The ferry from Zanzibar back to Dar es Saleem holds nearly 1000 people and I would guess that half of them were sick on the voyage; seas were high and rough. Imagine a ship big enough to carry that many people being tossed about by the waves. I made my way to the outside deck, very carefully, and spent the trip out there having never before felt so seasick nor so happy to see land. Jim wasn’t bothered by the motion – I found him with his hat over his eyes trying to avoid the mess around him. We left Dar the next morning and only made it 90 kilometers, both of us a bit wrung out. Mount Kilimanjaro and Marangu town await and we commenced the long drive through desert landscape and sisal plant plantations. Row after row, acre after acre, the agave sisalana plants march toward Kilimanjaro. It appears the leaves are cut by hand – whew, what a job that is; the sharp points and razor edges of the leaves cannot be pleasant. Sisal is stripped and dried in the sun but we only see a couple small operations, this is not the cutting season.

Marangu is nestled in the foothills of the famous peak and is one of the four routes climbers use to ascent Kilimanjaro. The town is hilly and cool with tropical vegetation. Arabica coffee is grown here under banana trees; this type of coffee plant needs shade. What a great combination – coffee, our favorite drink, and bananas – one of our favorite foods. Kilimanjaro is hidden by clouds so we will have to make do with coffee. We find the Coffee Tree House Community Camp and arrange for a walking tour with William and Nelson, the camp liaisons. We walk downhill for an hour and I’m already thinking of taking one of the many bota-botas (small motorcycles) back up to camp when we are finished. First we visit the Chagga Caves. Chagga tribespeople dug a system of tunnels to hide themselves and their livestock from Maasai warriors intent on invading, stealing and killing. The tunnels bring to mind the Vietnamese who also lived in tunnels to hide from invaders.  How the Chagga (and the Viet Cong) got enough calories to do such arduous work under such pressure is uncertain. There are only so many calories in rice. The Chagga Cave guide tells us of how the Chaggas fended off the Maasai with clubs and also took Maasai warriors as slaves. I suspect the Maasai tell the story a bit differently as they are were never enslaved by Arabs because of their fierceness. The caves are impressive. Happily now everyone gets along ok – the Maasai graze their cattle on the flats and the Chaggas use the foothills for agriculture.

Babu is a third-generation coffee plantation owner and he tours us around his plot. Like many people here on the slopes he raises his domestic goats and chickens in pens and cages. There isn’t enough land to graze them so fodder is found and brought to the animals – now that is a chore. The upside is that the manure is concentrated in one place and can be tilled into the coffee plot. Babu has some fresh picked beans and he takes us through the process – a hand peeler is used to remove the skins; he expertly tosses the dried beans in a basket while blowing on the chaff so it disperses. A timeless blackened clay pot is set on open flames (not coals) and the beans are roasted, turned constantly by Babu. He then sets them in the wooden pestle and we take turns pounding the beans to a powder. Some of the grind is combined with a couple spoonfuls of sugar and we eat that out of our hands – it is delicious. The rest of the grind is poured into boiling water for a cup of the freshest coffee ever. Maybe we don’t need a bota-bota ride up that hill after all.

The day is finished with a locals lunch at William and Nelson’s favorite pub. HipHop music blares and bota-bota boys try to attract our attention. We are targets, being white and obviously rich. We can ignore these silly boys. But even many months into our trip, we still get fleeced here – we are overcharged for camping fees and since we did not ask for a receipt, the Coffee Tree House manager demands we pay for camping again. He speaks almost no English so Jim sets up the translator for Kiswahili and we explain we already gave the money to William and Nelson. The manager either doesn’t get it or is pretending not to. It is not about the money – it is just that the next camper is going to be fleeced if we cave in (haha, that’s a good pun). We go to bed with the issue unresolved and next morning we ask the manager to call his buddies – everyone has a cell phone – but Nelson hangs up when he hears Jim’s voice. We ready the truck and honk the horn to be let out and unlikely as it seemed, the guy unlocks the gate and off we go. Being locked into a campground/yard is a problem we often face, so we happily leave Marangu and cloudy Kilimanjaro behind and head for Tarengire National Park where we are sure to be given a receipt for camping. Lesson learned.