later with the rental gear and to settle the financial matters. Most of the money we pay goes to different government organizations and the park rangers, fees for this and that.
It is not that we are cheap or anything, but we wanted to use a locally owned company, which were on the cheaper side already, thinking that we could then tip the people involved in the hike the difference to some of the other companies. There are hundreds of companies arranging tours up the mountain, but only very few of them are actually locally owned companies. Many foreigners who have been here, want in on the deal and start selling complete packages from Europe or the US. They kind of contract the cheap locally owned companies to make the most profit or they open up their own company in Tanzania, charging very high prices, giving the traveler the impression that their service is so much better.
Well, we have paid, we have all the gear, we have been waiting for more than a year - lets just say that we are as ready as we can be!