Oops, who forgot travelpod?!
Trip Start
Oct 12, 2006
1
5
Trip End
Dec 18, 2006
Melbourne, Australia
Wednesday, December 27, 2006
I ended up doing the safari for two days - Lake Manyara and Ngorongoro crater for anyone who cares - met a really lovely german couple who thought i was so funny (and how good it is to be around people who laugh at everything you say!?) and sat in a jeep for two days looking at animals. Saw giraffes, elephants, zebras - very pretty - as well as all the famous but uglier animals: hippos, rhinos, buffalo etc etc. oh and pink flamingoes, they were the nicest. scenery was also very nice... did manage to take a few photos which i'll put up now, just for kicks.
After safari got back to Arusha and had that guy that I may or may not have written about in the last entry meet me at the bus... so decided to go to another town, Moshi. Very nice town, at the base of Mt Kilimanjaro - the 4th highest mountain in the world. Met a nice masai boy (you know the warrior tribe people you see on tv) who showed me around (theyre allowed to marry many wives - so his dad had 7 wives and altogether 80 children.....seriously), and nearly passed out due to severe dehydration from not drinking water for 3 days... very smart. Left 2 days later planning to go straight to Zanzibar, but once I got back to Dar es Salaam (after a 10 hour bus ride with a chicken to my left, baby who wouldnt stop crying unless the funny looking white girl would look at it... so it was decided that everyone would be better off if the baby just sat on me, huge african mamas bum banging into my already pounding head....) anyway back in Dar i ended up staying another few days in bed because i thought i had malaria or some infectious disease. ended up having not so bad tonsilitis, getting some overpriced and out of date pills and heading to zanzibar after all.
Spent a nice day in stone town where i was flattered that people I'd met 2 weeks before remembered me all over town and were very welcoming, then went back to that hostel and the friends i made in Jambiani (at the beach) who were starting to think i wasnt coming back. Spent my last week lazing about working on my faded tan and doing last minute shopping and souvenir buying - most of which i thought i'd leave to hong kong - and then the time finally came to leave....crazy! honestly i was driving out of that village in zanzibar thinking i must be insane to be leaving this, i really couldnt believe i was going. ANYWAY.
So boarded my flight from zanzibar to nairobi, arrived at nairobi airport with a few hours till my next flight to hong kong. the plan was to spend a few days there and get home on monday the 18th. found in nairobi that the "systems" were down, of course, and there were just people everywhere. when i finally got to the counter to check in the woman was like "hmmm thats strange, youre on standby (meaning i dont actually have a seat on the plane) wait over here and i'll let you know"
so 12 hours later there i was still lying on the cold hard floor with 4 african women, all of us trying to sleep on my backpack covered by my various things - sarongs, sleeping bag, jumper etc... and this guy finally comes and tells me that theyve re-routed my flight, i'm now going to south africa then perth then melbourne. i was just happy to leave nairobi airport, really. so a few extremely long flights and stopovers (and reeeeeeally long time at customs) later, i arrived 3 days early in melbourne to surprise my whole family.... and finally gave them the chance to let out all the black jokes theyve been saving up while i was gone.
wow, how depressing and not coherent was all that. basically, i had fun. and now melbourne is kind of crap. so here are my pictures, at long last. lets hope its not too long before i start a new travelogue with new adventures from a new random place in the world..............................
