Cobras!!!!

(Maasai territory north of Arusha)

So tired..its been an exhausting couple of weeks for the wife and I both really busy. She with reports for donors and me drafting a application for EU funding for a Child Rights Project. So come the weekend and knowing we had to go to Arusha anyway to pick up our allowance, we thought what the heck, let's do the Messerani Snake Park! The park is about an hour north of Arusha, its nice dry, rolling grasslands with lots of Maasai tending their flocks of mbuzi (goats). We had a nice Mzee (older guy) taxi driver who knew a lot of the history of the area to take Franatee, I and another kiwi volly off the see the nyoka (smakes). He had worked in telecommunications for years all over Africa, high up fixing the tall communications towers, so really interesting.

Passing the Arusha airport (where people fly off to game parks in rickety WW2 looking planes) we got to the Snake Park and got to business. The snakes were livelier than ones I'd seen in a South African snake park in 2008, twas cool. Especially cool to see a pair of jet black spitting cobras, but I could not get to spread their hoods and attack..sigh

(I think this is a puff adder. Slow moving but gives a huge (fatal) dose of hemotoxic venom if annoyed)


(Franatee adopts a pet to introduce her budgies to)

The highlight for me was the random camel ride wifey and I got a chance to do. A camel is a weird thing to ride, this strange rolling motion and as it gets up and sits down you think you are going to pitch forward and break your neck. But once you get used to the gait, its relaxing to trot along on this bored and bad tempered looking beast.


Our taxi driver was waiting for us, so we had a chilled ride back to Arusha (save for the thieves-heavy area near the bus terminal where all windows get wound up or rings, mobile phones etc get whisked off) then the cramped bus trip back to Moshi.

Sunday, we did another killer hour run in the noon sun into the hills, deflecting the children wanting money and sweets. The wife is much friendlier and patient than I with people wanting things. However I think I might actually be getting fitter with all the biking and running...but this didn't stop me feeling like fainting when I got home from the heat, think I overdid it a bit...Sunday night was the Cup Final with chums drinking Dutch gin in sympathy for the Netherlands.

So yeah, another fun weekend. Now its Monday and back to work..