Ziwa Duluti

One of my favorite parts about living in Arusha is the city's proximity to natural beauty. Once you get tired of cars and people and dust everywhere, you can escape relatively easily to rivers, lakes, hills, waterfalls, and many national parks. This weekend I did just that and went with some friends to Ziwa Duluti, or Lake Duluti. (Fun fact: the plural of lake and the word for milk are the same--maziwa.) We took the daladala and walked about a mile, then arrived at a tranquil lodge by the lake. There, we ate kuku (chicken) and chipsi mayai (basically an omelette situation with french fries inside). Having such scrumptious food and lakeside seats is the stuff of dreams after a long week at work; it was nice to relax in a peaceful place.

Sitting and simply being in nature is great as it is, but my favorite part of our day at Duluti was canoeing. The four of us split into two canoes and set off to explore the environment. There we are below. In the foreground, you can see my lovely selfie smile and my paddle minion, and the background you can see my much lovelier roommate and a friend.

From the middle of the lake, we saw a different view of the majestic Mt. Meru than we usually do from town. You can see that my friend is also majestic.

On one side of Duluti, we found a lovely colony of large birds. (I didn't have Birds of East Africa on my person, so I don't know the species.)

I think my favorite sight seen from the canoe was a few monkeys hanging out in a tree. I was ridiculously excited because it was the first time I'd ever seen monkeys not in a zoo. You can check out the video below and share in my excitement! Maybe. It's hard to see the monkeys, but if you look for moving branches you can find them.

I left Duluti feeling refreshed and ready for the coming week, and with a few thoughts to share in my blog post. Spoiler alert: this weekend I head to Uganda for an ultimate tournament, so you can reasonably expect to read about that next. Nawatakieni wiki njema, na baadaye!