[Okay – we’ve got internet access for the first time in about five days, so I’m back-filling our last few days as I can]

I hadn’t meant to drop the kids into Africa quite like that. I mean, I’ve spent a lot of time kicking around at least parts of the continent, as has Devon. I do get in out of my depth from time to time, but I usually get there slowly, after I’ve spent a day or two cloistered in some safe and quiet hotel in town.

We’d arrived in Arusha late yesterday, stepping out into the dark, humid, woodsmoke-laced evening air. Waded through security, visa and immigration lines and were whisked off into the night by the gentleman waiting at the curb with a car and a sign reading “Cohn x4”. In terms of clock time, the flights were actually a couple of hours shorter than our initial legs, but daytime flights always seem longer, and we’d started our day at 3:15 a.m. Barcelona time (which is something like 6:15 p.m. PDT the previous night). And what with the accumulated fatigue of the week, the kids were a bit too knackered for me to feel right about exposing them to too much “real Africa” right away.

But when Arnold – one of the three guides from Wildlife Explorer – picked us up and asked what we wanted to do for the day, the word “market” came up, and before we knew it, the six of us were knee deep in the local produce market in Tengeru, being led on a sort of scavenger hunt to acquire things that would get cooked for us to give this evening’s dinner “a local flavor”. Great fun, but perhaps a little much for starters.