Pre-Kili chillimanjaro
The crew started trickling into Tanzania a few days prior to the start of our climb, giving the bros time to get over their jetlag, Soph the opportunity to take her last few showers, and me the chance to have my last few ("few") beers.
The joys of the Tanzanian tourist visa
Soph and I were the first to arrive, and we were welcomed warmly by the insane dongmuffin of a system that is the Tanzania visa process.
First: a Tanzania tourist visa is $50. Unless, of course, you're an American. In which case it's $100. Because, you know, f*ck Americans, I guess.
Second: although the Tanzania consulate website says you can pay with Visa, you most definitely cannot. Because, you know, f*ck me, I guess. I had to leave the airport to get to the nearest ATM, where I took out $150-worth of cold hard Tanzanian skrill. I ran back and presented said skrill to the Visa-hating visa bro, only to be informed that...
Third: you can only pay for the visa with US dollars. Doesn't matter whether or not you're a US citizen (I was traveling with my Czech passport); doesn't matter that Tanzanian ATMs don't, you know, issue US dollars; doesn't matter that this don't make no goddamn sense. Because, you know, f*ck everybody, I guess.
I thus had the pleasure of sprinting back out of the airport, exchanging my newly acquired Tanzanian shilling for USD, at which point we finally - finally - got our Tanzanian tourist visas.
We later met someone whose visa story included a fourth: "they don't accept bills smaller than 20s" and a fifth: "... or bills that were printed prior to 2010." I kid you not. I guess... we had it easy?
We arrived at our hotel (Meru View Lodge) a bit later than expected, but as they say in Tanzania: hakuna matata ("worries out").
My first taste of Kilimanjaro
Coffee plantation touring
Isaac got in late that same evening, so the next day we got up early to do coffee plantation tour / jungle walk at the nearby Usa River.
That's "oo-sah," not "you-es-ay." Totally not a mistake we made.
The walk over had us tromping through a sleepy village, where we encountered all of your staple farm animals: cows, chickens, goats, chameleons, etc etc.
A lizard hops on a lizard on hops.
The coffee "plantation" was more of a small, acre-sized farm run by a kindly elderly woman. It turns out most small-scale farmers no longer grow coffee, since it's not as profitable as corn, bananas, and other year-round crops. I suspect that it's in part due to tours such as our that small coffee farms are able to stick around.
Here we picked and tasted some coffee fruit straight off the vine: the berry is a small, odorless, red little thing, and the raw bean inside is slimy, hard, and rather un-coffee-tasting. We then got to make our own cup 'o joe, more or less from scratch.
Step 1: pick the red coffee fruit! Peel off the red shell and let the slimy bean instead dry out for few days. We didn't have a few extra days on hand, so we decided to skip this step.
Left: coffee trees with unripened beans. Right: outermost shell removed.
Step 2: smash the dried beans with a big stick! This breaks up a second shell, the red layer removed in step 1 being the first. Since the inner bean is really hard, you can smash pretty aggressively. Which, obviously, we did.
Isaac and Soph enjoyed performing this motion... a little too much.
Step 3: roast the beans! In a cast iron pot on a tiny little fire, preferably. This mostly involves poking the beans around while they get brittle-burnt.
Left: the art of coffee roasting. Right: the poking of artfully roasted coffee.
Step 4: smash the burnt beans with a big stick! Same general jerking motion as step 2, except that now the beans are roasty toasty and turn into magical coffee dust.
The freshest coffee you'll ever smell.
Step 5: mix the pulverized coffee with some hot water! Let it sit, stir a bit, and give it a casual straining (compare to Ethiopia, where they don't strain the grounds).
We didn't do much to help here.
Step 6: drink the coffee! The resulting brew was mind-meltingly delicious. Our host was super stoked that we drank the entire pot, and we were super stoked about everything, perhaps due to drinking the entire pot. WHOOO!
Here we helped a LOT. The joy is real!
We left heads a-buzin' and beelined to a nearby house for a home cooked meal. Here we learned that Tanzanians (like Ethiopians) eat pretty much exclusively with their hands; that Ugali (like Inej) is served with just about everything; and that the resulting food is, unsurprising, super dank.
Ugali is a cornmeal-like dish that Tanzanians eat with seemingly every meal.
We filled up on beans, veggies, fried bananas, and Ugali, and set off for a gentle jaunt through the jungle.
Take your thumb... boooom! Thumb print. And then... you scoop.
We washed our faces (no, Jandro, not like that) right at the source of the Usa river...
Either that, or Isaac and Soph and playing peekaboo.
... did some epic tree climbing...
These photos don't do justice to how amazingly ninja-like we're being here.
... and got munched by a mountain of fiesty fire ants.
"We" mostly being "Soph."
We also saw a ton of "kima": a handful of small, tree-swinging blue monkeys, and mostly a TON of agro colobus monkeys. The latter had an awesome, burp-sounding battle cry, and really, really hated Isaac's monkey call.
Goats yelling like humans, or humans yelling like goats?
Chillimanjarin' by the pool
The rest of the bros filtered in around lunchtime. We posted up by the pool, dove deep into some Tanzanian beer, and just kinda soaked in both.
We more or less took over the pool (*)
This move is called the Mexican border leap (*)
"The seduction of Barak" (*)
If these photos make it look like we didn't move pretty much all day, that's pretty much exactly what happened (*)
The hotel staff was friendly, though it soon became clear a dude named Barak took a special liking to Isaac. And although Isaac would prove to have many African admirers over the course of our trip, this first love surely burned brightest.
Isaac and Barak: the love that couldn't be. It started off innocently enough: a friendly request for some beers, a casual call for some refills; a stolen glance, a hidden smile, a look that lingered.
It wasn't long before the tension hung hot and heavy. Their cloying desire swelled the air like the scent of forbidden fruit, thick, ripe, ready to burst - magnetism so strong it would have torn lesser men asunder. But alas. As quickly as it came, so swiftly did it end.
The next day when we told Barak we were leaving, his eyes shot past us, scanning desperately for his one and only mizungu. He paused before he asked - sadly, desperately, already knowing the answer, but having to ask anyway...
"... even Isaac?"
Mingling with Maasai in Moshi
The next day our kili tour guides picked us up and drove us all the way to Moshi, a smallish city at the base of Kilimanjaro that serves as a home base for climbers.
Isaac re-enacting Soph's reaction to the yoghurt. It... made sense at the time.
Most Kilimanjaro tours include a stay in Moshi, the night before and after your climb, to ensure you have a bit of a buffer on both ends.
Speaking of ends, it looks like Jandro's thumb might have found Matthew's.
Our hotel in Moshi (the Parkview Inn) was surprisingly nice, especially since we booked a company on the cheaper end of the spectrum.
We had a dope pool, but everyone was too sunburnt to go anywhere near it.
We spent the afternoon exploring the town, and we eventually landed at a local watering hole called the East Africa Pub.
Left: RIP Joe's former shredcycle. Right: East Africa Pub calls our name.
On the way we met a couple of friendly Maasai warriors we ended up grabbing a few beers with.
Sidenote on Maasai: the Maasai are an East African tribe based primarily in Tanzania and Kenja. They're semi-nomadic herders and farmers, and continue to live a largely tribal life in the rural areas of the country.
One of the dudes (next to Matthew, below) was a son of a local chieftain. When Chu jokingly asked him if he ever fought a lion, Maasai bro nonchalantly told us about how he and three buddies killed a lion that was attacking their flock, using nothing but their goddamn spears. Damn son.
Left: chillin' with the Maasai. Right: nomming on "mbuzi" (goat).
To our great amusement, homeboy in the white shirt (shown seen sitting next to Jandro in the back of the photo above) was reaaaally stoked to chat up Isaac, who, as was starting to become clear, is a total African dude magnet.
Unfortunately, Isaac's heart belongs to another. Barak, you'll be pleased to know, your man stayed true.
(*) Starred photos are courtesy of Suffaboy Photography