Finally made it on to the bus having braved the 'papasi' at Ubongo bus station. The journey from Dar es Salaam to Moshi in the North of Tanzania was due to take 6/7 hours. The scenery was pretty spectacular. We weren't exactly sure what to expect in terms of landscape in Africa but I have been constantly surprised how lush and green everything is. We passed the Pare Mountains, numerous fields of rice, corn and sunflowers and many small villages along the way. Unlucky for us we were subjected to the worse kind of Tanzanian feature length soap opera for the length of the trip! Nine and a half hours, and much later than expected, we arrived in Moshi, at the foot of Mt Kilimanjaro. Despite the long journey James has only managed 300 pages of war and peace!

Moshi is a pretty unimpressive place when it's cloudy as you can't see Kili; it's one of the main stop-overs for hikers in the area. We spent a couple of quiet days planning our next instalments of Tanzanian life. A full afternoon stuckin an internet cafe downloading software was quite depressing, apart from James being asked if he 'owns two wives' (whilst I was sat next to him!), and I spent a couple of hours teaching a local girl how to play patience. Mzungu is the Swahili word for 'white man/foreigner' and gets pretty affectionately used everywhere we go. Whilst walking a long in Moshi, two little kids ran up to James, held on to his hands saying Mzungu, Mzungu for a few hundred meters along the road. It seems the most memorable little gems like this happen at the most unexpected of moments.