Travels

I realize that I haven’t been posting much lately. A good deal of that is due to being both away from the internet, and busy, while traveling.

Abridged version of the travels:

1. Went to Dar Es Salaam (the capital), stayed with friends there, it was great.

2. Went to Mtwara, helped cook and eat Thanksgiving dinner with a bunch of Mtwara-area PCVs, swam in the Indian Ocean, it was great.

3. Visited a friend’s village down in Mtwara region, it’s beautiful there but much less developed than the Karatu area. Her village is much larger than Karatu town, but many fewer things are available there. There’s free mangoes from the local trees though.

4. Went back to Dar Es Salaam, stayed with the same friends, it was great again.

5. My parents arrived in Dar Es Salaam, we stayed in a hotel and explored the city a bit together, they brought my laptop (!) from the US, and now I have that, all is great. (Note: my dad has a temporary blog up at paffl.wordpress.com , though so far he hasn’t gotten enough internet access to do much updating.)

6. Went to Zanzibar, stayed at the nicest hotel I have ever seen (Tembo House Hotel, highly recommend it, etc), saw awesome Zanzibarian things, ate delicious Indian food at the hotel with milkshakes to go with it, it was great.

7. Came back up to Karatu, where I currently am, and have been showing them around town and hanging out with sitemates and friends, and it’s great. Currently I’m at the internet cafe that most of my internet correspondence has been conducted from.

8. Tomorrow, we go on safari to visit the Serengeti and a local bushman tribe.

9. Once we get back from the safari, we’ll go to my village for a week.

Hopefully soonish I’ll be able to update more.

Random note: discovered somewhat recently that some of the beetles I’d been seeing in my village are in fact dung beetles. No wonder they’re so strong.

Random note #2: in Zanzibar, I saw driver ants for the first and second times. Very exciting, been wanting to see those since I was a little kid.