East Africa part 2

After two flights (Dar to Mwanza, Mwanza to Bukoba) and an hour and a half drive into the hills we finally reached our destination - Karagwe, a lovely village close to the border with Uganda and Rwanda. 

Our hotel was quite nice (although played a lot of Nigerian music with a heavy hand on the bass, which made me feel quite at home but it drove Ken mad!) The views from the hotel were amazing. 

Flying over Lake Victoria
as the sun rose

The guest house

The surrounding hills

There's too much to write about in terms of the site visits that we made (and I have to write about that for my reports so I will skip for the blog!) but it was great to meet loads of coffee farmers who are benefiting from my project. And I got to learn a lot about coffee, from the field, to the processing factory, to taking part in a coffee tasting session with local organically grown Arabica coffee roasted right in front of me. 

A farmer gave me a bag of physalis - the
sweetest I have ever tasted

I loved this little house made of earth and straw

I was really pleased with some of the photos I took, capturing the local coffee producers. 

The coffee tasting session was great fun - lots of schlurping and spitting, which I found very hard to do because I kept laughing!

Schlurp...

...and spit it back out!

The journey home was looooong, but the trip was great! Here are a few shots of the tiny airport I flew out of. 

The waiting area

 

Luggage being taken to the plane!

Tiny airport

Oh, and my journey back via Nairobi was another mini adventure, as the 'hotel' I had been booked in to turned out to be a shared apartment! The other person staying there was just as surprised as I was as he thought he had the place to himself for the week! I was only staying there a few hours (arrived at 6pm and had to leave at 3am for my flight) and the guy was quite friendly so I just made the best of it, but it could have been a very uncomfortable night if he had been a weirdo! I should point out I did have my own room and bathroom, but it was still quite an odd experience! I consoled myself with cake.