We are on our way into Arusha in the Hiace taxi. We noticed how the landscape is very different than in Dar, it is much more lush and really very green, we are in a slightly mountainous area, although it is really only one mountain, Mt Meru which is the 4th highest mtn in Africa and it's just outside our hotel, the rest of the land is small hills.

But the road to town was quite straight and very flat for the first 20 km. A lot of small trees, almost like large bushes and scrubland and not a lot to see other than quite a few goat herders herding their herds of goats (this is like 'how much wood could a wood chuck chuck?') We were pretty excited to even see that though!

However as we got closer to town the road became more curvey with gentle hills and the vegetation became much greener, larger plants and palm trees, it is quite beautiful. What was interesting though, is the people. Every 200-300 feet you see people walking on both sides of the road, single folks, groups of a few and groups of 5-10 as well. Some have buckets on their heads or bags of potatoes, sacks of what is maybe grain, maize or rice, and them women often just carry their purses that way, or large bunches of fruit, or piles of laundry. It's like a convoy of people as far as the eye can see.They are also all wearing the colourful robes, they are called kangas and they are all so vivid and bright. You see the men wearing both the traditional garb as well as pants and t-shirts, but the only women we have seen wearing western style clothes are the business women that you see downtown.

Every half mile or so are the dalla-dalla stops, sometimes as many as 4 or 5 dalla-dallas crowded into one bus stop (which is just a small roofed area like any bus stop) but they squeeze in so that the back end of half the bus is sticking right into the road and the taxi driver would have to swerve in the oncoming traffic lane, sometimes a little to close to the oncoming traffic for my liking! Yikes!! The dalla-dalla have different coloured stripes on the front which tell in which direction and which area the dalla-dalla will be going, so if you don't read, you can still find your way.

Every now and then there are these huge speed bumps on the road, which struck me as odd, considering this is a major road, one of the main ones, but I guess it cuts down on accidents, the drivers are maniacs.

Closer to town we start to see little shops, bars, restaurants and other businesses and I use those terms very lightly, they are all no more than run down ramshackle places, often no more than a shack with a porch, none have windows and I imagine the last paint touch-up was probably...never?. But it didn't seem as dirty as Dar, there wasn;t the huge amounts of garbage strewn about and it certainly seemed more like what we had expected, and the atmophere didn't seem quite so desperate.

Arriving at the hotel we were very happy to see how it looked, a large and open foyer filled with carved statues and a huge wooden reception desk, there seemed to be a lot of couches and areas where you could curl up and read and catch a nice breeze.
The hotel has 4 restaurants; a chinese, an indian, an italian and one where breakfast is served. Also an Internet cafe, a gift shop, 2 jewellery shops and other odds and ends. It's a top end hotel for Arusha, but they are building a new wing (or perhaps renovating an old one) and there is a lot of noise. As a matter of fact, our first room (note the "first") was not 5 feet from the construction, it was literally in our hallway outside our door. Down we go to reception to ask for a new room, which they gave us, a couple of floors up, with a view they said, of the pool. Up we went...this room was a smoking room and Nicole is allergic to smoke and it did reek (remember Zanzibar??), and the view was a rooftop, down we went and asked for a new room, they gave us one on 5 this time, up we went....it had no fan (and in +30 weather you NEED one) plus the bathroom had an incredibly strong smell of sewer gas that permeated the entire room....down we went, but we had exhausted their supply and we had to have that one until the next AM they said. They promised us a great room on 8th floor the next day. Geeze, who knew we would be so annoying? I mean, we're Canadian for gosh sakes. But I have to say, we were very polite and they were so kind and patient with us. And, as we mentioned , we will be spending a total of 6 nights here, and most of their customers are here one night only as they start and/or end their safari (this is the place where the safari companies pick up and drop off their clients.) So we will see what sort of room we get tomorrow.

We wandered through the hotel to get our bearings and checked out the gift shop which has comparable items to many of the things we purchased at the markets, but at 3 times the price, which pleased us no end to know we had gotten some good deals, plus we had the fantastic experience of our actual market purchase.

After all our room troubles we decided to have a nice meal in the Italian restaurant, and Nicole was not feeling great, so after that we just went upstairs to read and hit the sack. The room was SO hot, even with the fan, so we opened the window, figured out how to manipulate the screens so that there were no open spaces, taped up all the holes with my bright yellow handy dandy duct tape, unravelled our mosquito nets, taped up the holes in those, and crawled into our little cocoons with a book and a bottle of water and a flashlight. It's not quite as oppresively hot here as it was in Dar, it cools down a bit at night and a slight breeze comes in the window, so we did sleep pretty good.

It was awkward at night to get up for a bathroom run though, getting out from the net and then trying to re-tuck yourself in again but you need to protect yourself from the mosquitoes, but I must say we have not seen many, perhaps because of the drought. There were about 6 in the taxi from the airport which we killed as quick as we could, and one in the internet cafe.

Jan 15.

We woke up at about 6:30 when Chad phoned, although we wake up every morning at 4 AM---Bing!---our eyes fly open, wide awake, it doesn't bother me, I fall back asleep eventually and I awake no tireder than usual, I guess it is a circadian rhythm thing..

We stayed up after Chad's call (it was just a 'hello from home' call, nothing serious) and Nicole was feeling much better so we showered and came down for breakfast, very similar to the one in Dar, but no yogurt...I miss my calcium. Lots of beans, rice, hotdogs and odd little brown bits of meat in a sauce, rice noodles, french toast and chocolate cake. Something for everyone!! I would really love some cereal, but we were advised to stay away from dairy as it is very often not pasturized.

We decided to get a taxi and head to Sunny Safaris to pay for the rest of our safari, but the office is closed on Sundays. Arusha is the gateway to the Serengeti and most of the safaris start from here so it is quite busy and a lot of tourists.

In Dar the tourist trade is almost nil, it's a stopover place and people very seldom stay longer than a night, on their way to or from somewhere else. We asked our taxi driver why we were not seeing more tourists, thinking maybe they were all somewhere really fun that we were missing and he told us: "Tourists don't come to dar!" as if to say "You women are nuts!"

But, once again my time is nearly up, so more tomorrow.