Back to Arusha

I woke up this morning in another very “glamping” tent, but this one was also a treehouse! Cool! 

Pembini Rotia

Pictures of the pool and fire last night - and dinner!

We had breakfast at a respectful time of 7:30am and after tea by the pool we got on the road. 

Our first stop was at a gift shop - I should have taken photos of it, it was huge!! They had so many wooden carvings that it was hard to decide the right size, which animal, which type of wood…but I eventually made my decisions and was only 5 minutes late getting back to the Land Cruiser. Sorry tour mates!! No photos of my purchases - it will be a surprise!! 

Our second stop was at a Maasai village. One of the main reasons that I chose to go with National Geographic Journeys is the donations and humanitarian moments they added into this trip. At this stop we learned about how the women stay in their huts and do their cooking over fires and no chimney! You can imagine how the smoke builds up! We went into one - they are very small, maybe 10-15 feet in diameter, if that! The smoke was horrible - and families live in here! Then we got to visit a boma (Maasai hut) with a clean cook stove in it. These are ones with chimneys installed so that the smoke leaves the hut and the air is better for everyone. Part of our tour cost included a donation towards buying one of these clean cookstoves. We got to visit a boma where they were building it and we got to see the difference our donation was making in this family’s life. It was being built by women as that’s also part of the “Clean Cookstove Project”, to help women help others. It was so fascinating to watch them build it right before our eyes. They use mud bricks and mortar for the indoor part of the chimney to save on costs, but then use cement for the part in the roof and outside so that it doesn’t wash away when it rains. I was very happy to be a part of this project! We were invited to take as many photos as we wanted. 

One thing we 4 girls always wanted to do was have our photo taken by a termite mound to show how big they are. So we took turns, then tour friend Allison decided she was going to try and climb it like the kids we saw on the drive in. It was much harder than she thought as the mud breaks off quite easily. It was fun and even the guides were impressed and took photos! 

We drove more towards Arusha, stopping about 45 mins outside for our final box lunch (I forgot a photo today, but it was pretty similar to the rest).

We made our way back to our starting accommodation: Ilboru Safari Lodge. We were tired! They gave us the same rooms as before, which I really liked because I had gotten comfortable in it during my first 3 nights here. Our newlywed tour friends got a new room because their first one had two twin beds! We all spent the afternoon relaxing before meeting for dinner at 6:30. I was able to check in for my flight to Zanzibar tomorrow. We had planned to eat outside by the pool, but we found it too cold - even for me! It was overcast, windy and only around 15°, so we changed our plans and went inside, up to the restaurant to eat. Although we didn’t get our favourite waiter, Joseph, he still came over to visit and help us out when our waiter was struggling. I forgot a photo of dinner, but it was pool food - inside. I had the margarita pizza and Tanzania Mule again, and also had veggie samosas. It was a lot of food but so yummy. Allison and I shared everything, except the mules, as it would have been too much food otherwise. 

We said our good nights and planned to meet for breakfast at 9am tomorrow.