Things to Know

We are getting adjusted to the time and had a leisurely day in the area of our hotel.  Duncan, the tour company rep stopped by to confirm some plans for tomorrow and later when Clarence and Bob will head to Moshi to start their Kili hike.

Then we found a cash machine and successfully withdrew thousands of shillings!!  The rate of conversion is 100 shillings = $1.42 or 700 shillings = $10.00.  Of course none of this means much until you go out and discover your purchasing power!

So our benchmarks are:

500 ml bottle of Tusker beer = $75 shillings + $17 shillings deposit

bananas = $69 shillings / pound

5 cups of dry rice = $225 shillings

small veggie pizza(which was delicious!) + Coke = $485 shillings

toothbrush (yes, some were forgotten at home!) = $255 shillings

small bag of potato chips = $29 shillings

KitKat chocolate bar = $109 shillings

Clarence was trying on hats to wear while we are safari.  What do you think?!!  He's still looking :)

And the flower shop at the mall had this huge arrangement of 500 stems of roses for $4500 shillings.  It was gigantic - bigger than anything I've ever seen!  The shop smelled beautiful with all the colorful arrangements waiting to be purchased.

I have lots more pictures but uploading them is painfully slow so I'll have to save them for later.

In other news - we've killed 4 mosquitoes between our 2 rooms now so the mosquito nets are being used tonight.  Unknown to us, our bedroom window (the screenless kind) was open to the pool area so it was an open invitations for the little guys.  We closed that up and Clarence was a quick catcher, before any of us got bit.  And a very close card game of Kaiser was won by the guys tonight, on a lucky handoff of the dreaded -3 point card!  You can be sure that a rematch will be played soon!!