Unfortunately, the “food situation” did not really get better the next day. We had booked a shuttle to Tanzania and therefore had to get out – once again – early. So early that the cook of the restaurant had not yet appeared for work and we therefore had to cope with a cup of coffee for the time being. The usual, African, punctuality of the shuttle was then “owed” that we still each got a packaged, fresh tuna sandwich for the way. So the long journey could start.

On the way we made a short stop, shortly before the border, where all fellow travelers (only one local) could stretch their legs. It took of course no 10 seconds until we were nicely addressed by a Rastafarian – but in the end he just wanted to know what we wanted to give him, since Christmas and New Year were not so long ago. Arrived at the border we had to leave the bus with our luggage to go through the security check, the health check, the exit from Kenya and the entry to Tanzania … all our own counters, with our own queue. Despite extensive, negative research, we both suddenly began to sweat a bit, because here at the entry now actually a negative Covid test was required and we had none. Try makes wise, we thought to ourselves and foolishly showed the 10-day-old test results from Rwanda on our smartphones. Visibly astonished, the lady at the counter took this information, took our temperature and sent us on to the next counter with an entry form – still deep furrows of astonishment on our foreheads.

  • When One Does a Journey …

About 5 minutes later – we were almost done with filling out the form – exactly this lady came rushing towards us like lightning. Oh my God, she understood it and we are not allowed to enter, were our thoughts. Far from it! Very nicely she asked Andreas where his cell phone was … he had left it at the counter and said lady brought it back to him with a friendly grin. But we pushed our luck a little further. A longer discussion with the Tanzanian border officials followed, because something had gone wrong with Andrea’s electronic visa application. We had already noticed this error in Germany and had written several e-mails, which, however, remained without an answer and so the officials initially expressed the opinion that the EDP system was right and Andreas was very welcome in Tanzania, but he had to leave the country again on 07.01. – 12 days before the planned return flight. After some back and forth, one of the officials manually changed the entry in Andreas’ passport – obviously starting to get a bit annoyed, not even a small “additional” fee was charged.

So we finally arrived at our accommodation in Moshi around 4pm – the bus driver even made a phone call to colleagues (no one knew where our accommodation was at first, as it had a different name until recently) and brought us right to the door. We spent the short rest of the day preparing everything for the adventure tour starting tomorrow: looking for the office of the travel agency Kessy Brothers, doing the paperwork, withdrawing money (always a small experience in itself), making the deposit for the tour (for a moment we were millionaires – 1 Euro = about 2800 Tanzanian Shillings) and repacking our luggage. During dinner at the “Climbers Home” – our accommodation – we met a nice couple (she from America, he from Holland) who had been traveling the world for 8 months and had already seen a lot. Well strengthened, we went to bed early to be fit for the next 5 days and the climb of Kilimanjaro.