In and Around Moshi

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Moshi - Mt. Kilimanjaro 2-13-06
We left Kampala at 5:10 Am on a well maintained, Kenya Air 737 jet. The 1-1/2 hour flight to Nairobi was uneventful as was the turboprop flight to Kilimanjaro airport. Upon arrival we learned that there are no busses from the airport to Moshi where we planned to stay. It cost $50 US to take a cab for the 15 mile ride to town. Tell me cabbies aren’t the same everywhere. Later we learned that we could have taken a cab about 1 mile to the main road and flagged down a bus from there to town for about $2.

Moshi is a scruffy smallish town, but it is where you stay if you can’t afford the luxury safari lodges near Kilimanjaro. We found a decent place to stay, the Kindoroko Hotel, for $30 per night (as opposed to $150 to $360 for the lodges), then started looking into costs for trekking the mountain. It turns out that the government doubled the fees as of Jan. 1st, so it was going to cost us $60 each for entry fees plus $100 mandatory guide fee, plus mandatory guide tip to just walk in the park. We also learned that it would cost us about $500 for a one day safari into the Ngorongoro Crater, so we nixed the idea of doing either.

But we were committed to stay the night so we searched for a place to eat lunch and found the IndoItaliano Restaurant … a combination of Italian food (read that pizza) and many Indian dishes. We of course ordered Indian dishes, somosas, some little green ball things that were great, and the ubiquitous

mixed vegetable/

dish. We couldn’t figure out if there were even vegetables in, never mind what they might be, but it tasted great.

At a table near us were some young Brits and Aussies who had just completed a climb of Mt. Kilimanjaro, a four day effort. The final ascent began at midnight, climbing from about 12,000 ft. to the glacier capped summit at about 18,000 ft. They arrived at sunup cold and with some altitude sickness. It was sleeting, so they each took one photo from the top then started their way back down. They were celebrating their accomplishment with pizzas and beer. Had I been their age I surely would have climbed Kilimanjaro. I pined a bit knowing that I will never do so.

At another table near us (actually all the tables were near us … it isn’t that big a place) were a Danish family of five, Mom, Dad, two boys ages 11 and 13 and a cute little girl about six or seven. Dad had been a pig farmer all his life, but the government had recently bought his property through eminent domain for a public works project. They decided to travel for a year all around Africa with some of the proceeds. Dad piloted their plane from place to place. The Danish equivalent of BBC aired their story at some point. They even have a website where they record their adventures: Flying Family Tour Everyone but their two boys seemed to be thrilled about the adventure. Perhaps it was because they had earaches, or maybe they were just normal preteen boys.

After lunch I wandered around town a bit, poking into various small shops to see what was up. I was amazed by the number of tailoring shops on the two blocks surrounding out hotel. While I was exploring Marie finished a project due at Dearborn by 9:00 AM CST. Fortunately she had a nine hour lead on Central Time, so despite a power outage throughout the town for most of the day she was able to send it off in time when the power came back on. Her editor emailed back within minutes of receiving it, amazed and thrilled that she had submitted it on time.

That evening we returned to the IndoItaliano and ordered pizza (it was cheaper and comes a lot faster than the Indian food). While waiting for our order we met an older Danish couple who recently retired to Moshi. I can’t imagine why, but they have been there for two years. As we chatted with them Marie asked if they knew a good doctor in town. She was worried about the Danish boy’s earaches. They did, and gave her the name, so she marched across the street to the Buffalo hotel and gave it to the Danish family.

Soon they all paraded over to the restaurant, glad to have fellow Danes to talk to. In the mean time we found two Italian women about our age traveling together so we invited ourselves to their table and let the Danes babble on. Although their English wasn’t as fluent as the Danes, we had fun visiting with them, each of us trying to make ourselves understood … a true negotiating process

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Photos

Tailors All Over
The streets near our hotel had two or three seamstresses and/or tailors in fron of nearly every shop.

Mt. Killimanjaro
View of Mt. Killimanjaro from our airplane

Rooftop Restaurant
Marie having breakfast at the Kindoroko Hotel