Last Weekend - Kilimanjaro :-)

In no way right now do I feel like blogging - I leave Arusha in less than 24 hours, and the last thing I want to do is sit around blogging and uploading pictures.  However, at the same time, I know it would really bother me to not complete my blog, so here goes a quick recap to my last weekend in Tanzania.

For a final hurrah, Molly, Stephen, Minje, Esther, Maka and I went for an overnight trip to Kilimanjaro.  It took a little over two hours to get to the Kili area from Arusha (which was a great drive out), which is cleaner, fresher, and much crisper than being in Arusha.  We stayed at a really comfortable house (which is rented out to guests like ourselves), had a very relaxing evening hanging out together, and then woke up early to explore the area.  

I know this is terrible, but I am already forgetting names, and maybe one day I will come back and edit this and put the proper names in here, but my brain has very limited capacity right now, so I'll have to do what I can.  Basically, the area where we stayed was called something that started with an M (I think an M), and is home to the indigenous group the Chaga.  So, we first went to the live Chaga cultural museum to get a glimpse of life of the Chaga people.  I must say, it's not a life I would want.  It's very similar to the Maasai, and in no way do the living accommodations of the indigenous people appeal to me. Very interesting, though.  

Next, we walked to the main gate of Kilimanjaro.  We could go in a bit, but to really go into the trails of Kili, you have to pay something like sixty dollars (just to get inside), so we hung around the gate and enjoyed the view.  I must say, going to Kili and seeing where the trails start desperately made me want to come back and climb it, so I'm throwing that on the bucket list.  Anyway, after that we went back to the house, had an awesome lunch (including some sort of local, homemade "beer" but I don't know how to describe the taste, or texture; let's just say that was an interesting part of lunch but not really the awesome tasting part).  

After lunch, we went for a hike to a waterfall.  Actually, right before that we stopped at these cool Chaga tunnel/caves that took the Chaga people 52 years to build.  I didn't take any pictures inside, and am too tired to write about them, but they were really cool.  Moving right along, we hiked down to a waterfall which was really spectacular, amazing scenery (I literally felt like I was in Jurassic Park), and we actually got into the water and swam around.  There is a lot more I could describe, but I have a very long list of things to do before tomorrow, so suffice it to say that it was a very cool culminating weekend in Tanzania.  

I will try to post tomorrow with my final thoughts and maybe some thoughtful reflections on my time here, or you may never hear from me again.  It could go either way right now.  :-)