2 Weeks till Home!

Hi everyone and Happy Valentine’s Day!  Kevin and I are now in Moshi, Tanzania, which is the main town at the base of Mt. Kilimanjaro.  We arrived on Feb 9^th after a long, ten-hour bus ride from Dar es Salaam, though it was considerably more comfortable this time as compared to the 14.5 hour ride we had on the way down to Dar (we made sure to take the right company this time!)   We are staying at a backpacker’s hostel which is fairly good and clean and most importantly for us right now, cheap!  Also, Moshi is much less expensive for food than Dar and Zanzibar and also has more fresh salads and sandwiches which is a nice change. 

Most of our time in Moshi so far has been quite relaxing, as we have mainly explored the town, read and perused the internet in coffee shops (with great Kilimanjaro coffee!)  We also found a great internet connection so we have been able to skype for the first time so far in Africa, which has been really great!  The last two days have been particularly lazy for Kevin and me as our legs are quite stiff from climbing to the base camp of Kilimanjaro!

On Saturday we took a dalla dalla (local mini-van transport here) with our guide to a town called Marangu where we then took a cab to the main gate of Kilimanjaro National Park.  We started the hike by walking down many steps (similar to those at Wreck Beach or the Grouse Grind) to a waterfall, which was really nice though slightly underwhelming as it is the dry season.  We then started our hike on the main trail up to the base camp.  The majority of the hike was through a thick rainforest with beautiful vegetation as well as blue monkeys and white colombus monkeys along with several waterfalls.  We started at 1000m above sea level and hiked up to 2700m where the base camp is, which was approximately 8km up, so about 16km round trip.  As we got higher the vegetation became less dense with smaller trees, more grasses and bushes.  After about 3.5 hours we reached the base camp where we ate lunch for about 15 minutes and then we hiked a little further up to see Maundi crater and some great views of the surrounding areas, including the border to Kenya.  By the time we were at the top my legs felt like jelly!  Even though the “climb” is really more of a hike, it is still ascending a long way for 4 hours straight which was exhausting, though completely worth it.  After we left the crater we continued straight back down the mountain which took about 2 hours and that was actually kind of difficult too as it takes a lot of control and is hard on your knees going down big steps!  All in all it took us 6 hours and we were told that our time was really good so we were happy with that and really enjoyed the trek.  Plus it is super cool to have climbed at least some of Kilimanjaro!  Unfortunately for us it is far too expensive to climb the whole thing, and frankly after feeling how sore our legs were after just the first climb, I’m not sure we are entirely ready to attempt the summit!  That will have to be another trip!

Apart from our Kilimanjaro adventure, we don’t have much else to report.  We had mentioned before that we were going to go to Lushoto, but unfortunately we decided to scrap that as the transport would have been a hassle and we aren’t in much of a mood for precarious travel right now as well as the place we were planning to stay was actually much more expensive than we thought (once again the Lonely Planet was way off!)  So we came straight here but have really enjoyed it as Moshi is quite nice, cleaner than most cities here, the people are friendly and things are cheap.  We have two more nights here and then we will head up to Nairobi, Kenya for a couple of nights and after that we are not quite sure.  We have about a week and have not decided what we will do but hopefully we will travel somewhere else in southern Kenya and maybe see some more animals!  Then we start our journey back to Canada via Liberia on Feb 26^th and then leave Liberia on Feb 28^th, getting into Seattle on March 1^st!  We are really excited to come home and can’t wait to see all of our friends and family!

We hope you are all well and we look forward to catching up with everyone when we are back!