Tanzania Safari
August/SEPTEMBER, 2013
Vancouver to Arusha
The journey from Vancouver to Arusha, Tanzania required two flights, each about nine and a half hours long. By the time we reached Arusha we had added ten time zones to our clock. We flew from Vancouver to Calgary, and then over night to Amsterdam arriving about nine in the morning. After a layover of a few hours, we boarded another KLM flight to Arusha, arriving there late at night. Our guide picked us up at the airport in the "upscale" city safari vehicle, and drove us to Onsea House which would be our accommodation for two nights.
We decided to spend one whole day in Arusha (two nights) as we thought that the long flights and time zone changes would be a little tough on our old carcasses. We wanted time to recover a bit before heading out on the five day, 600 kilometre driving part of our trip. It also gave us a chance to see the big city of Arusha, and how city life was in this part of the world. It was definitely a wise decision.
We figured we'd get a taxi into the city from our hotel, but when we mentioned this to our guide when he picked us up at the airport he said that it wasn't appropriate, he would pick us up in the morning and ferry us about the city to show us the sights. We also wanted to get some beans for our camera bean bag rests, so he helped us with that as well. He was quite protective, making sure he was always between us and any of the locals. I guess we would have been overwhelmed with people trying to sell us things, or just get money from us.
Our guide vehicle outside Onsea House.
Our excursion into Arusha for shopping.
One of the items on the girls shopping list was to try and buy some Tanzanite jewelry. Tanzanite is a blue precious stone that is only found in Tanzania. So they wanted it as a keepsake of the trip. The hotel recommended a particular shopping area where all the craft people sell their wares, and that there was a jewelry area there. But when we mentioned this to our guide, he said anything sold there was of low quality, and questionable providence. So instead he took us to a different location where there was a store that sold tacky souvenir items in the front of the store, but high quality stones and jewelry to the more decerning clientele in the back of the store. That area had the machines that were used to turn the rough mined stones into the jewelry quality finished stones. So we figured this was about as close to "wholesale" as we were going to get. The girls were each able to get a lovely gem of top quality and colour for what we thought was a good price. We'd get the jewelry part made back home.
After we were finished, our guide, who's name was Said (Sa-eed), delivered us back to Onsea House for a late lunch and then dinner later on. We just took it easy for the rest of the day as our hard core safari started the next morning at nine o'clock.
