A couple of weeks ago three of my friends and I decided last minute to travel to Tanzania for the weekend. We wanted to see Mt. Kilimanjaro and
experience Kenya’s neighboring country we had heard so much about! Throughout the week before we left we
tried many times to plan, but because of faulty Internet it was Thursday night
and we still had to book our hostel.
We then booked a hostel called The Green House and bought our bus
tickets without any other plans for the weekend. At first I thought this would be good! I am usually a type A person and need
everything planned, but maybe a weekend without plans would be good for
me! After all, I had been in Kenya
for about seven weeks and should be used to the go with the flow
lifestyle…right??
Ha,
well the weekend didn't go as smoothly as we had hoped. It all started at the Tanzanian border where we had to pay for a $100 Visa in
American dollars. We knew about
this requirement, but some of us didn’t have any American dollars left and we were
just planning on exchanging Kenyan shillings at the border. Well, I had brought a $50 bill and only
enough Kenyan shillings for the other $50. Without boring you with all of the details, the border
officials wouldn’t take my $50 dollar bill because it was too old (it was Series 1996). Ah! And my
friend Leah didn’t bring enough shillings to convert because she thought there
would be an ATM and of course, with our luck, there was no ATM to be found. So we all had to pull together the
little amount we had in Kenyan shillings to make up the equivalent of $150. For about fifteen minutes, we thought we
didn’t have enough money and we would be left at the border by our bus. But thankfully, after double checking in all of our bags and pockets, my friend Kaitlyn found
an extra thousand shillings to help us just squeak by!
After
that fiasco, we arrived in Arusha at around 3:00 PM ready to start the weekend.
We got off the bus and decided to go find the hostel.
Being in Kenya for awhile, we figured we didn’t need to
depend on a taxi and could navigate the dala dalas (like matatus in Kenya—the
14 passenger vans that serve as public transportation) ourselves.
After standing in the wrong place and
waiting for 20 minutes for a dala dala that never came, we finally got on
the right dala dala going towards Sombetini Road—the supposed location of this
hostel.
The website with the
directions said it would take about ten to fifteen minutes from town on the
dala dala without traffic.
Half an
hour later…we are still on the dala dala in the middle of rural Tanzania where
everyone was obviously surprised to see four young American girls.
A man we asked for help finally turned
to us and said “Sombetini Road” and so we got off.
Turns out the man had no idea where the hostel was and we
were just dropped off nowhere near the hostel.
We quickly figured this out after walking with about twenty children holding our hands and
following us around.
After five
minutes of trying (and failing) to call our Arusha contact, we decided it was
unsafe out in the middle of nowhere and we should get back to town.
So, all rattled and anxious, we boarded
the dala dala back into town and continued to ask people if they knew where in
the world was this Green House Hostel on Sombetini Road.
No one did.
Wanting comfort and a safe place, we decided to go back to
the nice, fancy hotel where the bus dropped us off to figure out what to do and
have a nice meal as it was getting dark.
After a nice relaxing meal, we asked the hotel for a reliable taxi and
our godsend Masaai Taxi Man came to save the day.
He graciously drove us to a different hostel to only find
they were booked (just our luck), drove all the way down Sombetini Road (it is
a lot scarier in the night) to look for the hostel again without luck (of
course), and finally drove us back into town and dropped us off at a cheap,
clean hotel he was familiar with.
He even came in and helped speak in Kiswahili to the front desk lady.
By the end of the day, we were all
exhausted, but couldn’t help but laugh at the ridiculous day we had just had!
Oh, and we all decided to give up on The Green House
hostel as it obviously doesn't exist.
On
Saturday, we had arranged (the night before at the full hostel) with a local tour guide, a local Tanzanian named Joshua,
to take us to Moshi to hike on the foothills of Mt. Kilimanjaro, see a
waterfall, and make organic coffee.
Leaving Arusha early on Saturday morning we arrived in Moshi at around
10:00 AM. Before leaving the town,
we stopped at the market to pick up our lunch of avocados, oranges, watermelon,
mangoes, and papayas. We then made
our way up the foothills on another dala dala. The forty-five minute drive up through the hills was
beautiful though a bit bumpy!
Everything was so green and peaceful. After we got off, we hiked with all of our heavy fruit and
water up the hills for about an hour and a half before we reached the
waterfall. The shear force of the
waterfall was incredible. The weather
completely changed when we approached it.
It was incredibly windy, cold, and of course misty. The sound alone was overwhelming. We were originally going to swim, but
we decided with the strong current and the cold water, we would pass! We then ate our lunch of delicious
fruit and prepared to make organic coffee from scratch!
Near
the waterfall was a family owned coffee farm where they welcomed visitors to
participate in the whole process of making coffee!
We first started with coffee beans that were still in their
shells.
(Coffee beans are white by
the way before they are roasted! I thought they started off brown…) We had to
beat (twanga in Kiswahili) the shells off the beans and then separate the
shells from the beans.
Next, we
roasted the beans on the fire (dark roast).
Third, we ground and sifted the coffee beans.
And last but not least, we added the
coffee grounds to water!
Before we
drank our coffee, the boys (sons of the coffee farmers) had us hold out our
hands for “coffee candy.”
It was
just coffee grounds mixed with sugar.
On the count of three, we all threw it in our mouths.
It was so delicious!!! I definitely
wanted more.
Then we sat and had
our cup of coffee.
It was
definitely the best cup of coffee I’ve ever had! I’m not sure if it was because
we helped make it or because we were drinking it on the foothills of Mt.
Kilimanjaro, but either way it was delicious! This was probably our favorite
part of the whole trip!
The boys
were so welcoming and fun!
And
they entertained us by teaching us an African song they sing when grinding the beans!
After our cup (or two) of coffee, we
headed back to Arusha and just collapsed at our hostel (Arusha Backpackers)
after getting something to eat.
The next morning we left Tanzania after a whirlwind weekend!
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| Beating the Beans to Loosen the Shells |
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| Separating the Shells After Pounding the Beans |
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| Roasting the Beans! |
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| Grinding the Beans! |
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| Sifting to then Grind the Beans Again! |
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| Best Cup of Coffee I've Ever Had! |
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| Us and our Coffee Men! |
On the bus Sunday morning, we had all
started to fall asleep when all of the sudden people on the bus woke us up to
look out the window. When we
looked we saw Mt. Kilimanjaro very faintly off in the distance. Though we were on the foothills and had
visited Moshi, Mt. Kilimanjaro was hidden by clouds the whole day on
Saturday. (The locals call Mt. Kilimanjaro shy because it's always hiding behind clouds.) We were all disappointed
as that was one of the main reasons we went to Tanzania. So even though it was faint, we left
satisfied that we had finally seen the magnificent mountain! (Look closely just above the clouds in
the picture below and you will see the dark top of Mt. Kilimanjaro)
