Cultural Tour Of African Swahili Food & Art
After my safari tour ended, I still had a morning for a cultural tour of Arusha before Leo and Charles from Safari By Leo took me to Kilimanjaro airport for my flight out. This cultural portion actually started the night before when they took me to try authentic Swahili BBQ for dinner. As some readers already know, I’m a big fan of trying out local cuisines whenever I travel as I post articles about food markets and even unique food tours on scooters like the one I did in Vietnam.
The food throughout my stay in Tanzania was surprisingly good, even at the Serengeti lodge campsites I stayed at. I shot video footage where my tour operators in Tanzania took my out to local Swahili restaurants shown below.
As part of food culture, I visited a local food market where locals shop almost daily since many people in Tanzania do not have fridges at home. I also visited local art markets where I got to see different artwork including paintings, sculptures, masks, jewellery and furniture made by local artisans. The next video below shows some of the incredible artwork I saw. It was during this tour that I decided that I wanted to buy a painting of a Serengeti scene with animals but I wasn’t able to find exactly what I wanted in Arusha – I later did successfully make an acquisition of such a painting later on near the end of my trip when I was in Zanzibar.
My week spent with Leo and Charles was absolutely amazing as I felt I made two good friends in Tanzania. Not only did I get to experience incredible wildlife on safari while staying at adventurous Serengeti lodges but also culture with local food and art. This was not the end of my trip though as they sent me to the Kilimanjaro airport as I was only at the halfway mark of my African trip in terms of the timeline. I was now facing a big travel logistical challenge to take two different propellor airplane flights from two different small local airlines that don’t really connect with each other and hope that my scuba diving gear and I make it all the way to Mafia Island on the Tanzanian coast by the end of the day to start my second week in Tanzania but in a very different environment from that in the first week.
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