Moshi Hike

SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 14TH

Today I went on a dayhike outside of Moshi – a town approximately 75 kilometres East of Arusha (Click on the link and zoom out to get an idea of it's proximity to Arusha) with another one of the hostel residents, Lauren, and our guide Mtui. The hike itself was in the hills above the city, which gave the whole experience a very ‘remote’ feel, despite the fact that we were only about a forty-five minute ride from the city center. The trail took us around a forest covered ravine between two hills, which culminated in a waterfall that was several hundred meters high. However, in addition to the natural beauty of the place, I also enjoyed the chance to hike through the local area villages and farms, sometimes literally through their fields. I was fascinated by how the natives of the area were able to overcome the challenges of their geography, and took great interest in the bridges and aqueducts they constructed, the fields that were planted literally on the sides of the hills (sometimes as steep as 25-35 degrees, in my estimation), and the small quarry we passed from where bricks were excavated for houses and local buildings.

The return journey back to Arusha was also eventful, although not exactly in a pleasant way. To explain, I have to first say that transportation in Tanzania (and Africa in general, from what I’m told) is somewhat chaotic. Nowhere was this more apparent that at the central bus station in Moshi. Upon arriving back to the bus station from the hike, Mtui was immediately swarmed by a group of about eight people, each one in charge of finding customers to bring aboard their own bus (As hikes in the area are somewhat common, these ‘customer scouts’, for lack of a better term, have learned that when you see two or more white people following one native, it’s a good bet that he’s a guide in charge of arranging transportation for the whole group). Mtui literally had to throw out a few solid juke moves and then run away to prevent these guys from physically pulling him in the direction of their bus, and I even saw some pushing and shoving between them as they were trying to fight off one another for his attention. Eventually, the most persistent of his pursuers dragged Mtui to his bus, where they negotiated a price for our passage. The story should have ended there, however, somewhere in all this madness something got lost in translation, and we wound up on a bus headed to Dar Es Salaam, the capital city, which is in the complete opposite direction of Arusha (not Mtui’s finest hour, to say the least, but we forgave him). We wound up getting off the bus at a weigh station and then waiting for another bus to take us back to Moshi, at which point we boarded a third bus to travel back to Arusha. All in all, it wound up being a two hour detour on top of an already long day, but nonetheless we did finally make it home, and just in time for dinner.