Jambo (hello)!

After a 10-hour flight from Toronto and an 8 hour stopover in Istanbul, I board another flight — this time for another 6.5 hours to bring me to Kilimanjaro, Tanzania. And no, I am not here to hike the mighty Mount Kilimanjaro. Arriving at 1:20 am local time, I am driven for an hour to the city of Arusha for a short shut eye before I catch a bush flight to my final destination in Tanzania.

Arusha is a cool, lush and green town near the foot of Mount Meru and fringed by coffee, wheat and maize estates. So it is no wonder that my pit stop is the Arusha Coffee Lodge. The lodge is built and designed around the original landowner’s plantation home that dates back to the early 1900s.

It is said that coffee in Tanzania originated from southwestern Ethiopia at the turn of the 19th century after being introduced by Jesuit missionaries from Reunion. During the British colonial era, the industry flourished and is one of the main export crop of Tanzania.