Mt. Meru, Waterfalls, and Raha!

It felt like a very adventure-filled weekend.  Saturday was the camel safari, and on Sunday we went on a hike to the base of Mt. Meru to see a very impressive waterfall.  Let me start by saying that I am not a hiker and have never been a hiker, and really wasn't sure what the difference was between going for a walk and going for a hike.  Apparently it's hiking whenever you're not on paved roads?  I would have to check on that, but that's the feeling I'm getting so far.  Either way, I am now addicted to "hiking" (or just walking for an extended period of time) and want hiking gear for Christmas (do you see how I slyly throw my Christmas list into this?  I'm going to make this a recurring theme so that by the time I'm home, everyone will have done all my Christmas shopping and buy me very satisfying presents).

Anyway, this hike was pretty awesome.  It was also not the easiest; being in Tanzania we are already pretty high up, and elevation headaches and swelling are pretty common (or I'm just tired and out of shape, but I prefer to blame outside sources).  The first part of the hike we were mostly on unpaved roads and got to meander through some really local villages, which was pretty cool.  We had a pretty steep climb to get us up to where we needed to go, but I can proudly say that I didn't fall at all (at least on the way up).  Instead we took some sweet pictures and saw some great views.  

After awhile of hiking up, we started to descend and take a trail path down towards the waterfall (this was a 25km walk).  This is when I started to fall.  Walking downhill has never been my strong suit, and I took my first big fall on the way down one of the steep paths.  Once we got all the way down, we got to traverse a river.  In the beginning, I tried to follow the rocks and make sure I didn't fall in.  Obviously it was only a matter of time before I actually fell in, so once I did, I no longer worried about stepping carefully on the rocks and just walked through the water (which was actually very refreshing).  The river was pretty fun to hike through; I surprised everyone (including myself) with a successful climb up some big rocks, only to be followed by an unsurprising fall off of them, but it was fun.  Definitely challenging, but totally worth it when we made it to the waterfall.  The waterfall was awesome; it's the kind of thing you see that makes you really appreciate the beauty and power of nature and the fact that it's untouched (also, I apologize for using a phrase like 'the beauty and power').  But it was pretty awesome, and I somehow managed to climb up right behind it and let it soak me.   

We hung out at the waterfall for a little while.  The water was actually freezing and once I was soaking wet, I got pretty chilly.  The dread started to sink in when we realized we had to hike all the way back the exact way we came, which means that our steep descent was going to be a very challenging incline.  After falling a few dozen more times, we actually managed to get up the very steep hill and made it back to the top, and then got to enjoy a refreshing downhill walk for awhile.  The walk back became much more interesting when Morris introduced us to Raha, which is a locally brewed banana beer.  These things cost about 400 TSH each, which is about 20 cents (can you beat that?).  And, they don't taste bad at all.  We filled up a backpack with them and it made the fifth hour of hiking much funnier and more manageable.  I will also say that I actually fell down more times on the downhill walk back than the rest of the hike, but only because 1) walking downhill is hard for me and 2) the roads are so dusty and the rocks are slippery and 3) obviously the banana beer.

On the sixth hour of our hike, we stopped at a little village where the woman who cooks for us, Susan, owns her own restaurant.  We stopped there to get something to eat and drink, and in my banana-beer induced state I broke my no-meat bandwagon and had some (I must say) delicious chicken.  Luckily, by the time we were finished there (which was hours later), we got cabs to take us the rest of the way home.   

I realize that I have been posting a lot of fun weekend adventures we have been having, but have been getting a ton of questions from everyone about every day life and what I'm up to during the week.  Let me just say that my every day life and weeks are not nearly as exciting or fun (yet), but that I will get on that for my next blog and hopefully have a lot more interesting insight about life in Africa.  Until then, let's all be thankful that my computer is fixed and I am no longer catatonic about it.