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Weekend Holiday at Kilimanjaro (Part 1)
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This weekend I travelled with my housemate Julie and a friend who currently lives in Nairobi to see Mount Kilimanjaro up close! There are more and better photos of Kili coming soon, but for now, a few choice looks at the amazing country I'm living in!!
Julie made the travel arrangements with a safari company that she has used before. The driver picked us up at 8:30 on Saturday morning. We drove from Arusha to Moshi, about a 2-hour drive. We passed small towns and lonely houses in the middle of vast plains. We saw women carrying produce to market on their heads, Masai tribesmen herding their cattle, and just really got a chance to take in the roadside scenes.
We just barely saw the peak of Kilimanjaro through the clouds and haze. But the time we got to Moshi, around 10:30AM, it was completely obscured.
We stopped briefly in Moshi to pick up our first guide, and then drove up into the hills to a tiny village. We walked through a couple of peoples backyards to a narrow uneven trail through the forest. It was a great example of sustainable agriculture! Old natural rainforest trees as well as towering mango and avacado trees shelter banana fields which in turn shade coffee plants and yams.- its basically 5 crops in one field, and from vast numbers of healthy plants we say, it works pretty well!
We walked for about an hour occasionally balancing across log bridges or hopping from stone to stone across small rivers. We acquired a small following of children who raced back and forth up and down the trail as we
laboriously panted our way towards the Materuni Waterfall. Finally we saw it- all three of us were in awe!
We sat at the base of Materuni, took lots of photos and had our boxed lunch provided by the company. What do you most want to eat after a long hike in the presence of a beautiful waterfall??? I'll just take a chance an bet whatever you might desire it will NOT be the following: 1 large donut, 1 white bread-tomato- chicken sandwich with butter (crusts removed), 1 4-inch diameter fried meat pie, 1 meat samosa, 1 crepe, 1 box of super-sweet cherry juice, 1 bag of potato chips. Honestly I would have killed for an apple. But next time I go on a safari I'll know to request we stop and buy some fruit along the way. We ended up giving most of our lunches to the kids who had accompanied us- indeed I suspect that happens often which helps to account for our popularity with them.
Then it was back to the town, where we got to photograph these beautiful girls carying water up the road.
We met the jeep and headed down the hill to our resort. In the next post: seeing Kili, more waterfalls, and Banana Beer
Latest Comments (2)
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yay annelies (reply)
Feb 5, 2008 14:51 EST by rlopata
mt. kilaminjaro! How very awesome. You rock. (Pun entirely intended...) :)
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Fabulous (reply)
Feb 4, 2008 10:17 EST by janshearer
What are the temperatures there? It looks like it could be a little cool. Fabulous pictures and sounds like a wonderful weekend trip. Wish I was there!
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| 9. | Weekend Holiday at Kilimanjaro (Part 1) - Moshi, Tanzania Feb 04, 2008 (  6 ) (  2 ) |
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