South Africa trip

having downloading difficultities so captions and more photos to come in a few days...

Serengeti Trip

Just got back from a fantastic vacation with Chris and my parents.

Day 1 Arusha
Day 2 Lake Manyara
Day 3-6 Serengeti
Day 7 Ngorngoro Crater
Day 8 -11 Zanzibar

We (ok, I) took about 9Gb of photos so this is merely a small selection of unedited highlights (taken with my pretty new zoom lens):


Lake Manyara

Serengeti

Ngorongoro Crater

Zanzibar

Apparently I've been terribly negligent of my blog this year... it's April and the only entry of the year is from January and I didn't even update the photos!

Ok... I've actually taken house photos now so will bring them in and upload a few.

Not much to say about life between January and April except that we've settled nicely into the new house. Still working through the list of repairs and upgrades but have definitely made progress and it's very cozy and home-y now.

Spent Easter weekend in Zanzibar. Zanzibar is only a 20 min flight from Dar (90 min by ferry) so it seemed completely unjustified that aside from a brief visit to stone town last December, I had yet to explore the island. Because this is technically the rainy season it's also low season pricing so we got a decent deal to spend three nights at Mtoni Marine which is just a few km north of Stone Town.

Mtoni was lovely - the rooms exceeded my expectations with flower buds placed on the bed every day and lovely little touches like that. It was a stunning pool right on the beach.

We arrived early Friday morning, dropped our bags off and went in to stone town for the day. We met up with a friend from Dar and did a morning tour of stone town. Learnt lots of interesting historical and cultural facts (even Chris learnt something new despite several previous tours). We took a lunch break and then continued through the little streets checking out the craft shops etc. Watched a beautiful sunset from Africa House Hotel then head back to the hotel to get into our room and have dinner.

The next day we rented a motorbike and rode 90 min to the north of the island. Turns out rain is quite painful on exposed skin on a motorbike but it didn't rain much and the ride up was lots of fun. Spent a few hours in the north with friends and then drove back to our neck of the woods to shower and change before heading back in to stone town for dinner. We wandered around stone town for a couple of hours checking out all the restaurants.

After two rather full days we decided to take it easy. We visited the spa in the morning - Chris got a pedicure/foot massage and I got a back massage. We had lunch in stone town - kept the motorbike for easy transport - and then returned for some time swimming and lounging poolside. We had fantastic weather all weekend except for the little rain we got on Saturday and the cloud cover kept it nice and cool. It was then back to Africa House Hotel to meet friends of a friend who were new to Tanzania - drinks and dinner and ice cream on the beach before heading back to the hotel. Monday morning was again spent lounging around - except unfortunately the sun was out in full force so I'm feeling the consequences now. I've got my first proper sunburn EVER. It's not too awful - only a few small areas are sore but I look rather lobsterish in the areas not usually exposed when wearing a T-shirt and shorts. Fortunately in most clothing you can't tell as the burn is over a dark base and I was smart enough to keep my face out of the sun completely. I think the trick now is to maintain this base tan so next time I don't fry so badly.

So, overall a wonderful weekend though I definitely needed at least a whole week to recuperate from so long with no vacation. Now finalizing travel plans for my parents' visit in June so checking out Serengeti tours with much excitement... only two more months!

(pictures from Zanzibar and from the last blog about the house to come soon!)

House delays

Well, I promised photos of the new house a while back but there have been some... delays. This is Africa after all...

So we don't end up getting into the house until the 10th because the repairs are taking longer than expected (which is not unexpected really).

Then of course half of the things that were supposed to get done before we moved in weren't. The curtain rails are mostly missing or broken, the windows haven't all been fixed, etc.

Then we discover we have no hot water. First it turned out that there was a closed tap preventing water from reaching the tank. Then the input and output pipes were reversed. Then the pipes - with water finally flowing through - were leaking. THEN it turned out they were corroded and smaller than the rest of the pipes. So... after many frustrating hours (frustration on my part, work and frustration on Chris's) we finally think we've got it sorted out except the pipes are still smaller than the cold water pipes so we'll be installing a water pump to increase the pressure and, hopefully, the water flow.

We're also waiting to install a ceiling fan in the master bedroom so haven't built our bed yet and have been sleeping in the guest bedroom. We've finally gotten through most of the unpacking though not everything has found a home quite yet. It's a tiring process so we try to do little bits between enjoying our new satellite TV.

There are still so many little things to get done but we're making our way through them and once furniture has been placed and our walls have stuff on them I will add photos here.

HOUSE HUNTING IN DAR

Searching for a home is always a stressful experience. There's usually a time constraint (have to be out of the last place and have no where else to live) and if the market is busy places disappear quickly leaving little time to think the big decision through.

House hunting in a third world country, however, brings a whole new level of challenges and frustrations to the experience. Add to this that we are looking for a place that is livable as an expat (we like having running water and don't want chickens running around our yard) but are looking at a range that's significantly lower than most ridiculously overpriced expat homes... basically the result isn't fun.

In Dar, most rental house hunting is done through agents found either through recommendations or through classified ads in expat publications. These agents generally don't have their own vehicles so they make an appointment to meet you at a gas station or somewhere like that and then you drive around to various places together in your car. System isn't really that bad since there isn't much in the way of street signs or house numbers so giving directions to many places is very difficult.

To start with, the agent is generally very late so you sit around in the heat waiting for them. Then they take you on a tour of parts of the city you didn't know existed (and probably could have happily never seen) to look at places that are often out of your budget, horribly located or just horrible. And as though that isn't bad enough, half the time the agents didn't actually bother to arrange the house key so you sit around outside for 20 min and can't even see inside the house.

We were actually qiute lucky with the houses and saw quite a few nice options. The problem is things are being taken up at an astonishing rate... by the time we'd seen a few places (a few adys later) the earlier places were all gone.

This process is frustrating enough in itself (we're both grumpy after two hours of driving around without seeing inside a single house), once you actually find a place you have to try to negotiate. Most owners demand one year up front payment and often a house will need some repairs. So you negotiate how much you want to pay each month, how many months in advance you want to pay and what repairs need to be done (and who will pay for them).

And if you've made it through all that and the house is still available (and you still want to live together) then you finally get to sign a contract, arrange to pay the owner a hell of a lot of money and start hoping and praying the place doesn't fall apart after a month or flood in the rainy season.

It's a lovely process. Fortunately we managed to keep our sense of humor through most of it.

I am thrilled that after only two and a half weeks (that felt more like 2 months) we have found a house we are very happy with. Three bedroom, decent sized garden, full air/con and a landlord that's actually interested in taking good care of the place.

Will post photos next week.

In meanwhile, happy holidays!