Karibu!

We arrived in Tanzania last night after a long but thankfully uneventful day of traveling.  It was around 9 pm when we landed, and an hour or so later by the time we got visas and found our bags and driver, so we didn't see much of the area on our way to the hotel.  Getting a visa here is easy in that all you have to do is pay $100 and show your passport and completed form, but also difficult in that you wait in three different lines to interact with 3 different customs agents.  We were very excited to make it through the lines and find that all of our bags had made it, and were not noticeably the worse for the wear.

Kilimanjaro airport is between Moshi, where we will be working this month, and Arusha, where we are staying prior to our safari.  It's about 45 minutes from our hotel via paved highways, dirt roads, and one  pothole-ladden "shortcut."   The lodge we're staying at very peaceful and quiet.  Above is the view of Mount Meru from in front of our cottage. Everyone is very friendly, and knows much more English than we know Swahili.

Today we did pick up a few new words, and make our hosts laugh at our errors along the way.  In Tanzania jambo or mambo means "hello."  But answering jambo in response apparently identifies you as a rube, and the better response is poa.  Or, if like me you have a hard time remembering that word, you can just make every encounter a race to be the first one to say mambo.  We also learned that karibu means "welcome" or "you're welcome" depending on the context.  Which is probably why we got some smiles when everyone said karibu to us last night and we enthusiastically responded "karibu" (you're welcome) instead of asante sana (thank you very much).  We are learning, albeit slowly.

We also went to a store that sells Tanzanite, a precious blue gemstone only found in a small region at the base of Kilimanjaro.  According to the intro video, it was discovered in 1967 and by 1968 was being sold (and enthusiastically marketed) by Tiffany's in New York.

Our other big accomplishment was acquiring cell phones, complete with Tanzanian SIM cards.  My phone is a slightly more sophisticated version of my previous Nokia brick phones (complete with the snake game) and cost me only $20 for the phone plus about 150 prepaid minutes.  Not a bad deal.

Hope you all are well!  I will try to write later this week when we've seen & done more interesting things.  Our safari starts tomorrow with a trip to Lake Manyara National Park!