We had the rest of our day to ourselves. George, Trish and I tried to walk out from the hotel into town but we were descended on by local kids, selling things and asking for money. I’ve been in plenty of developing countries and this goes with the territory, but here it was the most intense I’d seen and also the most uncomfortable. This was the real Arusha. Looking around I saw we were the only tourists within eyesight. That explained some of it. I had wanted to quietly explore the town but that was going to be impossible so we gave up after 10 minutes and went back to the hotel. It turned out that Greg, Tony and Sean hired a local guy to fend off the other locals and they got a tour of Arusha. I didnt’ think of that.
The eight climbers had dinner together.
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