Thursday, September 20, 2012

Kilimanjaro: Pre-trek


Before setting out for our trek up Kilimanjaro, we stayed for 2 nights in the backpacking town of Moshi.  On the first morning, we had no tanzanian shillings and only large USD bills so we walked for 40 minutes to get to town.  It was during this trek that we discovered how truely dusty Tanzania really is during the dry season.  Cars drive on the left side of the road and there are no sidewalks which was something that we just had to get used to.  On the way, we saw lots of Tanzanian ladies selling fruits and several carrying bunches of bananas on their heads.  Yes, everyone actually DOES carry stuff on their heads (even the porters on the mountains).  The whole town seems to be sponsored by Coca-Cola as all of their street signs, church signs and schools signs all say "Coca-Cola" on them.

In town, every third store sells cell phones which doesn't seem entirely sustainable to me.  Also, finding a bank or merchant that accepted Master Card and/or Maestro (European version of "Plus" in North America) was also difficult.  Apparently EVERYTHING in Tanzania is done in cash.  I knew that USD was a common currency but found a few interesting things:
1. Banks don't accept USD bills from 1999 or older from foreigners.
2. Banks will give a 1:1000 exchange rate on USD bills from 1999 or older from locals.
3. Any local merchants will take USD bills at a rate of 1:1000.  The actual rate is ~1:1500.

After going to 3 banks, we finally found one that would accept credit cards, however it would only give us 100,000 shillings per day (~70 USD) so we had to get a little creative in order to get enough to pay our porters and guide.  Tipping is a big part of the trek here and most of the group relies on this more than their salary.  We had 5 porters, 1 waiter, 1 cook, 1 assistant guide and 1 guide to take care of so this was a bit tough.

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