Arusha to Zanzibar: Part 1 – A Mountain, God, and the ATBC

Apologies to you all for the recent silence over the past few months, things have been a little hectic, so in the next few weeks I will try to get things back on track and make sure that you are all up to date with all my adventures. So here we go!

On the 9^th June I travelled by bus from Mombasa to Arusha, the trip in itself, as with most bus trips in Africa, was exciting. We saw some incredible scenery, drove through parks, past Elephants, and at one point there was a question as to whether or not the bus had abandoned us all at the boarder, however, after about 10 hours I finally made it to Arusha to the wonderful sight of Seline - an old friend from my MSc. After checking me into our hotel we spent a while catching up, then  went for dinner and got an early night in preparation for our first trip – a safari by Lake Natron, and a Climb up the mountain of God!

The trip was great… most of the time J We stayed in a wonderful location next to a massai camp. On our first day we went for a walk through the valley in the local hills, and down to a wonderful waterfall. The scramble down was great fun, and once at the bottom we were below a stunning waterfall which created a natural Jacuzzi below (although a little cool), it was fantastic. On our way back we met the kids from the local village, and with great crys for chocolate, once they worked out we didn’t have any it gave me a chance to practice my Swahili and them the chance to practice their English. By the time we had made it back to camp the tents were up, with mattresses, pillows and massai blankets, and there was an afternoon snack waiting for us. That evening we got a relaxed and got an early night knowing what faced us the following day. The next day we went on a game drive to see the lake and the local birdlife. We saw some incredible birds, but only when we reached the lake were we told that the thousands of flamingos (which is what we had expected to see) were not there and had migrated north! We were all a little disappointed, but had enjoyed the day anyway.

A child we met along the way to Lake Natron

Sunrise over lake Natron

The camp was surrounded by many Bee-eaters

One of the waterfalls along our way
The Jacuzzi was behind this one, however this smaller one did
have it's own waterslide!

Some of the kids who lived near the camp and I on our way back

That night we got a very early night in preparation, and were up at 10.30pm to drive to the base of Ol Doinyo Lengai, a live volcano and a rather big mountain! When we set off there were 4 of us with two guides. We had been assured from the start that although it would take us a long time it was an easy climb. The start was fairly simple, a little uneven, but nothing any of us had any issue with. An hour in we had our first loss, one of the team decided it wasn’t for them and headed back to the car. Undeterred the rest of us continued. About ten minutes later we hit sand. Sand was not what I expected miles inland, up a mountain in Tanzania. This wasn’t just a little sand, but rapidly it appeared that we were climbing a giant volcanic sand dune, at this point it also became apparent that there were minor issues with communicating with our guide. Finally we managed to communicate with him our concern, and he announced that it was sand all the way to the top – when managed to ask if most people made it to the top he happily announced “Oh no madam, only the fittest Massai men make it to the top. It is very, very hard”. By 2.30am sitting on the side of the Mountain of God we admitted defeat. Two hours later we were back at camp, crawled into bed and fell to sleep a little disappointed, but more so, very, very tired.

Seline in our car by Lake Natron

Massai boy and his dog

On our return to Arusha we had just enough time to shower (oh dear God! The colour of the water still disturbs me to this day), change and head out to the opening night of the 2011 ATBC-SCB annual conference. It was a lovely evening, where we met a wonderful group of people who we would spend the next few days getting to know and learning from over the course of the conference. The following 4 days were such a great experience. I went to a fantastic array of talks, met some funny people, some interesting people, some inspirational people, and made some great friends. I learnt a lot, both about the kind of work that I do, but also about the range of research that people across the tropics conduct. I got to present a poster, and along with receiving some great feed-back I also managed to impress (which is always a relief at these things). But a conference is not just about work, there were excursions to the local market, where I discovered I have a rather severe Tinga-tinga addiction, and I can haggle very well in Swahili as well as English! Seline and I joined a bunch of researchers from Brazil and together (along with whomever we could convince to join us), we sampled the wonderful range of restaurants Arusha had to offer.

An example of a Tinga-Tinga
Not one that I was lucky enough to buy but a great example

All in all the first week in Tanzania provided a wealth of adventure, excitement, and had been both productive and entertaining. A great start to what we hoped would be a great trip.