Mt Wa Mbu
While the majority of organized trips are covering only the great national parks in this part of Tanzania, we also spend a lot of our time on places off the beaten track. Traveling on our own with no fixed schedule is quite some experience to let go of the hectic European style of life and to dive into the completely different rhythm in Africa.
If you take the time to stop at the small villages and places such as Mt Wa Mbu you get the chance to get closer to country and people. None of the organized tours ever make a stop here.
Cultural Tourism is the key word. They offer tours organized not by foreign tour operators but by the local communities showing tourists the area they live in and aspects of their daily life.
In this area they grow many different things.
Our guide Elind shows us how they harvest by hand.
This is how they live.
Together they produce all sorts of things including some souvenirs.
A banana tree with a big flower and some small bananas.
If you did ever wonder why bananas are bent, come here to see and learn. ;-)
Yes, this is how they brew banana beer. It does taste better than it looks.
A dinner place with a nicely decorated table just for us.
They cook very traditional over the open fire and with hot stones.
Amazing what they produce. What we pay is enough to serve the whole team.
It does not only look good but it tastes fantastic.
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The Cultural Tourism Program here is very new and was only established recently. We agreed to meet up at 8 am with our guide Elind. Very untypical for Africa he shows up half an hour early so we need to hurry up with our breakfast.
He walks with us through the fields of growing crop, explains how they grow rice and talks about how they live here every day. Now we know why bananas have that distinct shape and how the beer tastes that is made from them. It doesn’t look very good but the taste was not that bad at all.
As this is our honeymoon and we are the only tourists we also get served a fantastic meal somewhere in between the banana plantations. We really seem to get a special treat here and after an eventful day we walk back with Elind to the camp site where we say good bye. Next morning we hit the road again with the goal to make a short stop in Karatu before we drive further into the Serengeti.
