Leaving Rwanda and First day in Tanzania, December 29-30, 2023

We left Rwanda early on the 29th. We were staying at the hotel in the Kigali convention centre, meaning we had some of the strictest security to enter the complex a person can have. The car needed to pass through a screener, followed by all of the bags and us! We headed to the airport early, and we had to go through another screening, this time via dog sniffing. They took all our bags out of the car and had the dog smell all of them. I must say standing there looking at the dog to decide your faith is a weird process. I feel uncertain about bag-sniffing dogs because those good boys get a treat every time they find something. Wouldn't that encourage Jeff the German Shepherd to "pretend" that there were some explosives in my bag for a delicious treat? Well, it doesn't matter because Jeff can't be that good at his job after all because he didn't find my explosives (if you are the Rwandan government, this is a joke). We hung out in the airport for a couple hours while they killed all the lights in the building to "test" something. RwandAir shuts its check-in an hour and a half before the flight, so if you show up later, you're screwed.  

We boarded the half-full flight with a stop in Dar es Salaam with a final destination of Kilimanjaro Airport. Tanzania has one of the smoothest border security processes ever, with our bags sitting there when we got through. We were picked up and then drove the 1-and-a-half-hour drive to Arusha, where we stayed for the night. The accommodation was a nice little eco-lodge next to a coffee field. We had a great "family-style" dinner, and the breakfast the next morning was awesome. We were picked up from the accommodation by our guide, Gilbert. We then drove about 2 hours to Tarangire National Park. We had a great first day of animal spotting, seeing lions twice, tons of giraffes and endless elephants. The park was literally overrun with elephants; at one point, there was not a place you could look where there were no elephants in sight. Elephants are awesome creatures; they are playful, smart, and fascinating to watch. Although they look nothing like us, their social intelligence is very similar in how they lead and follow and how they play and understand others' situations. After some successful animal viewing, we headed to our lodging, which was about 20 minutes down a random dirt road on the highway. It was very strange to see such a nice place in the middle of nowhere; the rooms were more like tents with a fixed wooden roof overtop and built-in bathrooms. During our dinner tonight, the rain picked up real quick, with lighting in the distance fast approaching. A torrential downpour began while we were sitting at the table; we had to rush all our food and beer inside. We sat inside for a while, waiting for the rain to die down, but it never did. I decided to make the trek back to my tent/structure to find that all the nicely cleaned clothes that were set out to dry had fallen off the railings into some large dirt puddles. I spent the next 10 minutes jumping over and back off the railing, saving the clothes in the middle of torrential downpours and lighting; those clothes consider me a hero now. As I write this, the rain has finally died down, and I'm looking forward to our game walk tomorrow.  

First Night in Tanzania

Coffee Plant