Na sasa tunaishi Arusha

And now we're in Arusha: hub of safari traffic as the last major town before heading west to the Rift Valley, northern Tanzania's commercial center with lots of agricultural production, and home to many NGOs and the ICTR. It's Tanzania's third-largest city, and the central clocktower is commonly misthought to be the midpoint between Cairo and Capetown (trivia: it's actually in the Congo river basin).

View of Mt. Meru (on a clear day!) from our street

Looking out our front window

Local production means 24 roses for TZS 2,000 (US$1.25)

Jambo jirani! (Hello neighbors!)

From the UAE to the URT

To catch up a bit, we started our trip with a fantastic visit with great hosts in Dubai. We experienced some of the extremes of Dubai, from braving the midday heat in search of falafel, minted lemonade and spice souks, to entertaining ourselves with the thrills of indoor skiing and dune bashing, to exploring some of the Emirate's extravagant construction projects, like the tallest building in the world (Burj Khalifa), the only 7 star hotel (Burj al Arab), and the floating community of the Palm development.

The indoor skiing complex

At the top of one (of the two) slopes

View from the Burj Khalifa

A dune bashing break

Karibu!

We swore we wouldn't have a blog, but here it is. We'll be updating periodically to share some of our adventures in Tanzania until the beginning of August.

And we also have photos, which we'll post here. But the internet in Africa is, well, tricky. Stay tuned!