So I arrived in Mbeya from Iringa on Wed afternoon - this trip was nowhere near as interesting as the previous and was only a mere 5 hours. I decided to stay at the local church youth hostel where the guidebook stated "all the backpackers ended up", this is only true if I am the only backpacker in Mbeya (which may actually be true although I did meet a couple of Austrian girls today). The hostel is .... fine, I have a double bed, a really decent mozzie net, a toilet (the communal bathroomshave a squat so the toilet is actually a bit of a luxury) in a relatively clean bathroom (all things are relative - it's actually not that clean) but it only cost 10,000Tsh per night (less than a fiver) and brakfast is included so it's all good with me!

Mbeya is a strange City - they greater Mbeya region has a population of 4 million and the city centre has a population of 400,000, however the town centre feels really small, it is compact with a samll market and a few shops and little else! It was explained to me today that the city centre is where one comes for official business like form signing but all other business/trade etc happens outside the city centre. It does have a friendly feel to it though.

I visited the local tourist info run by a company called Sisi Kwa Sisi who came highly recommended in my guidebook. When I found them, the office didn't fill me with confidence - however the guy spoke excellent English, I asked predominantly about getting to Malawi and he provided me with all the info without trying to sell me anything so then I decided I would try and book a local trip with him. Things you can do around Mbeya: climb a mountain, climb a slightly bigger/further away mountain, hike to a volcanic crater lake, or further afield visit a very cool sounding waterfall. I think for now I've climbed enough mountains and the waterfall, while it sounded cool was a lot of time on a bus and a bit more expensive so I opted for the (short) hike to the crater lake.

I visited a local restaurant where I tried the local speciality nyama choma (bbq'd meat - they didn't have goat so I had beef) with grilled bananas. I had this with a bottle of safari beer and the total cost was 4000Tsh (less than 2 pound) I'm liking the price of things further south! The food was also nice!

So after only a four day respite my feet were returned to my walking boots. We caught a dala dala out of town to the start of the hike. My guide (Felix) was excellent, really knowledgable, really chatty and I actually quite enjoyed the journey (except when we had to change dala dala and we were being shoved in lots of different directions - this would have been extremely stressful had I not been with Felix). We then walked through a rain forest - all the green in Tanzania really surprises me especially since it is the end if the dry season (it hasn't rained at all in over 5 months). The walk was enjoyable, there were loads of banana tress which were massive and looked cool, there were so many butterflies, some of them were really big and there were many different coloured ones; a lepidopopterist (I just googled that word) would have loved it! As we got nearer to the top we saw some colobus monkeys on the trees - that was fairly cool too! Then we reached the lake - the view was stunning, the water in the lake was so blue. There is a legend that there is a snake-like monster in the lake (a bit like nessie) and twice a year the locals sacrifice a sheep to it. There was a path down to the lake shore but Felix said we couldn't go down as it was too steep. I took some pics which I will upload at a later date!

So I have enjoyed my brief stopn in Mbeya and this will bring to an end the Tanzanian leg of my journey as I head for Malawi tomorrow! Tanzania has been awesome, Kili had a large part to play in that as did learning to dive but everythng in Tanzania has been really enjoyable and I hope the rest of my trip continues in a similar way!