MartinFromOz

Arrived back in Mto wa Mbu on Sunday evening from Moshi after an absence of 3 years since our first time here. It seems largely unchanged apart from a new bank, a roadside coffee cart where you can get real coffee (catering to the safari crowd) and a huge new upmarket service station & restaurant/bar with outdoor tables on a fresh, green (wait for it,,,,) LAWN! Both of these last two cater for the safari crowd and a few well-heeled locals, as their prices are out of the reach of most of the people here. Maybe now we’ll see some safari-types come out from behind the gates of their lodges? (We KNOW you’re in there!). We tried out the restaurant at the servo. We are living back in the same house as last time. It’s in ... read more

The start of our second African adventure! After a hectic period for our family that has included helping both of our kids move house at the same time (one family in Torquay and the other into our own house in Warrnambool), we’ve hit the road until Christmas. Our plan is to return as volunteers to the Bandari Project in Tanzania for a month, followed by independent travel around Rwanda, Uganda and lastly Madagascar. Ran into some Warrnambool friends on the train to Melbourne and discovered that we’d be sharing the 13-hour flight with them as far as Abu Dhabi where we hung out with them for a couple of hours. Then it was off to Nairiobi and a four hour stopover before our final leg south to Kilimanjaro, flying right past the iconic peak that we ... read more