Mosquito River, just outside Lake Manyara National Park, should win an award for the’ least-appealing-village-name-ever’. Fortunately, there weren’t too many mossies in sight when we visited the village on our second morning of safari. We took the tour both to give us an insight into village life and to support the community, as the tour […]

Now that I’ve seen my mountain, we’re headed north-west to complete the core-loop of the Tanzanian tourist trail by means of a safari. Safari means ‘journey’ in Swahili. We chose to organise our trip with Tanzania Journeys, a well-regarded tour operator that features in our Ethical Travel Guide and is recommended by the worthy Kilimanjaro […]

We’ve been in Moshi for nearly three days now and have still not caught a glimpse of Mount Kilimanjaro. I had hoped to climb the highest mountain in Africa but my ear’s still not right. Instead, I’d settle for the opportunity to take a good photograph of it. Alas, it’s an elusive bugger and hasn’t […]

Domali in Crystal Palace is one of my favourite cafes to go for a cuppa or bite to eat. It’s particularly good for brunch, and in the summer I like sitting in their secret garden out the back. Today I discovered the Tanzanian equivalent: The Coffee Shop in Moshi. It too has a sunny garden […]

(Ed: Oops, this should have been published a couple of days ago.) It’s been a disappointing day for both of us — Claire didn’t manage to buy a hand-carved wooden giraffe to replace the one her dad broke and I’m still wholly deaf in my left ear. With high hopes, we caught a bus to […]

We’ve been blogging about the things that we do as we travel. Here in Tanzania, as well as the things that we plan to do everyday, lots of things just seem to happen to us. Amusing little things that seem funny becuase they wouldn’t happen at home. They don’t warrant a full blog in themselvs, […]

A little over eight hours on a bus from Dar Es Salaam brings us to Moshi, a town near the foot of Mount Kilimanjaro. A number of people had told us that, for this leg of our journey, the Royal Coach company would be our coolest, cleanest, safest bet. As it turns out, the air-conditioning […]

It hadn’t gone unnoticed that many of the [armed] bank guards that I walked past had taken an interest in me. I put this down to simply being a mzungo. Turns out there’s another altogether more funny and frightening reason. According to one petrified shopkeeper, the silver water bottle that I have been swinging on […]

Mzungu is Swahilli for “white person”. As Claire and I go about our daily lives, the locals often raise their hands to us an shout “mzungu!” as we pass. Without knowing whether it’s a warm welcome or a derogatory remark, we wave back and say “jambo!” (hello) in the faint hope that our pastey faces […]

Squiffy and I stumbled upon a goldmine of a bookshop today. Amongst the numerous African social, political and economic publications, I happened upon the “Zanzibar Popular Jokes” book. We’ve spent most of the afternoon in stitches, for all the wrong reasons, as we read the jokes back and forth to each other. I want to […]