the great tanzanian adventure: Crew Introduction..Dar and Lushoto

First things first, the crew that were the key participants in The Great Tanzanian Adventure!

Starting from the girl who is standing in the white top and blue denim skirt..
Rebecca! Our host (aka Rebec, aka R in these posts)

(Going clockwise, and adding some anecdotes)
Li Ling (aka Li, who hates/is afraid of birds and ketchup) ,
Qihui (aka Kiwi, who is accident prone and can break anything. One time nickname was Goddess of Destruction),
Wanlin/Win (aka W in these posts, who sacrifices herself by being the one who gets BITTEN BY ANYTHING AND EVERYTHING hence saving others from malaria and other sad things.),
Tian Yun (aka TY, who is the shortest. we always make fun of her about her height ;P), and
Su-Anne (aka Su, who hates fruits.. and got a fruit platter and fruit juice as the first dishes for her birthday morning breakfast).

Oh! no anecdote for Rebec! she's the one who loves "sour sour" aka preserved fruits like orange peel and sour plums, and is our "mama" for the trip! --> mama, apart from the biological sense, she was literally our mama, aka she drove us around, gave us "allowance" (aka Tanzanian shillings that are not easy to get), helped us bargain (she knows swahili) and handled all the administrative stuff, was in charge of the "common fund" from which most things are paid from, planned and executed a lot of our itinerary, and even was our tour guide for a lot of the places we went to! (THANK YOU!!!)

One other thing you should know about us-- we are car sleepers. aka, once the engine gets crankin, and the trip takes more than 5 mins, all of us fall asleep. almost without exception. So.. you're probably going to get lucky and see some unglam photos of us asleep in the car.

1st destination! 5 hours drive to Lushoto, on the way, the gods decided that we clearly needed some spice in our adventure (to make it Great)... so the car broke down--overheated! apparently at the Exact spot that Rebec's same car overheated on the same journey to Lushoto, and our car ended up being parked next to the Same meat bbq store as last time!

This was beside our car for the next 45 mins..

Lushoto high up in the mountains, beautiful, and true to its name, lush green trees all around (although its pronounced "loo-sho-toh"). Very much the antithesis of what we'd expect to see in Africa in the dry season.

-->This was us during our 3.5 hour trek around Lushoto. We'd started trekking at 3 ish PM, on a quest to see a waterfall--which turned out to be quite disappointingly non-watery, since it was the dry season. On the way back, our 75 year old guide asked us if we wanted to take the longer route, and we said why not? This started out very nicely.. we saw agriculture fields, the routes were very manageable. However, it soon turned into trekking in jungle-like terrain along paths that sometimes didn't even really seem to be there, and we weren't 100% sure that the guide knew where he was going, and it was rapidly turning dark... But clearly our fears were for naught! we arrived back in the village before it was COMPLETELY dark YAY! But oh yes, the photo is to show you how lush Lushoto can be.

The waterfall... do you see it behind us? Do you get what i mean by it is non-watery?????!!!

Our 75 year old guide (who was probably the most fit of all of us.. and gave us sticks to walk with, and whacked thorny plants out of our pathway..) (Thorny plant = REALLY THORNY PLANTS, poor liling and qihui were wearing sandals.. and got a lot of scratches :( ) and 2 boys who gave us picked wild Calla Lilies)

Waiting for dinner to start.. its zi4 pai1 (aka self-phototaking) time! --> TY looks a little.. squished.

The Viewpoint of Lushoto--> A steep drop!!!!! (I basically army-crawled to the edge.. we were too scared to stand up!)