The road to Arusha

We made it to Arusha last night. The day was long, but could have been much worse. I read most of the way and our Masai Mara group have become quite good friends, so there was a lot of joking down our end. They recently discovered my triple first name combo of Charles Andrew Stuart...so before I was just Andrew, now I'm called Charles by the tour leader and some of the other people on the tour, Chuck by the Masai crowd, and even Crazy Larry as I'm taking Lariam, the generally psychological episode inducing and sometimes  hallucinogenic malaria medication.

The rest of the group have done the tour from the start (I think Kampala in Uganda) to see the gorillas in Rwanda, and most plan to go all the way to Cape Town. There are a plethora of different nationalities, but the pick n mix of accents probably couldn't be worse:

Most are Australians, so they sound like they're asking questions....all the time...as they go up at the end of their sentences (I even caught one of British girls doing it already). Hello Larry? Everyone get on the bus? This is how we put our tent up?

Ruth, the tour leader, is from Brimingham, so periodically she stands up to give us all our information (as well as the worst case scenario on everything: someone broke both their legs here, someone died there, don't take photos of anything, you'll get stone thrown at you). The b'ham accent, as some of you will know, goes down in the first few syllables, then goes back to the tonality it started at.

A welsh girl. They just sound silly.

Finally some Canadians who to describe them best are anal bitches. Most have initiated us slowly and with open arms. Not this mother-daughter combo. They like to enforce the rules and take no prisoners. I tried being helpful to get on their good side, but there were still some snide comments about the newbies, as we're known. Rules are important, but there should be some diplomacy in enforcing them.

Touring with a big group of Mzungus is very different to travelling by yourself. I would say it makes things easier and more efficient, but does feel like it takes out some of the spirit. That said, we are camping in Africa...and for the next two nights 'in the bush' in the Serengeti, so there still is still a certain element of hardcore-ness...