With one brief interlude that was really foreshadowing it is time for me to tell you all about our next trip – to Tanzania!

I was very excited for my super amazing wife to see Tanzania. For various logistical reasons it didn’t make a lot of sense this round to go to Zambia, though she is excited to see my ole’ stomping grounds someday. But Tanzania is right next door and gave us the opportunity to go on safari, to see Lake Tanganyika, and to recreate sort of our Morocco trip by going to the medina of Stone Town. It is such a beautiful part of the world and I spend all my time reading about people caravanning between Zanzibar and Ujiji so it was high time we took a stab at it ourselves.

To travel to Tanzania, we flew to Kilimanjaro airport via Nairobi. For that flight we were lucky enough to be on the left side of the plane and got to see out the window the awe-inspiring sight of Mt. Kilimanjaro. I really wasn’t prepared, but the snow-capped peak rising out of the endless clouds served as a welcoming beacon for the trip.

Our safari read-ahead materials had warned us that since Kilimanjaro is such a small airport that customs could take a while, but our airplane was also small so we breezed through and were picked up by Obedi, who would be our guide on our safari. We had booked a safari via African Big Cats Safaris and they were great; you should definitely book your safari with them and ask for Obedi. When I spotted a very pretty bird in the parking lot I joked that our safari was starting already and Obedi was kind enough to laugh, so we hit it off right away.

The first real stop of our safari though was in fact the lodge we were staying at that night, where we were greeted with juice (de rigueur at all the lodges, we were to find out) and led to our very lovely little room. We had made a list of things that we really ought to see in Arusha during our one day there, but after briefly unpacking we lay down on the bed and promptly fell asleep for three hours. This prevented us from going into town but did not prevent us from sightseeing, as long as you count the monkeys that were roaming the grounds as sights (I do). We watched one climb up a string of lights which felt very 21^st-century. Besides the monkeys we had the lodge mostly to ourselves. As usual the timestamps on these posts won’t make sense, but we had arrived towards the end of May, after the rains but ahead of the high season.

Monkey business over, we settled in for a delicious dinner at the lodge and a relaxing evening. It was so good to be back in east Africa. I was entranced even just by the drive between the airport and the lodge. Being at the end of the rainy season everything was so green. I pointed out all the ag stores to my super amazing wife, and was second-handedly proud of all the Zamseed (the Zam is from Zambia) locations that were around, easy to spot because their roofs were painted with “Good Seed. Pure Seed. Zamseed.” We saw cows and goats and people going about their business, houses with their gardens, and pottery and baskets and plants for sale by the side of the road. I was excited to see it all again and show it to my super amazing wife for the first time. And finally before we went to bed (again) to look up and see the Southern Cross in the sky meant to know we were in for a really fantastic adventure.