Arusha

We traveled from Dar es Salaam to Maragua which is located at the base of Kilimanjaro. It was nice to drive through the mountains again. Unfortunately it was too cloudy to be able to see Kilimanjaro and there was no sign of the clouds moving the following morning. At least I've some reason to come back to Tanzania again to visit Kilimanjaro.

We stayed in Snake Park in Arusha for a night before heading to the Serengeti. Snake Park has some of the poisonous snakes in cages. They do anti-venom treatments here so if someone gets bitten by a snake they take the blood from the snake to make an anti-venom. I looked at the snakes but didn't dare get too close. They also have some turtles, birds and crocodiles in cages here.

Beside the snake park there was a museum about the Masai tribes. Emanuese is a Masai and I learned a lot about the Masai tribe from him. He told us that a man can have multiple wives and Emanuese has twenty siblings. They like having daughters as then the family get more dowry when your daughter is being married. Masai tribe worship the cow and are also Christians. They herd cows, drink the cows blood and eat it's meat. They can move freely between Tanzania and Kenya so they build temporary houses to live in from wood and cow dung. We were then brought to the local village and meet the local children and people. It was a nice experience and I learned a lot about the Masai which has a very different culture to ours.

When we arrived back to Snake Park we met Ethan who was on our Cape Town to Victoria Falls leg. He flew from Zanzibar and was traveling to Serengeti for a week. It was nice to have another friendly face at the dinner table and have a catch up for a drink at the bar. The bar area had hundreds of jerseys and notes pinned up on the wall from other tourists who have stayed in Snake Park over the years. Of course there is always an Irish one!Read more