© Richard Randall

MOSHI

Another bus journey took us to Moshi, a bustling town situated at the foot of the snow capped Mt Kilimanjaro. Would we be climbing Mt Kilimanjaro? We had the boots for it! Er ... No! But I would be consuming lots of Kilimanjaro beer, I'm not sure if that's quite the same as conquering the mountain though! This part of Tanzania has such a pull for tourists with three major sites of interest. There is of course Mt Kilimanjaro, and the Ngorongoro Crater which is packed with wildlife, and the plains of the Serengeti. Oddly enough, but not if you knew us, we did not visit any of these! Not sure why really ... oh yes, now I remember. One day we had an urgent phone call from the U.K. We had to fly back rather urgently, but that's another story. Before the unfortunate phone call, we had managed to enjoy a couple of days in Moshi. We stayed at the KNCU Coffee Tree Hotel, which had an inexpensive restaurant, and great views from the top, weather permitting we could see Mt Kilimanjaro, even if we couldn't climb it! We could see that many years ago the hotel would have been quite grand, but now it was sadly very shabby. Our room was very large and well furnished, the bathroom had seen better days but we could still see how wonderfully cool it would have been long ago, with all of its art deco shapes and styling. Unfortunately the water barely dripped out of the taps on the bath and it was stone cold, definitely not a place to linger! It seemed as though everyone in the area ate at the restaurant in our hotel, it was always very busy, with a lot of waiting for food once we had ordered. The food was pretty good though, lots of goat and chicken dishes, mostly spicy or curried. There was a nice bar/restaurant across the road from our hotel which served good snacks, and whilst out walking round town we found lots of places to stop for a beer. We also found a really great French bakery, which among other things sold really fresh delicious croissants - Yum! As I said, unfortunately we were only able to stay in Moshi for two days before we had to get back to the U.K. After the urgent phone call from home we left Moshi and headed to Dar es Salaam to catch a flight to the U.K.

DAR ES SALAAM

We had not intended to return to the U.K. for a long time yet, but now we were in Dar es Salaam we had to sort out our plane tickets. I think we have probably changed our flights on almost every trip we have ever made, and this one was to be no different. The only difference was that it was not as straight forward as usual. It seemed that we were not the only people trying to change our tickets and leave Dar es Salaam in a hurry! Having been in Dar es Salaam for just a few minutes I could easily understand people wanting to leave, it was a horrible place. Unfortunately the earliest flight we could get meant us having to stay in this awful place for two nights ... YUK! I have since read that Dar es Salaam is a pleasant city with a picturesque seaport, with a oriental feel and lots of its colonial character still intact. Well that must definitely describe a different Dar es Salaam to the black hole we were stranded in! Oh well we were there for two nights whether we liked it or not, so we tried to make the best of it. We stayed at a different place each night, can't remember why we moved though. One night we stayed at the YWCA on Maktaba Street, which accepted men if they were part of a couple, so Richard was okay. Our room was fine, and there was a canteen, we didn't eat there but it looked busy enough. I can't remember where we stayed the other night. We spent most of our time in the bar at the New Africa Hotel, which was the only other top end hotel after the Sheraton. I'm not sure what it was exactly but, one evening in the bar at the New Africa Hotel, there was some kind of 'do' going on. It was mainly full of business men who didn't seem to mind us being there, we were even offered some of their snacks! I am sure there are things to do and see in Dar es Salaam but neither of us were in the mood, we just wanted and needed to get back the U.K. Even though we didn't get to really appreciate as much of Tanzania as we had hoped, we both have very fond memories of it. We really loved our time in Zanzibar, Tanga, and Lushoto, and had we stayed longer I am sure we would have good memories of Moshi too, although I still don't think that we would have climbed Mt Kilimanjaro!

Caribbean

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