Mike and Michele’s Global Wanderings

Jambo! (Swalli greeting)

Michele here…we are currently in Zanzibar, an island off of Tanzania (in Eastern Africa). How we got here is another adventure that we will relay later. For now, I will tell you about our Mt. Kilimanjaro adventure.

After we got back from the safari, we needed a few days to recoup from days and days of camping and being covered in dirt. We paid the staff at our hotel to hand wash our clothes in a bucket (that’s the way clothes washing is done here) and we made our plans for our Kilimanjaro Trek. We decided to go with a different company than the one we used for the safari because we were concerned about the equipment we would use for the trek. Climbing “kili” as it is called is no joke and we needed top quality tents, sleeping bags, boots, and a whole lot more. Since our Land Rover safari vehicle ran out of gas due to the gas gauge being broken and we froze in our sleeping bags one night, we had concerns about the equipment provided by Nature Beauties. We had heard good things about Good Earth’s equipment so we decided to go with them. We met with the company representative and he had a checklist of what was needed for the trek. Hmmm….ah, yea, well, you see, we are on a trip around the world and we don’t have many things on that check list. So, the next day 3 guys showed up at our hotel, including our Kilimanjaro guide, with 3 huge bags of clothes and a bag of boots. We rented:
2 sleeping bags
2 pairs of hiking boots
2 heavy down jackets
2 pairs fleece pants
2 pairs rain pants
2 medium weight fleece pullovers
2 balakavas
3 pairs of socks
2 sets of treking poles
2 pairs heavy waterproof gloves
1 pair googles

The next morning, on Thurs, Nov 3, we were picked up at the hotel and saw that the car contained 6 porters including our guide. Then we drove 1.5 hours to the Machame gate and picked up 2 additional porters for our Kilimanjaro trek. (Note that there are many routes. We chose the Machame route because we could camp for 6 days instead of staying in huts and because it is reportedly the most beautiful of all the routes.) There is no fresh water and no showers on Mt. Kilimanjaro. All our water was collected from streams and boiled and Paul, our cook, made us great camping meals, sack lunches to take with us each day, and lots of snacks, while Floreane was our “waiter” (the guy who served us food while we were in the “restaurant” tent).

With our guide and 7 porters, we started up the mountain. Our 6 day schedule with pictures and descriptions is below:
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Jambo! (A greeting people use in Tanzania, Africa)

Sorry it has been so long since we’ve blogged. (Michele here by the way….) We have actually been camping for 2 weeks and then we made several attempts at blogging – and actually did write two blogs – but blackouts in Arusha, Tanzania are common and we ended up losing everything we wrote because it didn’t get uploaded to the server. Oh, and we’ve had some adventures along the way that we will write about. Anyway….

We went on a 6 day, 5 night budget safari in four national parks between October 26 and October 31. We visited Tarangire National Park, Lake Manyara National Park, Ngorongoro Crater, and the Serengeti. Many people might think of going on a safari as a luxury adventure. Well, not so in our case – we did the budget camping safari. Here’s a look at what a budget camping safari means:
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Mike types…

Well, its been a while since we’ve posted anything but computer access has been either really expensive (Dubai airport), inconvenient or impossible (Serengeti National Park). While Michele is presently writing about more recent events, i will fill in on how we got from Greece to Arusha, Tanzania…

We left our Athens, Greece hotel at about 1 p.m. to walk about 2 km to the metro station and rode the metro to the Athens airport. Our flight was scheduled to leave at about 6 p.m. and we arrived to check in just about 2.5 hours before departure. We had been dreading the trip from Athens to Tanzania because it would require us to spend the night in the Dubai, United Arab Emirates airport. Little worth mentioning happened in the Athens airport and we boarded our Emirates Air Airbus 330 without any trouble. Emirates is a very nice airline. Every seat (yes, including economy class) had its own display screen on which one could watch cameras displaying downward or forward views from the plane, a choice of about 6 movies or a choice of about 6 T.V. programs. It was also possible to play video games with a small phone-shaped control module detachable from the seatback in front of me. I chose the marvel comics-based ‘Fantastic Four’ movie while Michele watched ‘Crash’. Double F was fine while Michele reported Crash as being quite depressing. We recieved an excellent dinner meal of Greek Mezze, salad, bread and cheese, Chicken Piccata, Blueberry yougurt museli tort, chocolates and the beverages of our choice including (without charge) beer, wine or liquor.

We had heard and read that the Dubai airport was quite a spectacle with a shopping-mall-sized Duty Free shop and bars and lounges. Well, it certainly was something else. It was elaborately decorated and even had 15m lighted artificial palm trees in the middle of the terminal! see…
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Just a brief blog to keep things up to date…

After hanging around Santorini for 4 days and 4 nights, we will be departing on the ferry back to Athens at 7:15 tomorrow morning.

While here, we walked around the shops and restaurants in Fira, had lunch and drinks on the other side of the island (we’ve been staying in Fira) at the beach in Perissa and walked down to an interesting church on the side of the cliff of the caldera (Santorini has a caldera in its center as a result of a volcanic explosion a few thousand years ago.

The biggest news is that today Mike spotted a small lizard eating ants!

Here are a few pictures…
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Hi! Yes, it’s been a few days since we blogged. It hasn’t been laziness but rather we have been spending our computer time researching and planning our next countries (Kenya, Tanzania, Egypt).

Anyway…Michele here on October 18, typing from the most beautiful Greek Island ever – Santorini (if you ever see a picture of one of the Greek islands, chances are it’s Santorini) – but I’m getting ahead of myself.

So, when we last blogged (Oct 12) we were catching a train from Marrakesh, Morocco to Valletta, Malta where we would stay one night before taking a plane to Athens the next day. Why are doing all this? Because the flights between Casablanca, Morocco, Valletta, Malta, and Athens, Greece were very cheap if you did it the way I’m about to describe – but I’m not sure I would do it this way again since we got very little sleep and were basically toast for 2 days. We took a 10:50pm flight to Valetta, Malta, arriving at 3:45am. We waited in the airport until 5:30am when the public bus came. It was raining and in the rain we walked to our hotel. Dripping wet, we talked to the night manager who first tried to tell us that check in time was noon. We said we would sit there in the lobby (dripping all over everything) until noon if that was the policy. After chatting a bit more with him and making friends with the man, he informed us that we could in fact check in at that time (about 6:15am) because he felt sorry for us. O.k., fine. So, we hung up our stuff to dry and laid down for a nap. I had made a hair appointment to get my hair highlighted 3 weeks prior to this day and the appointment was at 9:00am. So, as I was saying, we laid down for a nap and set an alarm. Well, neither one of us woke up and all of a sudden I look at the clock and it is 8:55. Oh @#($*&#! I scramble like mad to get out the door and I run to the hair dresser. I am a bit late but no problem. So, for the next 3 hours as I am drifting in and out of sleep I get a hair cut, highlights, and wash and blowdry. Wow! A blowdryer! Something I haven’t used in almost 5 months now. After the hair appointment, I go back and wake up Mike. We have a list of errands to do including shopping for 1st world items (e.g., hand sanitizer), burning a CD off of my camera’s SD card, and sending some stuff back to the U.S. Dragging and dog tired, we go out to run our errands and we get the CD burned but then realize we have to go back to our room to get the stuff to mail to the U.S. Big mistake! We laid down and got up at 6:30pm. Oh well!

We go to sleep in Valletta on Thursday, Oct 13th, setting the alarm for 2:00am. We get up on Oct 14th and catch a 3:00am taxi to the airport. Our flight left at 5:40am and was scheduled to arrive at 8:10am in Athens, Greece. Gawd, we were both so tired when we arrived in Athens. However, the much of the metro system in Athens is brand new and very easy to use (thanks to the 2004 Olympics being there). We found our hotel, checked in, and had grandios plans for not wasting the day this time and getting out to see the ancient sites. Yea, well, about 7 hours later, we wake up from our “little” nap and realize that most things would be closed. So, we simply walk down to the shopping/restaurant district, have dinner, then go back to sleep!

The next day (Sat, Oct 15) we got up early and were determined to see all the sites in one day that we had planned to see in two days. The day started with a trip to the Athens Archeological Museum, one of the most famous museums in the world because it houses many of the statues found at the ancient greek archeological sites.

We went to all the ancient sites including:
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Mike and Michele write…

Today is October 12 and in the next 1-2 hours we will head for the Marrakech train station to ride to Casablanca where we will catch our plane back to Valletta, Malta. The next day we will take another plane to Athens…

At 8 a.m. Friday morning, Oct 7, outside the Sahara Expeditions office, we met the guide, cook and bus driver for our trek through the High Atlas mountains to Jebel Toubkal (highest mountain in North Africa). We had packed everything we thought we would need for this trek into Mike’s pack and left everything else behind in Michele’s pack in the Sahara Expeditions office luggage room. The bus ride to Imili, the Berber village where our trek began, was just about one hour. In Imili, we met our mule and mule handler and began a moderately easy 4-hour trek to our first overnight stop. One thing we (or at least Michele) learned is that a mule is a cross between a horse and a donkey and mules cannot reproduce. So, the only way to get more mules is by breeding horses and donkeys together. Our guide also explained thqt a mule can carry up to 450 pounds of stuff. Our mule was carrying all our food and cookware and the gear for five people over four days. Here is a picture (taken by our guide, Tariq) of Michele; Mike; our cook, Mahmoud; our mule handler, Hamid; and our mule.
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Hello…Michele here…Today is Thursday, Oct 6 – exactly 4 months since the day we left. Yesterday we returned from a 3 day, 2 night trip through the Draa Valley (described below). On our last night we rode a camel ride out in the Sahara Desert and slept under a star-filled sky.

Our trip began with a stop at Ait Benhadou. This is one of the best preserved kasbahs (ancient castles) in central Morocco and the site for several films including Lawrence of Arabia and , more recently, Gladiator. Here is a picture:
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Today is Saturday October 1. It is hard to believe it is October! This is Michele typing using a French/Arabic keyboard so my punctuation will probably not be correct. We left Chefchaouen, the beautiful small mountain town in Northern Morocco, on Thursday September 29 after having 2 great breakfasts. The breakfasts included bread, eggs, butter, honey, jam, chocolate, olives, and very fresh Moroccan goat cheese. The goat cheese has the consistency of feta but is slightly sweet. Before I go on, here is a picture of Chefchaouen:
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As always, if you are shy and don’t want to post a public comment but would like to contact us, please do so at– mikeandmichelertw at hotmail.com (of course the ‘at’ should be replaced by an @)

We write…

On the morning of Sunday 25th of September we took a “Petit Taxi” to the CTM bus station in Fes to subsequently proceed by bus to Chefchaouen. First, we had to figure out how to board the bus. Here we encountered a new, more formal way of checking luggage on a bus. In the station some employees weighed our baggage, charged us 6 Dirham (about 80 cents) for our two baggage claim tickets (based on the luggage weight) and motioned for us to enter a waiting room. We left our bags with them and went to sit down. As the departure time approached we wondered where we would be boarding. We could see two busses through the glass door but one was apparently unlabeled and the other was in front of a sign which indicated Casablanca. Just as Mike was asking someone behind a ticket sales counter where we should bem some employees unlocked to door which lead to the busses. After some confusion about which numbered seats were ours, we were seated and ready to depart. The next challenge would be to get off the bus at the appropriate stop. This is often more difficult than it sounds because there are no announcements when approaching stations (this goes for the trains as well) and the signage at stops/stations is generally poor. We usually go by expected arrival time but we had received differing reports about the length of this trip. When we attempted to ask the driver what time the bus would arrive in Chefchaouen, we gathered it would be around noon. Fine. The bus stopped 2 times along the way for what were apparently tea breaks and each time we questioned the driver to make sure we had not yet arrived in Chefchaouen. The second time, he assured Mike it would be at noon and gave Mike a pat on the back. None of these people we were capable of more than about 50 words of English so these conversations are not so straightforward… often a mix of English, Spanish, French and Arabic…

We arrived in Chefchaouen at about 10 minutes after noon. It was clear that it was a bus station and Mike had spotted a sign on the ride through town which read Chefchaouen. After gathering together our baggage we asked a “Petite Taxi” driver to take us to Plaza Uta el Hammam. It was a short ride but the driver wanted what seemed a little excessive, 20 Dirham. Oh well! It’s only 2.25USD! Almost before we got out of the Taxi, a local tout claiming to be an official guide was in our face. We couldn’t figure out what he wanted to sell us be we THINK it was a tour of the mountain trails. No thanks, we’ll have a look around ourselves. So, we broke away and found our intended target hotel — Pension La Castellana. We checked into a small room upstairs with shared bathroom and a second sink out in the open. For this we pay 150 Dirham per night (17USD)…

The La Castellana pension is just 1 minute off the main, Plaza Uta el Hammam in the heart of the medina. This Medina is much smaller and more manageable than the medina in Fes and at least 30% of the people walking around or eating in the street cafes are tourists. The majority of these seem to be from Spain as the second language is definitely Spanish here. This is good for us becaus Mike has managed to retain a fair portion of the Spanish he learned in high school… At least enough to communicate some basic needs and make simple conversation with some of the Spanish tourists.

After making some basic preparations (some water and light food) Sunday night, we headed to the Rif hills and mountains flanking the North and East of Chefchaouen at around 8:30 Monday (Sept. 26) morning. We encounter many people from the village in the mountains who are heading into town. They are walking with large sacks on their backs or riding or pulling donkeys carrying loads of produce, clothes, etc. (probably to sell in the town markets). After about an hour of hiking we encounter a man, “Hola!” he yells out. “Hola!” we say back. He asks us where we are from (in Spanish) and Mike tells him (in Spanish). He then asks us if we would like to buy some tea. We say “sure” (in Spanish). We go with him to the village of maybe 20 scattered houses on the hill. His house looks much like a shack. There are chickens and a donkey in the yard. We enter the house, which has concrete floors covered with dirt. There is no electricity and we later learn that water comes from a hose that is inserted into a well up on the hill. We go into a room that is a traditional Moroccan living room. The room does not have a door and it is rectangular shape with a table in the middle and benches lining the walls. The benches are covered with coushins and pillows. It is obvious that this is also where the family sleeps. There is a battery on the floor (like a small car battery) that is charging a cell phone and a candle on the table that is their light at night. A small boy is there who is very dirty and his nose is running. The man’s wife is in the other room trying to quiet a baby. After several minutes of broken Spanish between the guy (whose primary language is Arabic) and Mike, the wife brings us sugared coffee and mint tea. She smiles, and like many Moroccans, has about half her front teeth missing. While drinking the tea and coffee, which we offer to pay 20 dirham (about $2.25 – probably 10 times what it cost to make it), we notice a goat in the other room who is chewing on a plastic bag. After a few minutes we thank the man and his wife (“Shukrun” – thank you in Arabic). The man and Mike do a fake kiss on each cheak. This is what men do here in Morocco. He shakes my hand, which is what a man would do when saying goodbye to a Western woman. We go on our way and are very grateful for this experience! We then hike for a bit more and find the bright white village mosque and one room school. It is all alone and beautiful, set against the background of the Rif Mountains.

Later in the evening we are walking through the 15th century town Kasbah (north African castle) where we climb to a lookout tower that overlooks the main town square. We hear music and shots being fired and it seems it is getting closer and closer. We stay in the lookout tower and see a parade of sorts and all of the local Moroccans gathering. The men march in a circle, firing their muskets (very loud!), and people throw money and gifts in the center of the circle. Of course we have no idea what is going on but we have a great view from the kasbah tower. We later learn that these are the “rain men”. They travel from town to town and perform their ritual to bring rain to the town. People throw money and gifts in the center of where they are marching in hopes of bringing more luck or hope for the rain to come.

Yesterday (Tuesday, Sept 27) we set out for another hike in a different direction. At 8:30am the rain men gathered in the town center to perform a parting ritual before moving on to the next town. We were eating breakfast and have a close up view and had no problems hearing the ear piercing gun shots that they fired. After breakfast, we walked through the maze-like media to try to find one of the town gates (this is how you get out of the medina). Just after leaving the medina through the gate at Bab Suk (all the gates have names), we met a man supervising construction work outside a relatively large, multi-story building just outside the Medina. When he began to speak to us, of course we were skeptical this guy wanted to sell us something but we were to be very pleasantly surprised…

After settling on English as the language through which we would be comunicating and telling this man we were from the U.S., we learned that he was a retired Colonel in the Moroccon Air Force and had spent several years in the United States (mostly around Texas). It turned out the building he was supervising had been in his family since many years before he was born (about 1930) and he was building additions and reonnovations so as to open it as a hotel. He invited us to a great panorama of Chefchaouen and insisted we come inside the under construction hotel. This should be one of the nicest hotels in Chefchaouen when it is completed in the predicted 2 years. As is true with many hotels in Chefchaouen, it is built around an open air atrium it its center and the doors to the rooms open into this center. One can look down from the rooftop terrace into the atrium 6 floors below. This man showed us nearly every room in the hotel (none were close to being completed of course) including the “family” rooms. These are like apartments with a kitchen, 2 bathrooms, and two large rooms – one bathroom and large room for the father and the other bathroom and large room for the children and mother. After he shows us all six floors of the hotel, we go to the roof top for some beautiful views of the mountains, ville nouvelle (new part of town), and median (old part of town). Before leaving, however, he tells us that in Morocco, when you invite someone in, you must show them your entire house. O.k…
so we follow him to a different part of the hotel and he opens a door – WHOA! We set foot in the most luxurious house ever! It is clear this man is quite wealthy. He has a beautifully decorated home with Italian and Spanish furniture and display cases of silver and glass serving pieces. His house is painted in a variety of blues and whites with soft flowing fabrics between rooms (no doors) and detailed rugs. We meet his grandson who is 8 years old and is studying in his own bedroom and then see the library and toy room followed by the kitchen, also beautifully decorated. We leave after more than an hour, telling the man what a great honor it was that he invited us into his home and showed us around the hotel.

After leaving the wealthy man’s house, we start hiking up a trail to go up a different mountain (i.e., different than yesterday). During our 2 hour hike up the mountain, we were offered hash and kif (marijuana) numerous times by people who seemed to appear out of no where. We continually say, “La, shukran” (no, thank you). You see, here in Chefchouaen, selling hash and kif is a means of making money for the village people in the mountains. Our guidebook tells us this is tolerated because it is one of the few profitable crops, if not the only, that can be grown in the Rif mountains.

Later at night, we go out for a feast of harira, a thick soup made from lamb stock, lentils, chickpeas, onions, tomatoes, herbs and spices. This is followed by pastilla, a dish made from pigeon meat and lemon-flavored eggs, plus almonds, cinnamon, saffron, and sugar encased in layers of pastry. For our desert we have yogurt, mint tea, and cookies. All of this cost us $11 each.

Tomorrow we will take a bus back to Fes, spend one night there, then head for Marakesh, in central Morocco. See ya!

We love blog comments but if for some reason you want to say something to us more directly, please email us — mikeandmichelertw at hotmail dot com (appropriate punctuation changes will be required of course).

Hi everyone,

Today is Saturday, September 24th and we have been traveling now for 109 days (more than 3.5 months). Michele writing with Mike supervising. On Wednesday night, Sept. 21st, we went to the Malta airport to take our late night flight to Casablanca, Morocco. Immediately, I felt some unease since the waiting area near the gate consisted of Moroccan men and Moroccan Muslim women wearing headcoverings. (Morocco is made up of 99% Muslims.) Here I was, white skin, blondish hair, in a short sleeve shirt. Needless to say, Mike and I really stuck out. The entire airport and flight experience was very unusual. First, when the airline employee walked up to the counter, all of the Moroccan men ran up to the counter in a mob. The employee said something and they sat down. Then when it was really time to board the plane there was no queing (lining up). It was simply a scrum (pushing and shoving to get to the front). For whatever reason, Malta Airlines lets people board from either the front or back of the airplane and this makes for a big mess when boarding since many people boarding in the back need to make their way to the front and people boarding in the front need to make their way to the back. It was a big mess! Next, when the dinner was served, many of the people questioned whether the chicken was “hallal” despite the fact that the flight attendants assured them it was. Muslims will not eat meat unless it is hallal, meaning the animal has been killed in a special way. So, they either refused the meal or asked for something else. The flight attendants said things like, “either you eat it or you don’t – that’s it!” and “this isn’t a restaurant!” A bit later we heard an announcement that people were smoking in the bathrooms and that if this behavior continued and the people/persons were caught they would be turned over to the airport police upon landing. When we landed, the entire planeful of Moroccans clapped and cheared. It was all so interesting!

Once we got to Casablanca, we quickly discovered that there are two languages in Morocco – French and Arabic. However, we did manage to find the bus station office and perchased tickets for the 11:30pm bus ride into Casablanca. Turns out Mike and I were the only 2 people on the bus. We figured we would just walk to our hotel from the bus station because we had a map – yes, a sketchy map, but we figured we could make do with it. When we got off the bus, we started walking in a not-so-great area around the bus station, trying to use our map. Someone yelled, “Taxi?” “No thanks, we’re going to walk” we replied. The guy started laughing. Well, now we know why. There was no way we could find our way to our hotel. Not all of the streets were labled and with our pretty crappy map, we just couldn’t figure out where to go. So, we walked back to the bus station, saw the same guy who had laughed at us, and with our tail between our legs, so to speak, had to get the taxi. Of course, there we were trying to bargain after midnight in a bad part of town. We did pay several times the normal rate but the normal rate is about $1. We arrived at our “3-star” hotel (which is like a 1 or maybe 2 star hotel in the US and went to bed at 1:30am.

The next day, we got up early, took a petite taxi to the train station and went to Fes. The mode of transportion within each city is a petite taxi, which holds 2-3 people. If you have backpacks or bags, you have to put them in the box on top of the little taxi. Mike and I have now learned that when we do this, we should clip our packs to the top or else they could disappear. Anyway, we are in Fes now and have been here for 3 days. Fes, and Morocco in general, is much different from anywhere we have been. The first day we walked around just getting used to the people and the culture. Mike and I very much stand out here. Many Moroccans wear robes and slipper type of shoes. Most of the women have headcoverings. We, on the other hand, are light skinned and wear Western style clothing. Despite our initial intimidation of the Moroccans, we have found them to be very friendly and kind people.

An interesting thing that immediately stands out here is that there are no women sitting out in front of the cafes around town. People watching is a national past time here but only the men do it. It is very strange to see cafe after cafe with the many tables outside filled with men only. We learned that it is o.k. for couples or women to go into a cafe as long as they go upstairs and/or sit in the back. The front tables outside are for the men. The other thing, as I mentioned previously, is that very few people speak English and every sign, newspaper, menu, and all other printed material, is in French and Arabic. So, we are learning both!

Fes is made up of 3 parts. We are staying in the new part of Fes, ville nouvelle. Today we hired a guide ($18) to show us around the other two parts of Fes, Fes-el Bali, where the medina (old center of town) is and Fes el Jdid, the Jewish part of town. This tour was very enlightening. Below is a picture of the Fes medina:
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