Mello-brunello

So, we've left Africa and moved on to civilization, ie Italy! We're rewarding ourselves after months of questionable food, no raw veggies and horrible beverages with pizza, salad and wine galore! We're in Siena now, in the heart of Tuscany. Yesterday, we went on a wine tour of the Montalcino area, which produces Brunello, Ryan's favorite wine. The highlight of the tour was a stop at a little winery in Torre Neri (black tower). We were guided through the cellars by Mario, frisky 78-year-old vinter who only spoke Italian. He then proceeded to get us drunk, feeding us wine throughout the tour, in addition to the very liberal tasting at the end, which included a shot of grappa. After getting completely toasted, he passed out the orderform. We may be sleeping on the street for the rest of our trip in Italy, but at least we have 4 bottles of great wine!!

Next on to Venice to meet Ryan's parents, hoping they like gelato, since that's our main staple here.

-Betsy and Ryan

Brass Mummy, You Funky Mummy

Cairo has been quite the whirl-wind tour as we've only had three days to explore... Whirl-wind comes to mind when speaking of the Nile cruise we took on the first evening on being in Cairo. When deciding to take a dinner cruise we thought it would be dinner on a nice little boat motoring around on the river, oh we got that and SO much more! For entertainment two whirling dirvishes came out, one was a little person and the other Robert Downey Jr. I'm really thinking he needs to do that for his next movie, who needs a sequel to Iron Man when we could watch him doing a whirling routine?! It was like a car accident, horrible but impossible to take your eyes off. After that we had a belly dancer come out, this is my time to explain my dislike of belly dancers, they make me overtly uncomfortable and this was no different. The woman had giant breasts and was less of a belly dancer and more of a booby shaker, most of the men were having a good old time. One guy taking pictures was especially funny to watch as his wife glared at him, I'm thinking she was in my frame of mind, not entertained. In reality, the Nile cruise was so amazing it needs its own posting but due to the shortage in time, this is all it gets for now.

The next day we traveled out to the pyramids in Giza, but being the cheap-skates we are, we decided to try to take the bus instead of a taxi, yikes! It took about 30min to find the bus stop and to top it off the numerals were in arabic, which we cannot read. Luckily, the Egyptians we've met along the way have been very kind and assisted us along the way. If it weren't for the five different men we met in the various buses we took, I don't think it would have been successful. As we hopped off the final bus we started hoofing it West, thinking we'd find it eventually. Well, it practically hit us in the face, pretty hard to miss as they are HUGE! It was a pretty amazing site, if only we could get the camel peddlers to leave us alone so I could take a picture or two, man they poop a lot!

Speaking of poo, yesterday we went to the Citadel, well, tried to get to the Citadel... We flagged down a cab this time, thinking it would be quicker, and told him, Citadel. The Citadel, a fortress built in 1176, is a major, if not the second most important landmark in the Cairo area next to the pyramids. Cairo Citadel, large fortress situated on top of a huge hill in the middle of town, something you can see for miles! I kept saying Citadel with the idea that it will somehow sink into the cab driver's head, no such luck. He didn't have a clue and everyone we asked along the way didn't have a clue either, it was overly frustrating as he cris-crossed the Nile three times when we started on the correct side to begin with! I even had a map to show him as to where it was located. Eventually we drove within eyesight of it and we pointed to the place, I still don't know if he understood why we got out of the cab when we did. Inside the Citadel the architecture was nice but the show was stolen by the dioramas of different battles. They looked straight out of a highschool history project and were awesome! It showed them triumphantly winning all of the battles, although if my history is correct, it's been awhile since they've won any, especially against Israel, of which they have a piece of a jet wing in the museum with the Star of David on it. I'm thinking their lack of map reading skills could be the reason why they were devastated, couldn't find the Israelis! The best part of the Citadel was the uniform hall, Bill you'll enjoy this, they have Porta-Troops and you guessed it, their uniforms are brown!

We then visited the Islamic area of Cairo. We laugh in the face of Giardia and other microbial diseases as we have been eating the sketchiest of places. Sketchy, yes, tasty, definitely! After a quick lunch of pita, foul, chicken and green stuff (sorry Tender Branson, no recipes for you this time because I really don't know what it was) we were off to the Khan El-Khalili. I didn't know Betsy loved her scarves until now, she made me haggle for four of them! Anyway, they are pretty nice but four scarves, who wears all of those?!

One more stop in the whirl-wind tour, the Egyptian Museum. The museum is large and very interesting, it has so much stuff apparently they haven't found the time to categorize and tack information to all of it. In some parts of the museum, they have so much stuff you can barely squeeze though the statue of Amenhotep and Cheop's alabaster canoptic box. It's unfortunate because most of the items are out in the open, people are touching them and sticking their heads were they shouldn't be, I guess Egypt has so much stuff it's kind of a crap-shoot. Most of the stuff lacks any type of description, at least the King Tut displays, for the most part, had index cards with dates on them. We left the museum with out heads spinning for the over-whelming nature of it all, we didn't even go into a quarter of the upstairs rooms because it was all just too much.

On final thought, I know one place Betsy should go if we were ever to spit, Cairo because they LOVE her here! Not sure if it's the long legs or the blonde hair but one thing is for sure, they think I'm the luckiest man in the world! Even if they can't ready maps atleast they got that part right.
-Ryan

The Nose of Kilimanjaro

After close to a week of watching the Big 5 through a Land Cruiser window, Bill and I were ready for a nice walk... Seven days were ahead of us which included a little camping, hiking, scrambling, with a touch of labored breathing. Ok, maybe a LOT of labored breathing, I have to admit even I was pretty winded in the last 6 hours of climbing. Luckily, the swelling of my face had decreased significantly, although you may still have mistaken me for the "elephant man".

The adventure started in 2003 when Betsy decided it a good idea to climb Mt. Kilimanjaro (19,334 FASL), currently the tallest mountain in Africa, one of the Seven Summits. She took the Machame route which is a south-central (Dr. Dre reference not intended but you may infer) route and is considerably difficult in relation to other routes. This sparked the genius idea from Bill that we take on Kili while they were here to visit. I, always looking for adventure, responded with an enthusiastic, "sure!".

Through months of planning and research with every company known to man, we chose Evan's Adventure Tours. They are a relatively small outfit with decent reviews and an array of new equipment designed to help you up the mountain. This was an obvious choice for Bill, now we just had to decide which route to take. Again, Bill consulted his Kilimanjaro guide book for the answer and it pointed to one distinct choice, Rongai Route. The Rongai Route is on the North side of Kili, the village situated at the gate is in fact a border town with Kenya. It takes a semi-meandering route, since the North side is relatively steep, to reach Kibo, the summit camp of Marangu Route. Being the rainy season, the North side of the mountain seemed like the logical choice since it receives less rain.

Saturday morning came and it was time to start our trek up the side of the hill. We said our "goodbyes" to Laura and Betsy, who were off to spend a week in sunny Zanzibar (rough), and were on our way to the foothills. Upon reaching the gate we realized that we had 15 people in our party not including Bill and I, we thought this number ridiculous! Ridiculous until we reached first camp when we found they had carried a porta-potty up to the first camp, apparently this was to follow us and our explosive-diarrhea (if we were to feel mountain sickness) up the mountain. It was embarrassing eating dinner in our very own mess-tent as the three course meal was delicious and we had a dedicated wait staff. We were wondering when the violins were going to enter the tent and begin the entertainment portion of the evening.

Both Bill and I were reticent to use the porta-potty, as there were pit latrines on the route. We felt bad for the poor guy who had to clean out the refuse when we finished... I think the feeling of remorse quickly subsided with Bill when he found out how difficult it is to use a squatty-potty, he is almost 60 years old! He took to the saying, "oh, toilet boy!", after he had done his business, thank god there is bleach in Tanzania!

After four hard days of hiking up the the mountain, we made it to the shared summit camp of Kibo. This is where Marangu and Rongai meet up to make a strike for the top. Till this point it was a pretty easy hike for me but I was still nervous about getting sick and feeling like crap, as I seem to get sick from just about everything here. Kibo is at 4700m, at this point I was pleasantly surprised that I hadn't had headaches or and sort of altitude sickness but was preparing myself for the worst in the morning.

After a sleepless night, where we went to bed a 5pm to wake up at 10:30pm, we got up to put on our winter clothing and set out into the darkness. Our headlamps lit the way as we trudged up the scree, at times we were the only ones on the side of Kibo which made the stars just radiate! This day, after the previous four, was relatively difficult for Bill, but as we ascended higher and higher, he seemed to become more and more determined to reach the summit (this is possibly the dizziness from the thin air or perhaps a cerebral edema - as Laura always puts it to me, "I don't want to make that call"). We finally made it to Gillman's Point (aka the crater rim) around 5am, with one hour to reach the summit before sunrise. Bill started to feel a touch better and we decided to push on ahead.

As trace amounts of light began to envelope the sky we were able to identify various landmarks and features of the crater. The ash pit was beginning to show itself, in what could only be described earlier as a looming black mass which stood ominously in the distance. We rounded the crater and felt a familiar "crunch" beneath our feet, it was snow, which made us realize we were close to the summit. As the sun continued to creep, I became anxious that we would not make the summit in time, so I forged ahead of the group. Coming around the last turn of the crater before topping-off, I could see the iconic Uhuru Peak sign just ahead. I arrived, minutes ahead of sunrise and was able to snap off a great deal of pictures (which will be posted in mid-May upon our return to the US). I felt surprisingly good on top and waited for Bill and our guides to follow up behind. We turned around towards Kibo only after a few minutes, which made a jubilant but exhausted Bill even more than joyed. After a hard 1.5 hours of descending down the loose scree, my quads burning with pain, we came to the realization that we made it!

Now it was a matter of getting down as fast as possible, which made it hard since Bill was definitely not feeling well. Although the thought of a nice hot shower was enough to almost get the two of us running, our legs dictated the pace more than our minds. We made the base camp in about 1.5 days and were back to Moshi before dinner time the following day. The camping was great and the fact that we both were successful in reaching the summit was even better! We are now able to put one more adventure in the books, don't worry, plenty of pictures will follow when we get the time and bandwidth to facilitate such endeavours.
-Ryan
ps- I want to give a shoutout to my two amazing sisters (ok, Brian should probably be included as well) Jenny for watching Frank, and Sarah for sending my boots, not her Boots, along with GUs, which really were the only reason Bill and I made it up the hill! THANK YOU!

5 things we learned by going on Safari

1. Ryan is not (severely) allergic to African wasps.

A second point he learned in the same instance was to always inspect pit latrines for wasp nests BEFORE going in to pee. Ryan learned this the hard way, and before escaping the choo (toilet), got two good stings in the face and one in the leg. Luckily, my dad's severe hayfever finally paid off, and there were plenty of anti-histamines on hand. He still looked like a proboscis monkey for a few days though. (Pictures forthcoming)

2. Monkeys' love of bananas is not just a cliche (and they are very adept at stealing them)

We found this one out when a vervet monkey ran in the back window of the land rover, through all of us to the front seat, opened up a lunch box, grabbed a left-over banana then hopped out the driver's window. He then disappered into a bush, only to reappear a few minutes later happily chewing a cud of banana.

3. The proper procedure in the event of a leopard attack.

Apparently, leopards only attack from the back (lions from the front), so if you feel something on your back, it's most assuredly a leopard. You are supposed to grab it by the legs, swing it over your head and slam it down on the ground. Then you grab its front leg, rip it off (apparently this is easy to do) and beat the leopard senseless with it. Yeah, right.....

4. Don't try to drive down a road that's become a raging river, and don't try to pull a stuck land rover out in a borrowed car. You CAN over torque and break an axle.

This one is pretty self explanatory. We were the ones trying to help.

5. Seeing a million wildebeest and zebra migrating across shortgrass plans dotted with acacia trees NEVER gets old.

What's your favorite Dish? I won't cook it, but I'll order it from Zanzibar!

Our whirlwind tour of Africa and Europe has started! 1st Stop:
Zanzibar!!! When Dr. Livingstone came here, he wrote of the island's
beauty....and of its odor, calling it "stinkibar" in his accounts of
it. In our estimation, he's about right. (He also could have called
it "Noisibar". The capital (and only) city, Stonetown has no less
than 51 mosques in a 1 square mile area, each with their own call to
prayer...5 times a day.)

Our tour of stonetown has been led by our great tourguide/hostess
Naheed, a friend of ours from USF who is doing research in Zanzibar.
(A common theme of our trip: Mooching housing off long lost friends!)
Zanzibar has unique food traditions that are very different from the
mainland, so our trip was mostly a tour of Swahili cuisine, punctuated
with a little sightseeing. We started off by going to the famous "Two
Tables" which is highly recommended by all the guidebooks. It's
literally someone's house, and reservations are made by calling up to
the kitchen window and telling them what kinds of foods you like.
It's quite 'authentic' to say the least as family members come and go
throughout the meal, people sat in the next room watching TV and
laundry hung in the hallway. The food included cardamom donuts,
lentil soup, fish in coconut sauce, okra curry and spiced bananas.
After 7 courses, they pretty much had to roll us out of there. The
next night we went to get "Zanzibar Pizza", which is basically the
best hot pocket ever. Ryan and I are hot pocket fiends (a little
known vice) and we definitely think that these are amazing!

We took a little break from gorging ourselves to go to the beach, at
Matemwe. All if Zanzibar's beaches are world class (sorry Florida,
but they put you to shame) and Matemwe is purported to be the best of
the best. It's reached by either a very expensive cab ride, or dala
dala. Since we are dala dala experts, we didn't think this would be a
problem at all. Oh, how wrong we were. Zanzibar's dala dalas make
Dar's look like a north American metro system - organized, timely, and
relatively calm. Rather than the used Japanese school buses that
populate Dar, Zanzibar's dala dalas are literally pickup trucks with a
bench around the bed and a sun shade. Also, the roads in zanzibar is
generally unpaved. The trip out took over 2 hours, and at one point,
there were 33 people on the dala dala, including 6 hanging off the
back, plus a few buckets of fish and local fruits and vegetables being
taken to the market. The ride was worth it though! The white sand
beaches go on as far as you can see, islands growing out of choral
reef atolls dot the horizon, and local fishing dhows sail to set their
nets. Since this is the low season for tourists, we shared the beach
with a few local women gathering seaweed. It was pretty hard to tear
ourselves away from the beach and go back (via dala dala) to the
hustle of Stonetown. (Luckily, I'll be back with my mom in a few
weeks!)

Now on to Arusha for Safari!!!

Betsy