This month marks our six month anniversary of arriving in Tanzania.   Many people have asked for more details on the day-to-day, but we’ll save that for another blog post.  We feel so lucky to live, work, and travel in this beautiful country and this post is a chance to show y’all some of the highlights so far of our safaris (‘safari’ means ‘trip’ in Swahili).  And to make you want to come and visit…

THE ISLANDS

This is our first time living somewhere tropical, where the main hobbies are beach and/or water related.  We live within walking distance of Coco Beach (the weekend hangout for locals), a 30-minute boat ride from two marine reserves, and a two hour ferry ride from Zanzibar.  Zanzibar is Marrakesh meets the Caribbean, made famous for its spices, its slave trade, and for being home to Freddie Mercury.  It is beautiful, and we try to go as much as possible.

LAKE VICTORIA

We were able to take a trip to Mwanza, the second-largest city in Tanzania, in October and explore the shores of Lake Victoria, the second-largest freshwater lake in the world by surface area.  This is a two hour flight from Dar, or two day bus ride (at least).

USAMBARA MOUNTAINS

A biodiversity hotspot with rainforests, chameleons, mountain villages home to subsistence farmers, waterfalls, and views of Mt. Kilimanjaro – one of our favorite places in Africa.  We drove to the mountains on a holiday weekend with two good friends from GIZ (Marco and Sophie from Germany) and would love to return soon.

SELOUS GAME RESERVE

Just before Christmas, we took Nathan’s parents and his Grandpa and Grandma Holmes on their first safari to Selous Game Reserve, the largest of its kind in Africa.  Unlike the more visited parks of northern Tanzania, the animals here are truly wild and seem shocked to see safari trucks (or could this be related to the fact that most of the park is open for hunting?).  Safari is not something most Tanzanians will ever experience and we realize how lucky we are to have gone on one as a family.

GERMANY AND MORE

Nathan had to return to Germany for work in November and we were able to see many parts of the country – Berlin, Nuremburg, Salzburg (Austria), Berchtesgaden, and Frankfurt.  Germany is what we thought it might be in some ways (clean, organized, full of really efficient trains) but was surprisingly fun, mostly due to the many great people that welcomed us.  We visited Istanbul on the way home to Dar and the cliche is absolutely right about this town – East meets West, Old meets New.  But one word can sum up Shannon’s favorite part of Istanbul – CATS.  They are everywhere but the city is trying to take care of them humanely (and recently the dogs too) but also control the populations.

NERD ALERT:  Tourism is a major part of Tanzania’s economy (along with agriculture), with over 1 million people visiting each year.  Over 30% of the land is protected and most people come to visit famous parks such as the Serengeti, Ngorongoro Crater, and Mt. Kilimanjaro.  But there is so much more in TZ – visit us and you’ll see!