We are all excited to have a five day holiday from our holiday on the beautiful spice island of Zanzibar.
After our time in the Game Parks, we headed to a campsite outside of Arusha, called Snake Park. We had two days to stay here, which is always a treat to be able to leave up our tents for more than one night. It was a treat with its outdoor bar, its homemade dinner, and its laundry services. This campsite was beside a Maasai village so we took an early morning walk of the village with one of the locals. Learning about the Maasai culture was so fascinating. In this village, we were greeted by a whole slew of kids screaming "hello" and jumping up on us wanting us to hold them or swing them; which we did. Our guide told us that all of these kids were brothers and sisters. There was one man in the village that had eight wives and 50 children. He was in his seventies and his youngest wife was 28. He took us into a village home, told us about how boys become Maasai warriors, and discussed the issues of the western world making its way into their culture (AIDS, money, etc).
We also took time to check out the snakes at the "snake park" within our campsite. Most people loved it, but it actually scared me to realize how many fatal snakes are really in Africa. I had nightmares about then and I'm not even taking the larium anti-malaria pills. It would have been Becky Morin's absolute nightmare - she would have been screaming for days just thinking about it!
The campsite also had a Maasai craft market. It was a little village of fourteen huts with woman selling their crafts - beaded necklaces, carvings, spoons, etc. You wouldn't be in the hut for 20 seconds without having a bracelet, anklet, and necklace strung around you from the woman tending the hut and the hut next to hers. It was hard not to buy at least one small thing from each woman - I can justify anything!
After Snake Park we spent a night up in the high mountains on the way to Dar Es Salaam (captial of Tanzania). The campsite was breathtaking! We all set up our tents on terraces, which were basically over the clouds in the sky. We spent the afternoon reading, writing in our journals, and playing cards in a long bamboo hut overlooking the mountain range.
The main highlight of this stop was the football (soccer) game that our driver, Markus, set up with the young boys from the local village. There were about 10 from our group, including Bow and I, against 15 young locals. Apparently none of the Exodus groups had been able to beat the locals, they had only come as close as a tie. It was a large sized football pitch and the outside was lined with the others from our group and the entire local village, which was at least another 40 people. We were shocked to get a 3-0 lead on them, but it wasn't long before they tied us and then got ahead. It was a truly unique experience! The game didn't even stop when one of the local men decided to walk a huge tree through the game or when a herd of goats had to make it from one side to the other. The game ended when the sun went down and we were pleasantly surprised to win 6-5. We took many group shots and gave the village the ball we had brought to play with. We've decided to buy some more footballs and see if other locals will play with us as we make our way down to Victoria Falls.
We spent the next day making our way to Dar Es Salaam to another fantastic campsite right on the beach - white sand, pool, carribean style outdoor bar - paradise! We can't believe how lucky we've been with all of the unique spots our guides have been taking us to. The weather has changed to intense heat and humidity so we were all racing to jump into the pool.
The weather here is like the hottest week in the summer in Ottawa. It's nice to have the sunny warm weather, but it's that intense heat that slows you down. We were therefore very happy to come to Zanzibar today for a five day holiday from our holiday. We are currently in Stone Town, the main city on the island today. Everyone's catching up on emails and shopping for local crafts. Tomorrow we go on a Spice Tour and then make our way to the north west coast for four days of lazing on the beach.
We imagine that everyone is gearing up for the holiday season at home. We hope everyone enjoys the Christmas season. We will be in a Game Park in Zambia for Christmas, but apparently the camp site is going to take us carolling on Christmas Eve and is going to make us a traditional western Christmas dinner on Christmas Day. It doesn't sound like we'll have any access to phones on Christmas Day, so we're going to try our best to phone home as close to Christmas as we can.
Happy Holidays!
Jill