We awoke with the alarm at 7 am, having slept pretty well. The hot water was luke-warm, so we decided to just get dressed and go down for breakfast. There was a huge buffet, with french toast, coriander potatoes, bacon, sausage, eggs cooked to order, pastries, toast, fruit, juice and tea. Needless to say, we ate a hearty breakfast.
Our group met at 9 am to go to the Cultural Heritage center for some serious shopping. We rode with Exaud, and he was quite the tour guide. He took us down a few residential streets, past the narrow-gauge railway tracks, through a daily market and past a hardware shop so we could see hoes like the ones that were made by the father of one of our group members in Kenya in the 1950s and 1960s.
The Cultural Heritage center has a little bit of everything, all jumbled together. We looked at t-shirts, scarves and antique furniture while we waited for the main shop to open. Some of the ornately-carved furniture was truly stunning, making us wish we could afford to ship it home (and have a home big enough to store it). Then we went into the main store, where Jess spent a great deal of time selecting a tanzanite, then helping several other people do the same. Shange helped Jer pick an antique Masai spear, selecting one that was well-made and well-used. Then we selected a few carvings and other small items as gifts, before joining the rest of the group in the restaurant for lunch. Again, lunch was a buffet, and it was quite eclectic. We had soup (Jess liked the leek, while Jer preferred the mushroom), samosas, egg rolls, salad, mutton curry with rice, and spaghetti with marinara sauce, followed by cookies and banana fritters.
While some of our group returned to the hotel, six of us went to see Shange's school. It was very nice, with five classrooms (and a sixth almost finished) for the 78 students, who range in age from 2.5 to about 10. The students (and their teachers) were very charming and welcomed us, and the children sang to us. (The school has its own song, which mentions its motto: We aim higher.)
Then Shange drove us back to the hotel, where we dropped off most of the group and picked up Jer's dad. Shange then took the three of us to Shoprite, the new supermarket patronized by expats and affluent Tanzanians. Among other things, it carried an excellent selection of wines and spirits, US and European candies and packaged foods, and Dabaga tomato sauce (a sligtly spicy ketchup variant made in southern Tanzania and hard to find in the north). It also carried a few items not usually found in American grocery stores, like shoes and socks.
Having made a few purchases at Shoprite, we headed back to the hotel to shower and pack. Jer rewrapped his spear so that it could be checked baggage, and we packed our new purchases with clothes as padding. Then a member of our group called to summon us to the terrace for an early dinner. Jess had a pickle, tomato and mustard sandwich, which was good despite the surfeit of mustard; the fries (really deep-fried potato rounds) were better. Jer had vegetable soup (which seemed to be a warm version of the hotel's chilled tomato soup) and a garden salad with feta, which were okay.
We all checked out of our rooms and loaded ourselves and our luggage into the Land Cruisers, then Shange and Exaud drove us to Kilimanjaro International Airport. We got there in plenty of time, and it was hard to say goodbye to our intrepid guides. Eventually we tore ourselves away, got through security, checked in, went through another security screening, followed by immigration, and eventually found ourselves in the boarding area with almost two hours to spare. After chatting with fellow group members and doing a bit of last-minute shopping in the airport's excellent souvenir shop, we boarded our flight to Amsterdam via Dar es Salaam. The flight was uneventful - Jess slept most of the way, Jer slept a bit, and the food was awful. After a brief layover in Amsterdam (and almost going through Dutch immigration accidentally), we boarded our flight for Newark.