Arusha

We landed in Arusha airport, a classic mid-African airport with lots of small planes taking off and landing and a bunch of miscellaneous tin-roofed buildings masquerading as airport terminals. Each small airline had its own little waiting room and operations centre and you walked from your airplane, through the waiting room and out into the busy parking lot. There were dozens of safari jeeps waiting for their passengers and we were greeted by Ingrid from Bush2Beach along with Omari, our driver and guide for the next portion of our journey.

Before we embarked on our first bit of sightseeing into the Tarangire park, we stopped off in Arusha to do some banking and find a cell phone sim card for Rick. Driving along the streets of Arusha was a marvellous experience because of the sheer colour and vitality of it all. Here are some pictures taken from our Land Cruiser as we drove through the town.

It's Kili Time! 

 Kilimanjaro is a popular Tanzanian beer. Tanzania is a land of very few brands. you see Coke and Pepsi, the four cell phone companies and that's about it.

Construction Zone.

 Tanzanians have a wonderful ability to ignore chaos and dirt and live their life in peace.

Hair Dressing Salon

 A hair dresser waits for walk-in business while a passerby loads her sack.

Come inside!

 Bars in Arusha are plentiful despite Tanzania being a Muslim country.

Tanzanian industry

 A roadside bed factory shows the Tanzanian taste for elaborately carved wood.

Fresh Fruit

People bring food to markets like this from far away in the countryside. Women usually carry the fruit in baskets that they carry on their head.

Fast Food, Ice Cream and Internet.

What more could you want in life? Internet service in Tanzania is based on satellite transmission, so it is leisurely at best and too expensive to penetrate the market. With a dearth of wiring infrastructure, but a large investment in cell technology, wireless Internet will probably overtake from satellite-based Internet before too long.

Street Vendors

Life in Arusha reminds me of how I imagine life in New York would have been like in the 1920's and 1930's. Anyone with hustle and chutzpa can make a living on the street selling fruit, cell phones or jeans.

Junk Yard

The variety of storefronts was breathtaking. A clothing store could be next to a junk shop, a bar next door to a bank.

Nuts and Bolts

Tanzanians must be chronically short of nuts and bolts. There were many nut and bolt shops along our route. The state of the roads must shake everything up and loosen nuts and bolts by the millions.

Chairs for Sale

Tanzanians favour elaborate furniture styles as demonstrated by these chairs. There seems to be a disconnect between the size of the average Tanzanian house and the size of the average Tanzanian chair. I'm not sure how one of these behemoths would even fit through the average door.

Table Shop

The workers take a break. The cell phone ads are ubiquitous. We were there in the middle of winter, hence the hats. The temperature was over 25 degrees Celsius.

Bicycle Overload

Everywhere we went, we saw overloaded bicycles carrying everything from logs to entire families. Here's a typical example of a large load being carried on the typical Chinese-manufactured bike.