The plan was simple: fly to Arusha, spend a day seeing the city, go do a safari for 3 days, back to a hotel for showers that night, leave the next day. Easy!
Not so easy.
As we were leaving Zanzibar, I started feeling sick and threw up a bunch in the airport bathroom. I thought I had food poisoning.
That night and the next day, I continued feeling bad but stopped throwing up. Definitely seems like food poisoning!
The next morning, there was no way I was going on the safari. I was super weak and couldn’t do much on my own. “Why don’t you go on the safari, since we already paid and can’t cancel? If I feel better tomorrow, I’ll find a way to come join you.”
Famous last words!
That afternoon, I felt like death. I was having shakes and cold sweats, horrible fever… I googled my symptoms, and I was pretty sure I had COVID. The hotel got me a taxi to the hospital, and I told them I thought I had COVID. Off to an exam room.
From there, they asked me where I’d been lately. When I said I’d been in Zanzibar, they said it’s a hot spot for malaria right now, and they wanted to test me for malaria. Sure enough, I had malaria. Not sure if that was better or worse than testing positive for COVID.
Due to crazy fever, dehydration, and difficulty breathing, they kept me in the hospital for the 4 days. How do you get hold of your wife who’s on a safari in the middle of nowhere? I contacted the safari company, and they were able to reach the driver the next afternoon, telling him they need to come back. “We are running away from rain that is between us and the city. We can’t come back until the morning.”
When I finally got out of the hospital 4 days later (a day after we were reunited), I was completely worn out and exhausted from 3 days of crazy fever and shakes, bad sweats in the night, etc. Our original plan for going elsewhere that day was shot. I needed to just lay in bed for a while.
I’m sure we were/are the only people who’ve stayed in Arusha this long. We got to know the town pretty well.
Despite the fact we stayed at our hotel for 2 weeks, the same exact guy every day at breakfast would ask us what room we were in and if we wanted an omelette. Dude, the answers haven’t changed…
There was also a local restaurant that had vegan meatballs, so we went there a few times.
On our last day, we walked around to see more areas we hadn’t seen yet and to enjoy being able to walk independently.
The money in Tanzania is also really cool.
Check out just how many bats are in this tree!
Our plan for 5 days in the area turned into 2 weeks. We were really, really pumped to head to the airport and leave. It’s not that we didn’t like Arusha, we just wanted to get out of a place where we’d felt “stuck” or “trapped” for a while.
This entry was posted in Africa, Arusha, Tanzania
