Beauty in the eye of the beholder......

Part of Tanzania from the air




One of the Monkey families in the hotel grounds where we stayed...just watching them can be very entertaining, can really sometimes remind you of some humans....!!!!



One of the beautiful Baobab trees in the front of the hotel Mkonge where we stayed in Tanga




Another Baobab tree in the same grounds of the same hotel -this time at the back..the hotel bordered the 'beach' but it wasn't a swimming beach...

Does anyone else have Baobabs in their country? I think it's an indigenous tree to Africa but I could be wrong...

The view this morning on my travels home from Johannesburg after having returned to South Africa last night... the clean lines of the country fields bewitch me every time I travel this route (often, 1x a month) and I had to just take a photo early this morning........

So it's month end yet again and I have returned from my travels to Tanzania.I say travels but basically we stayed in Dar-Es-Salaam the capital for a night or two while we had a meeting or two, and then we stayed in Tanga, a coastal town north of Dar, where the factory is where we do the training. The training went pretty smoothly, no major hiccups experienced at all. I have other photos but can't place them due to the personal content thereof.

Tanzania is in the NE of Africa (Central region) , with the famous Mt Kilimanjaro, the highest peak in Africa in the NW of the country and the Indian Ocean in the East. I know several people at work who have actually climbed Kili, and one or two that have climbed Mt kenya as well. (It's almost the in-thing to climb Kili nowadays in our country...). Serengeti and Ngorogoro are also in the NW area which we didn't get to see, after all we were on a working trip not a vacation! The people are probably the best feature of Tanzania, I have visited 3 x now since 2000 and always find the people to be very warm and welcoming.

The infrastructure leaves much to be improved, and the towns and cities aren't necessarily pretty - the houses are mainly broken down and in dire need of paint, and there are no pretty gardens anywhere except perhaps in really well off areas of which there are few, more likely the various European Embassies. The rest of Dar and the country live in houses resembling shacks or shanties...pretty much what I guess the poor in Central Or Southern America live in. So it's not a visually appealing country, at least not to myself, where I consider South Africa to be an especially pretty nice looking country....

Anyway, the trip was good, the people are very hospitable, but one must truly work according to Africa time, and there are certainly no traffic rules followed by anyone. In the cities traffic jams can take several hours to clear up, and I experienced the traffic to be a matter of 'get in there, drive fast and don't let anyone else in'... and certainly don't stop at stop signs or traffic lights. But the plus points to such a country that has less than what you are used to, are there - one always enjoys the true African sights, there's always hundreds of bicycles on the road at any given time and usually they carry everything including the kitchen sink on such a bicycle - just dangerous in the evenings when there are no lights on anywhere , and the smells and sounds and sights are always of true Africa...always something to enjoy although the smells can be a bit overpowering sometimes in the wrong direction!!!

On a final note, such trips always make you realise exactly what you have at home to be grateful for - the mostly decent tar roads, the picturesque countryside, towns and cities that we have, how easy we take things for granted in our daily lives...

For this reason I appreciate these work trips to Tanzania even though they only happen every 2-3 years...

Tomorrow starts a torrid week at the office, month end deadines and reports...after all that's my daily job!! So if I only surface at the weekend, do forgive me. I also appreciate all the comments, I may not get back to you all individually, usually I go read your blog and leave a comment as opposed to answering on my blog where people don't always read the response comments...

Have a wonderful November where ever you may be...