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Published: February 9th 2010
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the start
riding on a motorcycle outside dar es salam Hi friends,
hope you all had a great start in 2010 and more important you are all healthy!
I want to tell you this time about my newest trip to Tanzania.
When my cousin Benjamin and I wanted to continue our traveling fun from last year, we were first thinking about South America. But we found out soon, that is going to be way too costly so we decided to look for Africa.
Africa to me was literally always a black spot in my personal mind map. So it was time to brighten up this black spot by some travel experiences. We soon agreed to start with Tanzania, because it seemed politically stable and people are used to travelers, but still not that crowded like Kenya.
Our trip started in the biggest city of Tanzania, Dar es Salaam. When I arrived at the airport, my cousin came to pick me up with a motor cycle. Then we went to the city center to get a first look of that cultural melting pot. To be honest, I was a bit disappointed. The city was just busy, crowded and quite dusty. So after a first meal and some
sightseeing close the a market we decided to leave urban life behind and discover some rural life instead.
The landscape was beautiful while we were heading to our first host in Tanzania, Simon. My cousin is an active couchsurfer (www.couchsurfing.com) so he contacted him before to ask him if we could stay at his place. He was a great guy, very modest and social. He was working as a teacher in a primary school in his rural area, that he opened himself with a friend through donations. He showed us the local way of producing cashew nuts and his wife cooked us the typical Tanzanian dish named Ugali. It is made of maize and tastes quite interesting.
We stayed two days with Simon, then we left for the first big adventure... the Safari. Benni and I didn't arrange any safari in advance, we decided to head to the main city for safaris - Arusha. There we met also lovely brothers who knew Simon and therefore let us stay at there place. One of the brothers was William who became very close to Benni (no, what your dirty minds is thinking now :-) They felt some connection, so believe
it or not, they want to marry now... uh no, they will do business together and open their own safari company with social responsibility. Actually William was already working for a safari company so he could give us good advice which national parks to go to. We picked Tarangire, Serengeti, Ngorongoro and Lake Manyara National Park...
I can tell you one thing - it was one of the most astonishing nature experiences in my life. I've never seen such a huge variety of animals in one area. I hope to give you a little insight with my pictures.
Although you travel the whole time with a jeep you still feel strongly connected to nature in these parks. There was never fear involved when we saw wild animals and they we were never afraid of us. One small exception was the open campsite in the heart of Serengeti. At night you could hear lions roaring very near to our tents, kind of weird but not really dangerous as humans are not on their menu.
After seven days of safari we went to another city called Moshi. There we met our third and last couchsurfing host named Walter. He was
also very generous and open minded and showed us around in Moshi. The reason we came to Moshi was the second big adventure... the Kilimanjaro Summit Hike. As Benni and I climbed Mount Kinabalu last year in Malaysia (I still hate him for those pains in my legs afterwards ;-)) we had to top ourselves, so there was no doubt Kilimanjaro has to be beaten by us.
My friends, I can tell you it became my toughest physical challenge so far. There are different routes to climb the Kili, so we decided to hike the Machame Route for 6 days. A very nice and intelligent business woman named
Gladys lend us great advice, professional equipment and a good team for climbing the highest mountain of Africa. Our guide was Moussa, he had a good heart and well experienced. He took care of us in our worst moments as both Benni and I became almost mountain sick. Every day closer to the top within the four and a half days became tougher and tougher. Heavy heads and absence of appetite tortured us a lot. It was raining, it was cold not only during the day, but also in our tents at
night. But all this suffering made us appreciate Uhuru (=Freedom) Peak, the highest point much more when we reached it. I almost thought I won't make it. My cousin and Moussa, the guide helped me a lot on the last meters, because of the altitude of almost 6,000 m and low pressure I felt being close to blackout. I tried to activate my last enery reserves and asked Moussa to go faster on the last meters so I do not fall asleep.
It helped, and believe it or not, we started as one of the last groups to the summit and we reached the top as first group!!! I will never forget that feeling reaching this goal.
When we returned from Kilimanjaro almost three weeks of our trip was done. Now after almost two weeks of camping, the only thing that I wanted was relaxation preferably on the beach. So we wanted to get to coastal area and somehow reach the beautiful island of Zanzibar. Since we started our trip from Dar es Salaam we didn't want to take the ferry from there to the island. Instead we took the risk and went to the northern east city Tanga.
But there was no ferry going to Zanzibar for three days. As our time was limited we headed to a smaller city more south, Pangani. Also there was no ferry, but a nice volunteer coordinator helped us and took us by a local bus to a fishermans village. Actually it became our third adventure without planning it before. In the middle of the night some guys boarded us to a sailing boat that was originally built for 20 people, but carried some 40. It took us five hours in this nut shell and believe me, everyday on this boat became seasick. Imagine 40 black workers around you puking out of the guard rail and two Iranians right in the middle. A very interesting experience. By the way, Benni and I managed not to puke... him by trying more or less successful to sleep and me by focusing on the horizon.
Finally we arrived at Zanzibar. It was nice after all this stress to relax at the beach. Now I had some typical touristy days, so nothing special to tell you at this point
Well maybe one thing before I finish my story. On my way back to Munich
motorcycle
"whose chopper is this? - zed's..." I had a full day stopover in Cairo, and I used it to see the pyramids of Gizeh and Saqqara and the Egyptian Museum. The pictures speak for themselves.
That's it, my friends. I know I'm not the best writer, but maybe it inspires you to share your travel experiences with others or makes you want to have new travel experiences. Go out and explore!
If you want to read a more sophisticated and a bit different view to this trip go and check
Benni's blog .
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