Waterfall Hike

On Monday, we had off school so we decided to do a hike up Mt. Meru to one of the many waterfalls. I got the name of a guide from one of the other teachers and he and his friends offered to take us for 10,000 shillings or $6. So morning of, me, Victoria and Kelly woke up suuuper early, Jimmy came and picked us up to take us to Sakina Supermarket to meet with the guides. Turns out there were two guides who crammed themselves in Jimmy’s little cab. We drove through the rural towns at the foot of the mountains over ruts and up some steep inclines. We paid another 10,000 shillings to go up the mountain and then began to hike. Jimmy had never done this climb so he decided to climb too. (he looked pretty funny hiking in his dressy jeans and ducklike shoes)

As we walked through a few of the smaller towns, a pack of children took up following us giggling and laughing. I couldn’t take pictures of them because then they start to ask for money. The views are absolutely beautiful of the hills and the trees. I was surprised to find pine trees on the mountain.

I had been taking pictures up until we walked through a corn field and the guide told me to put the camera down for a few minutes. We came out of the cornfield and ran into a groupf of three men dressed in rag-tag camo clothing with guns cooking breakfast in a open space. We walked up and the guide plopped down and started chatting up the camo guides. I pulled out my camera to snap a picture and the guards told me that I was definitely not allowed to take pictures. I put away the camera without asking questions but Kelly, of course, decided to question the gun wielding dudes. They said they were guarding a water pipeline just in case, “terrorists come to poison the water line and kill all of Arusha.” Because that is the ultimate aim of all terrorists. Kill off Arusha, riiiiight. We decided they were probably guarding their pot fields. (Later we did find out that they were, in fact, guarding the waterline but I’m pretty sure the terrorist part was them glorifying themselves.)

We then headed down an extremely steep dirt ravine, almost fell a few times, and reached the rocky creek at the bottom. We then walked for a bit over the rocks, boulders and finally through a narrow rock canyon that opened up into a massively high waterfall with a pool at the bottom. We climbed up some boulders to play in the spray of the falls.

We then climbed down to scale some more boulders so we could drink our bottle of wine that we dragged all the way out there. We then headed back out the creek bed and up the ravine wall. Up was significantly harder than down and by the time we made up to the top we were all breathing heavily and basically collapsed in a heap. The hike back to the car was uneventful and we drove back home tired but happy.