Exploring Arusha, and seeing how the other half lives

We hung around the apartment in the morning, and then at lunch time we had made plans to meet our new friends Ryan and Marti at an Indian curry restaurant in the central area. 

It was about a 3 km (1.8 mile) walk from the apartment to the center of Arusha so we set off at 12 noon for our 12:30pm lunch.

Arusha is a busy city of about 500,000 people. There aren't really that many attractions, and the main reason tourists come to Arusha is to use it as a base prior to going on safari in Serengeti National Park.

The side road near our apartment.

Getting close to downtown.

Sure enough, Ryan and Marti were there waiting for us at the Five Chutneys Indian restaurant. It's a little hole in the wall vegetarian place that gets really good reviews. We forgot to take photos!

Lunch was good, and we had lots to talk about. Ryan and Marti are a young (around 30) couple from Texas. They are on a one month vacation here. They are doing the Kilimanjaro climb starting on Sunday, and coincidentally they are doing the same route that we are. We hope to be able to get together again a week from Monday when they have (hopefully) completed it.

After lunch, we went to the big market building and then wandered around the central area.

You can see one white person in the photo above. Of course we stand out like a sore thumb. I think we might have seen two or three other white people the whole time. But everybody is extremely friendly towards us, with many people saying hello.

Justin tells us there are no racial issues of any kind in Tanzania. People are just people. Also, there are no religious issues at all. Half the population are Christian, and half are Muslim. But he says everybody loves one another.

Traffic circle monument.

As I said, there's not really a lot to see in the city of Arusha itself. Moshi is actually a nicer city, so we may head over there at some point once we are finished with the safari stuff in February.

Ryan and Marti had invited us back to their hotel to sit around the pool for the afternoon. There is an online app something like Uber to get a taxi here, and they have been using that so we got a drive to the Mt. Meru Hotel.

It's a fancy place. And very empty right now.

View from their fourth floor room.

View from our sun lounging chairs.

The hotel and pool.

Ryan, Marti, and Ruth.

Ruth with her Pina Colada.

We had a nice afternoon sitting around the pool. I almost went for a swim. I even had my swim shorts on. But the water was just too cold for my liking. And while it's fairly hot (we are right at the equator) when the sun is out, with the clouds it was just comfortable. The temperature is around 29C (84F) and there is very little humidity. It's really very pleasant.

Late afternoon we said goodbye to them and did the 4 km (2.5 mile) walk back to our apartment. Justin had a friend over, Abdallah who it turns out will be one of our porters on the Mt. Meru hike. So we sat and talked with them for the evening.

Today, Abdallah is taking us on a hike to a waterfall. He says it's about 10 kms (6 miles) walk uphill  from the apartment, but that we can take a bus back if we feel like it. We'll see how we do, but we'll probably walk both ways since returning will be all downhill!

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