We awoke to the smell of bacon frying and an announcement by Paul that 'Kili is naked this morning' so we gathered our cameras and a breakfast sandwich on the run and walked up the road to see Kilimanjaro for ourselves. She was semi naked with a small amount of cloud moving across her top but a wonderful sight nonetheless.
After breakfast we headed into Arusha for a wander around and our last chance to buy curios, where I noted a signpost that informed me that Arusha is equidistant between Cairo and Cape Town. Ian and I purchased a further twelve litres of water, managed to send our films by super speedy Federal Express, via British Airways, to arrive at home on Monday at a cost of TSH 27,720 which was half the price that neighbouring DHL quoted us and spend an hour in a cyber cafe, or rather waiting for the archaic PC to decide it didn't have enough energy to view more than one webpage successively. It was frustrating but at least I eventually got an e-mail sent to Mum and with lots of patience Ian managed to delete the temporary internet files that I was desperate to erase. Oh well, we have all the time in the world and we are in East Africa...
Lunch was arranged immediately on our return and Ian and I spent the afternoon playing bao whilst digital camera sitting as they silently charged in the bar. It was boring. Ian won at least seven successive games and I was losing my enthusiasm. Then Big Heiko joined us so Ian stepped down and I won a game! Finally! With my confidence restored I challenged Georgie to a game. He won the first two straight and I won the next two. He wasn't very pleased and quickly ran away to teach some of the others from the group the rules of the second bao game, 66, which Ian and I had now familiarised ourselves with.
All of this time someone called Tom had kindly washed all of our clothes for a mere TSH 3,000 which equates to USD 3! This had by now completely dried and was ready to be packed for the Serengeti expedition. Everyone is packing their belongings as on our return from Ngorongoro in a couple of days time we leave for Nairobi and the trip is then complete! It's very sad to think it will all be over very soon. I love Africa and have had an absolutely marvellous time. The days have flown by and I shall miss the familiarity we have established in our group and not to mention having an African cook for us nearly every day! I asked Paul if he would like to follow us around the world and cook for us. He said he would be there if we bought him a ticket and it's actually worth considering, especially now I have received a tax refund from the kind Inland Revenue, which incidentally was very prompt I must say, considering I only left my employment at the end of September! Still I shouldn't write as if we have left Africa yet. We still have some of the best days ahead of us and I am very excited about the Serengeti. I have bought extra rolls of camera film in preparation and have spare camera batteries at the ready! I'm hoping for sightings of giraffes, lions and rhinoceroses and that will absolutely make this adventure perfect, seeing the complete big five in one trip! I'm crossing everything...
Copyright 2002 Helen Fuller. All rights reserved.