You expect me to climb THAT?

As I mentioned in my last post, we had planned to go on a waterfall hike on Sunday morning. Unfortunately, our laziness messed it up. We had asked the guides to meet at 9 a.m. instead of their usual 8 a.m. since we were lazy butts and wanted to sleep in a little. Unfortunately, we weren't the only ones going in the hike, but we were the only ones to request a time change. So the guides show up at 8 and meet with a group of people and leave since they assume they have everyone. 9 o'clock rolls around and meander our way to the meeting point and watch as the minutes roll by. By 9:30 we call someone who can get in contact with the guides and we eventually find out that we had been left behind. Still wanted to go on the hike before we leave Wednesday for Zanzibar, we choose to go Tuesday.

So, Tuesday comes and again, we are lazy so we’ve asked the guides to come at 9 instead of 8. Luckily, this time around we’re the only ones going so we meet up with the guides and we’re off. In order to get to the waterfall, or even in the area where we begin hiking, we need to take a dala dala and then we had a choice. We could either walk the whole way, which they estimated would take about 30 minutes (lies….) or we could take boda bodas. 

This is a boda boda:

They're basically motorcycles that act as taxis. The benefits are they’re cheaper than taxis, usually, faster, can go places that cars might not fit, and to be honest they're way more fun. That being said, everything that’s fun is almost certainly dangerous and this takes the cake with the most dangerous thing I did all trip. Most of the motorbikes don’t have back for the passenger to lean on so you either hold onto the driver, or if you're lucky your bike might have a strap on the seat that you hold onto. Some locals just balance and hope the driver doesn’t gun the engine to start. For me, someone who’s been on a motorcycle more than once in my lifetime, I didn’t see it as much of a challenge. Some girls who had never been on one before though, that was a different story.

“OH MY GOSH! How do I stay on?!?”

-“Well you can hold onto the driver”

“but what if he falls off too?”

-“he’s driving how would he fall off?”

“yeah but what if? you never know!”

Needless, to say they all got over it pretty fast and ended up having a blast.

Believe it or not, I've seen more
people on boda bodas than this.

Finally enjoying the ride!

The one thing that did worry me was the lack of a helmet. The drivers might have one (mine did) but usually not. It’s a good thing you had room in your luggage next to your blow dryer and crème brulee torch to squeeze in your morotcycle helmet. What’s that? You didn’t have room? Oh well, in that case-  no helmet for you!

Now, I will be the first to admit that I don’t usually wear a helmet when I go for a bike ride at home. But, I bike on pedestrian trails mostly where there’s nothing really bigger than me to run into except the occasional tree if I’m feeling clumsy that day. If I rode my bike in a city at all or often on busy streets with cars, I would definitely wear a helmet. This is probably much to the surprise of my dad who’s favorite past time is nagging me about wearing a helmet.

It also wouldn’t have worried me as much if the drivers actually followed the traffic laws, but really, I had been there for almost 4 weeks so I knew that was wishful thinking and threw it out the window real quick. Everything you hear about motorcycles swerving in and out of cars, cutting cars off, going waaaaay faster than they should (especially over speed bumps), it’s like these guys try to break every single law and if they don’t it's not a successful ride. But like I said, it was cheap, the most fun I’d had getting around, and equally the most dangerous way.

Unfortunately, they didn't actually let me drive it. dang.

So the ride took about 20 minutes by boda boda and let me just say that if we had walked it, we would have not even wanted to go on the hike at all. It was all uphill and I’d say a good 3-4 miles. It would’ve taken us at least and hour and a half to haul our fat butts up that and then have to go on the hike. Another bonus was that the views of Arusha were spectacular on the ride, but only when we weren’t blinded by the dust. It was INCREDIBLE the amount of dust and dirt that we were covered in by the time we got off. I couldn’t get my shirt properly clean until I washed it at home and there was an outline of where my sunglasses were.

It may not be obvious, but our noses and foreheads are not
commonly that particular shade of brown.

So we finally start our hike after paying our drivers the correct amount (Damaris accidentally gave her driver a 500 note instead of 5000. He looked so sad and confused). The area looks very similar to Hoover or places I would hike in the States. At one point, one of our guides plucked something from a plant and popped it in his mouth. I swooped in on him like a hawk- “what was that?” “was it a fruit? A leaf?” “is it sweet?” “are there more? Can you show me?” “are there a lot?” “do they grow everywhere or just here?” “is this the usual season for them?” “What was it even?” “ummm it was a wild strawberry” was the simple answer I got. Fine by me. I managed to snag one at some point and it was pretty tasty. Poor guy. I think I scared him a bit. I was just interested but I very clearly inherited the  eating-strange-plants-at-random-times gene. Thanks dad.

Pretty but this was the super-de-duper easy part.

The hike itself was quite the challenging adventure. The route we took was to follow the little creek that comes from the waterfall and follow it upsteam. However, to get down to the stream the path literally drops straight down as some points. It was basically what I’m used to hiking at camp except a lot steeper and muddier. Kind of like a muddy waterslide only, you don’t have your bathing suit so you don’t want to actually slide down. I was quite surprise and proud of our group since we didn’t have a single person fall. We had the occasional slip and slide down a few feet but nothing bad.

hooray for super steep and muddy paths! NOT.

Once down near the stream we walk along it continually crossing back and forth which was fine for the guide who were wearing flip flops. On the other hand, it was a tad tricky for all of us wearing sneakers that we didn’t want to get wet. There were some terribly graceful moments on our part when trying to balance and walk on the slippery stones. I wish I had more pictures, it would be such good blackmail.

This is what the majority of our walk looked like. Claustrophobes beware.

There were some parts of the stream that were blocked off by gigantically large boulders. Some were ok to climb over, others had fallen branches and logs as a kind of ramp going up them but one stands out in my mind as being particularly awkward and difficult. It was fairly smooth (aka little to no places to hold onto) and I’d guess six and a half feet high. One of the guides had been ahead of us and he’s already up there and I’m looking around for what he used before I realized he had just scaled it. Once I got over how impressive it was, I realized he expected me to do the same. “You serious expect me to climb up THAT?” Thankfully, they didn’t, and thankfully they were both (very) strong and hoisted/gave us a boost up and over.

Aimee's turn to climb Mt. Nearly Impossible!

After that it was smooth sailing to the waterfall which just kinda pops out at you from around a corner. It was GORGEOUS. My pictures truly don’t do it justice at all. We decided to climb up behind it which proved to be harder done than said. First off, we had to climb barefoot since parts were basically a mud pit. I actually sank into mud up past my ankle at one point so very good call on that part. The only other problem was that it was mostly rock under the mud so you sank right through and had to try and grip the slippery muddy rock and hope you don’t slip and slide into the person behind you. It was a fun experience and we all got to laugh at each other afterwards about how dirty we were getting on this trip. I decided to wear flip flops on the way back which made walking up the stream a breeze but the climb back up was a bit more challenging with my feet slipping out of my shoes every few steps.

 

For all camp people, I was indeed singing "See the Pretty Waterfall" the entire time. =)

Seeing as we were already muddy it was unsurprising we purposefully made ourselves even muddier.

HA! Proof that I do (occasionally) smile for nice pictures mom!

We again took boda bodas back to the main road, which, again, was fun and dangerous. My driver was the first to get settled with me on board and he took off like a cork out of a bottle. It took a good 4 or 5 minutes for the next person to catch up with us. Not that I minded too much (who doesn’t like going fast?), but it’s still the whole no helmet thing. And although it wasn't exactly like this:

 This certainly is an accurate description of how I felt when my butt went flying off of the seat as we went over speed bumps. It happened a few too many times for my liking upon reflection....

Overall, AWESOME day trip to finish our stay in Arusha with!