This is not what I signed up for... I need some culture, STAT!

Yesterday we went on what was supposed to be a "cultural tourism program tour". It was TOTALLY not what we expected. When they guy came and told us about it he said "We'll see some traditional villages, then we'll walk to the top of a hill that has a nice view of Arusha, then we'll go to a waterfall and some lunch." Sounds lovely for a lazy Saturday. We also went out to karaoke the night before, so none of us had really gotten a whole lot of sleep. Anyway, "walking to the top of a hill" really consisted of about a 1500 meter assent up to the top of one of the foothills of Mount Meru. Then he insisted that the waterfall was just on the other side of the "hill" (I'd call it more of a small mountain... ) in the valley. We then walked for another hour or so until we came to a gorge. He said the waterfall was just down the gorge. We'd come too far at this point to turn back, so we descended down into the gorge I don't even know how many feet (a LOT) on a very tiny STEEP winding path that was really slippery cause it was just loose dirt. By the time we finally got the bottom we found a little stream, but not waterfall. Again, the guy insisted we only had a little farther, but again he majorly underestimated and we walked along/through the rocky river, periodically scaling rocks as tall as me for at least another half an hour before we finally made it to the waterfall. It was really pretty and worth the hike, just definitely NOT what we were expecting. When we left in the morning the guide told us we would be back in the village at 1 pm for lunch, but it was almost 1 pm by the time we made it the waterfall. (We left at about 10:30 am, so a two and half hour hike to just get there.) He then insisted on the way back that it would only take about an hour... (yeah, right!)... it took nearly that long to complete the hike back down the river and out of the gorge. To add to the fun of it, we had all worn flip flops because we thought we would just be walking around a village and wading in a waterfall. On the way back up the gorge I had to go barefoot because I kept slipping out of my flipflops. (Did I mention it was really steep? I spent most of the time on all fours using my hands to help climb up and having to rest about every 50 feet from exhaustion.) We didn't end up making it back to the village until about 4:30 pm (6 hours after we set out) and hadn't eaten anything since breakfast!

In the end I'm glad we did it because it was a super pretty hike and waterfall and we got to pass through a lot of traditional villages. Little kids would come out to the trail just to watch us go by, and a few would join our trek for a little bit before turning back to home. It was VERY exhausting though! And we certainly would not have work flip flops it we had know what we were getting ourselves into! The guide at the end said we hiked a total of 18 kilometers. It also made us feel really good that he had hiked Kilimanjaro, and he told us that last day's hike of Kili is not any harder than the hike we had just done. So basically, I'm going to start telling people that I basically climbed to the summit of Kili in flipflops!

Only other news, Caroline's mom arrived last night and is very excited to start seeing Arusha. We are doing some shopping today at the market which should be fun.