We came to Tanzania specifically to hike Kilimanjaro, and we honestly figured we could take up the balance of two months here without much problem. And that is certainly doable... if you have lots of money to spend.
But doing Tanzania on a tight budget is not that enjoyable. Now that we have our flights to Albania booked for March 14th, we feel like we are just biding our time until we can get out of here.
Sometimes the logistics of making a big purchase in a far away country can be a little overwhelming.
I remember when we bought our truck and camper in Australia how we jumped through hoops trying to follow all the right procedures. After all, we were physically in Mexico at the time... and we were buying an Australian vehicle by paying a Swiss bank from our Canadian bank.
And, we didn't want to get taken advantage of by the big banks in Canada.
Unimpressed with KLM.
I was double checking our flight times and I went into "manage bookings" on the KLM website yesterday morning. I happened to notice that the first leg of our flights from Dar es Salaam to Amsterdam was showing as "Cancelled".
Hmph. I hadn't received any email from KLM telling me they had cancelled my flights. I wonder when I would have found out if I hadn't been checking for something else.
Before we get into our beautiful hike yesterday, we need to tell you some good news!
I had mentioned a few days ago that Ruth's laptop wouldn't start up. Other than hearing the fan run, there was no screen, no nothing. She's been trying to start it up every couple of days just in the hopes that something might happen, but with no luck.
Until yesterday morning.
Of course we have resigned ourselves to the fact that we won't actually get to use our new motorhome for another couple of months (or more!), but that doesn't mean there aren't things going on in the background getting it ready for us.
While it's been sitting on the lot in Germany waiting for us since it arrived there in late November, we are now close enough to being able to use it that we don't want to leave things to the last minute. So we have authorized the dealership to go ahead with getting it ready for us.
While we've thoroughly enjoyed the scenery and the hiking here in Lushoto area, two weeks is enough.
Our accommodation had been overall good, although a bit quirky. It's a very old house, and it needs a lot of work. There are quite a few critters living in the house along with us! And the "staff", while very friendly and helpful when we have questions, don't really seem to actually do very much.
In December, we had booked our flight out of Tanzania for March 21st, with a destination of Dusseldorf, Germany. We had some faint hope of possibly being able to pick up our new motorhome at that time. Now, with only four weeks to go before our scheduled flight, we highly doubt that the entrance restrictions to Germany will be lifted by that time.
Our flight with KLM was fully flexible, with no change fees. So the only extra would be whatever the fare difference was to fly somewhere else.
We've had a good first week of weather since we arrived here in Lushoto on February 13th. Unfortunately, the second week isn't looking quite so good.
We had done a reasonable 12 km walk on Friday, and we would have taken Saturday as an off day, but with them calling for some rain on Sunday, and in fact every day for the next week, we figured we had better get out and do another decent walk before getting shut in due to rain.
We've been scheduling our activities here so that every second day we go for a nice hike. The off days, we still get out, but just for a wander around town and to find something to eat.
We tried a new restaurant yesterday, and it's the best one yet. There are two other ones in town that get good reviews, but from what I've read they are both western style restaurants and with western style prices. One is actually a pizza joint... Momma Mia's! And it definitely caters to the visitors... most locals wouldn't be able to afford the place.
