This was the best day of the trip. Sounds funny when I write and read that back... we've only just begun, but today will be hard to beat.
You know those perfect days that just happen with very little influence? I remember having the perfect pickup basketball game or flag football game when I was kid... we would play it forever and it was so fun....yet, you would try and repeat the magic the next day with all the same variables and inevitably something didn't work - people didn't show, or something else was just off.
I remember taking Tracy, Beth's friend, in Japan for a day and even though I had planned it and knew it well we had so much luck that it was the perfect day - we saw everything including all of the lucky things you can't plan for.
Today was kind of like that.
Ema, it turns out, is the logistics manager for Scenic, and in his spare time, drives for them. He has been with them for 8 years, so what we were seeing so far is that they were good employers. Check check. We learned that they had 7 full time Safari guides and 8 Kilimanjaro climbing guides. Climbing was a big thing here - Kilimanjaro is on a lot of people's bucket list. We had briefly considered it, as it sounds like it's not overly tough, but it takes 5 or 6 days to slowly acclimate and enjoy the climb up and down and it was an easy one to trade off for more Safari days.
So we opted to drive to the base of the climb and check it out a bit more closely. Ema drove us on the "highway" which was a one lane road each way with a speed limit of about 50 (assuming kph). Again, the colours and displays of the boundaries of human ingenuity were on display. It was beautiful.
The temperature was about 25 with very little humidity. A nice refresh from Cairo. Along the way, we saw lots of tiny kids in school uniforms who could do nothing but smile and wave at the animals inside our jeep :-). Eventually we hit a sloped road and we were on the base of Kilimanjaro. The weather quickly changed to foggy and moist. I noticed a nice little valley view and asked to stop. When we got out, I noticed five little dots down the slope of the road, moving quickly towards us. They were little school kids. I started to mock run towards them and they stopped running. I ran backwards and they smiled. I knelt down on the pavement and waited for them - they were so small.
We ended up spending twenty minutes with the cute little pack. I gave them my phone and camera and let them take pictures of us, which they thought was pretty hilarious. It ended up being a pretty good ice breaker. We kind of wanted to package them up and take them home with us!
Ema had a beaming smile when we got back in the truck. We drove another few minutes to the gates of Kilimanjaro national park, and that is as far as you could go without a permit. The vibe was very much "big climb" like the feel you get in Pokhara or Kathmandu where everyone is gunning for adventure. There was gear, guides, porters and a couple of trekking outfits. Alex and Robin stepped through the area where you needed a permit to walk and made it about 5 steps up Kili before getting yelled at. We have found a lot of similarities between Alex and Robin: they both skirt convention when it makes sense, they eat anything and they both have a certain joke de vivre or what I like to call a certain "I don't know what" (Dr. Evil) (and yes I,realize it's joy of life).
Apparently this was the "easy route" starting area, with a string of huts at logical stopping points, no camping and relatively easy ascent. The camping routes were on other sides, and these were considered the "technical routes".
It was lightly raining on the mountain, so we left and I asked Ema to find something cool - a market or something. Turns out he was from the town at the foothills of the mountain, so we went to a small market where we ended up running in to his sister in law. We bought veggies and fruit and spent a while in the market. It was fun. I had dried fish and Kim bought a wooden spoon. We've noticed the people are very camera shy, so if you asked they would usually say no. But sometimes we had these golden moments.
We drove to lunch. Ema dumped us at a tourist spot in the Center of Moshi and we proceeded to have lunch. The lunch took some time, so we played Presidents for a while. We are a loud group, but fun loving. In retrospect, we should have gone to Raj's in town Indian restaurant.
After lunch we had another stop... to the huge central market in Moshi. I heard later that the kids were rolling their eyes and asking how long we were going for. An hour later, time had flown and they had barely noticed. The market was fascinating. Setup like many Asian markets, but different. The cacophony of colours, sites and sounds was unlike what you would see in Asia, or India for that matter. And the people were so engaging and beautiful.... at one point Alex was talking to somebody, and I was chatting with some kids I'd met, and Abby and Robin were buying stuff and Matt and Jeff were browsing around. Poor Ema was trying to keep us all corralled but it didn't work. The market was huge, safe, amazing and full of everything you could think of.
We left and drove on. The girls (Beth and Kim) wanted to check out some tanzanite rings. Ema took us to a tourist shop specializing in all things tourists should be interested in - trinkets, t-shirts (got one), masks, statues, paintings....Beth and I and the girls are so still kind of shopped out of the small stuff. I prefer to buy bigger, more expensive things as we've all thrown out a ton of trinkets. I kept asking Abby if she wanted to buy anything, and she said she wasn't interested. Kim and Alex are not so jaded and picked up a few things, though they will be looking for bigger and better as well. I felt there was more to come in Zanzibar.
Outside I engaged with a man who was trying to sell me antique items - hand wound phonograph. He was elderly and handsome - a bit of alcohol smelled on his breath, but he seemed fun. Once I politely refused what he was offering, we sat down on a bench together and he opened up his case of photographs. He had a ton - antique cars, some other junk, but he also had a few of himself in there. He was a cute guy - a soldier turned antique dealer.
Ema was done for the day - we were on our way home when someone mentioned seeing Kilimanjaro potentially for the last time. He took a turn up a dirt road, taking us to a lookout spot to see Kilimanjaro emerge from the clouds when we saw...more kids! A batch of small kids came out of a nearby farmhouse running and yelling "hi!". The seven of us were all entertaining the kids when Alex came up the road holding a little toddler, and he was saying "I got one!". Oh my god... we laughed, after it was clear that the toddler was safe back on the ground.
Beth later said "can you imagine what would happen in our society if a black guy went in to a farm and grabbed a white toddler and said "I got him!". Wow Alex, wow. Too funny.
We finally got home at 6:30pm - Ema was great. He dropped us off and we ran into an expat from Pennsylvania - a young student actually doing an exchange and volunteering at an incubator project. She gave us some great advice for Zanzibar. We heard Robin say "I'm doing that!". We have no doubt Robin will travel and live abroad at some point....sigh. What have done?
More Indian and a lot of wine for three, and we were invited to play Presidents....the kids were laughing at all of the adults..they were in such a great mood. At one point the three drunks were down in three of the last four positions and Matt looked and shook his head muttering something about drinking....
We all concluded it was the best day of the trip....I know - sounds corny. As Beth said, we came to Africa for the animals, and we love the people.
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