Stopped off in Mbeya
Trip Start
Sep 15, 2006
1
37
80
Trip End
??? ??, 2007
Mbeya,
Tanzania
Saturday, February 3, 2007
"I'm walking." I snapped.
"But where are you going?"
"I don't know."
He laughed. "Muzungu, you are like a blind man!"
Better a blind man than surrounded by crooks and thieves. We've learned that anyone who hangs out at bus stations to help people is to be trusted only if there aren't any corporate lawyers or snake-oil salesmen around. Fortunately, here they're a busy bunch, and they don't tail us out of the bus station. Too many other people on our bus to bother, I guess.
Mbeya turns out to have a charming and small downtown area despite its sprawling nature, quite easy to walk to from the bus station. Finding the Warsame Guest House was easy, with the help of a nice young man who ran off before I could tip him. We take a spacious room with 2 beds and a broken down brown couch even a frat-house would have thrown out by now. The "rules" posted on the wall complain that previous guests have used the blankets and sheets to clean up after sex acts. Thanks for letting me know. Awesome. Well, we'll set those aside and use them to crush spiders. Which there are plenty of.
On the bright side, the place did have a faucet and a tiled laundry table out back, which enabled me to do some much-needed cleaning of my wardrobe. It was easy to wear the same thing for days in the colder European countries, but now that I was walking around in the blazing heat all day, I couldn't put off a change any longer.
We went to a local restaurant and had the African special... the only thing on the menu, which consists of a mountain of rice, a bit of broth, and some old chicken leg somebody cooked last week. Now, I'm not complaining, but I think I'm ready for a slight culinary variation.
In the morning, we broke out the good ol' food bag for breakfast and finished off a loaf of bread. In a more scary development, we finished the second jar of peanut butter in less than two weeks. Now sure, this is local peanut butter, so to be fair, that's like eating a jar and a half of peanuts and half a jar of sand, but still, that's overdoing it a bit on the peanut oil. We vow to cut it out, and head to the tourist info office, which is closed for no apparent reason. Ok. So, nothing to do but stare up at that huge peak that's just begging me to climb it.
Cierra decided to walk in to a local vet's office and met Dr Mwatcha, a nice guy who then spent the next hour walking around the downtown with us, and eventually took us to the tourist office, which was now open. A young man named Felix with an infectious laugh welcomed us inside and told us about several tours. Among them, we could climb Loleza Peak, the same one I'd been staring at all morning, and as the hike would only take 5 hours, we could do it that very afternoon! We agreed and hurried off to have lunch early.
Felix met us promptly at 1, and we set off on our climb up this extinct volcano. The path was slick and with us in our hiking sandals, Felix had to constantly warn us when the especially slippery parts revealed themselves. What a fantastic time we had! Felix was a wonderfully intellectual guy, with a great sense of humor and a real desire to help his fellow Tanzanians. He kept us smiling and talking even as we puffed up the steepest sections of the mountain.
At the top, or as close as the Tanzanian government wants you to their radio antenna, we paused to snap a few pictures and have a bite before heading back down. Across the valley and opposite the town below, a mountaintop thunderstorm was crackling away, and we decided to beat it back down. During the descent, we ran into a herd of cows who thought they were goats, trotting up and down a nearly vertical wall of mountain. Cierra also started having serious traction issues on the way down. Every few minutes, we'd hear a thump, look back and there she'd be, sitting on the ground, legs out in front. No serious damage, though.
Felix pointed out one of his favorite eateries in town, and we decided to splurge for a night in a restaurant with tablecloths. Well, plastic tablecloths and plastic bucket-seats, but who cares? Sombrero was a chance for a little something different, and the mound of delicious mashed potatoes we shared off my plate had both of us sighing with satisfaction.
In the morning, we went to the Internet cafe to check on news from home. I should mention now what I forgot in the last entry... our lovable older dog Mikey, staying with Cierra's parents, had gone into kidney failure. Cierra found out while we were in Iringa in an email from home. Though we knew Mikey's health might not hold out while we did this trip, it was still an awful shock for Cierra. We were both pretty heartbroken, as the prognosis wasn't good at this point. That had been back in Iringa, and there wasn't anything new on our little guy in the email. I guess no news in this case could be good news. We bummed around the market for a bit, but got tired of shopping and headed out towards the bus station. Our destination was Tukuyu, a mountain town 70 kilometers to the south. A smaller town with more hiking opportunities, it would be a good place to hang out for a few days.
