Kendwa & Nungwi.

 The shared ‘shuttle bus’ taxi only took 1 hour to get to the hotel in Kendwa. Driving in this place looked amazing! Driving TO this place was a little scary - lets just say potholes and dangerous overtaking are a prominent part of Tanzanian roads!

My little room 16

I was staying at Kendwa Rocks, a great hotel from what I had heard from others...then I was shown my room… Naturally I’d paid for the cheapest option (apart from the $20pppn dorm which was fully booked!) and found two single beds, a fan and a door which locked with a sliding bolt :S All of the 'basic' rooms had access to the same 3 shared bathrooms, with hot water if you were lucky, and broken toilet seats.

It was the beach (and honestly the food) which made this place. I have never felt more in paradise! Except for the roaring tourist trade and regular local men trying to sell you things while you sunned yourself.

It was properly white sand, turquoise waters and palm trees. Uh, lush. The first afternoon I literally laid on a sun lounger by a sun hut reading a book, and drinking 5500TZH cocktails (£2) at happy hour (3pm – 7pm). The next day I had planned to walk to Nungwi but decided to spend it relaxing and washing my 'smalls'. The sunsets here were lovely, so long as there was no cloud. Unfortunately, for the last three nights, we were blighted with cloud and rain during the day!

It took just under an hour to walk north to Nungwi along the beach. You can only do it during low tide, so you have to plan accordingly. It rained most of the way there, but was still lovely and warm. The turtle sanctuary was a natural coral pool that filled up more during high tide. The turtles were rescued from hatchlings on the beach, and are brought up to full adult size (about 3 years) before being released. This place had also turned into some kind of make shift cat sanctuary. The owner said he had one cat which he had neutered, and since then all the stray cats that are found in the village are anonymously left at his back door. They had the three cutest tabby flea-bag kittens, which took to me like a house on fire, all three falling asleep on me. 
Trust me to go half way around the world and spend my time stroking cats!

As I mentioned before, the food at Kendwa Rocks was really really good; a fusion of Thai, Indian and Western cuisine. One night I had a coconut prawn curry for around 13000 shillings, another a slightly spicy beef mussman curry. The breakfast was excellent too!

I really enjoyed my 4 days on the beach, even in the torrential rain, and the beach massage by Mama Zanzibar was a brilliant way to relax before starting what I assumed would be a very tough 4 weeks in Lindi! 

10 days did not seem like enough in Zanzibar!

Me being 'good mother' to the three kittens. 


... yes one is nuzzling me in the bottom photo.

Stone Town

Stone town is really cool - its like a tiny little Marrakesh with its winding alleyways with little shops on it. There is so much to do and see here, I could have spent a lot longer!

I found an Anglican Cathedral built on the remains of a slave chamber. The alter sits on what was then the whipping post, to determine how strong the slaves were. A missionary from Britain decided to build a church on something horrible to cleanse it of its previous life. Next door is St Monica’s hostel, run by Christian women, which has a café area. The food was brilliantly cheap – I had chicken stew/curry with rice and a slightly spicy tomato sauce. I was glad to find a traditional place to get lunch as most places are closed during Ramadan. I was sitting with other Tanzanians and teens in Massai dress who seemed to find me fascinating!

After that I wandered around the busy local market, being the only mazungu (white person), which was an experience! Got happily lost in the winding streets too, on the way back to the hotel.

The spice tour organised through the hotel was great. There were about 20 of us and we were taken to a privately owned spice plantation. Our guide took us around showing us the native spice trees, and then cutting bits down to show us the nut or leaf or fruit. I didn’t really like this – at least one spice tours a day roughly every day of the week equals a lot of growing fruit and branches being cut down for our sake. I wondered if it was just there for show! One of the assistants climbed the cinnamon tree and was just peeling bits of the fragrant bark off. Poor tree!

They made us a little leaf ‘cup’ to store bits in, so I have examples of all the different leaves and things. It was interesting to learn that mace is made from the red stuff around a nutmeg!

Me with Rambutan - it's like Lychee! :) 

We had lunch in a lovely hut with a ‘spice market’ at one end (two long tables filled with spices). I could have bought hundreds of spices but seeing as it’s the very start of my two months I held off. Lunch was a lovely vegetable coconut curry with pilau rice and chapatti which did not go to waste! The toilet was great – it was a little woven spiral out of some kind of palm/ coconut leaf with a porcelain long drop toilet in the middle and a bucket of water.

I also did a half-day trip to Prison Island, a place originally built to house slaves but during British reign was used as a quarantine for people trying to come over into Tanzania and Zanzibar who had tropical diseases. On the island there was a giant tortoise sanctuary as well, and you were allowed to walk around and touch them which was nice. After this we were taken snorkelling just off of the island. Our captain picked a really great place to see all different kinds of coral and fish. 

I had dinner at the Forodhani Gardens a couple of times. There was a café there with free wifi which was very unusual but very great! The food stalls were busy – most of them were repeats of the same things and the sellers would walk in your way while you wandered around, insisting to tell you exactly what everything was even though you knew it already from the other stalls! My favourite was ‘Mr Nutella’ who made these really great Zanzibar pizzas (basically a crepe made from thin dough) with nutella, peanut butter and banana inside! I also had various skewers of fish, falafel and the most solid and inedible corn on the cob of my life. How disappointing!

Mmmmmm squid....

Stone town is a really interesting place, you just have to get used to the constant hassling and occasionally being hissed at by the locals for not stopping at their stalls. 

The start.

Zanzibar, first proper day!

Today was good and my hotel, Hotel Kiponda, is nice. Cool floors and walls. Open roof terrace where I had a lovely breakfast after arriving at the hotel. My room is small, but perfectly sufficient, though I’ve had to place some duct tape over the odd mozzie net holes! This is the view from the roof terrace - yes that is a birds eye shot of where the chickens are kept. 'Nice' 5am wake up call from the cockerel!

 

Walking around was fun today. I decided to go it alone, though I got accosted by Haji who was determined to take me on a tour. He did show me some cool places though – lovely roof terraces for drinks on top of hotels, and a Hindu temple nestled in the middle of the hustle and bustle of Arabic and Indian architecture and winding streets. I asked to be dropped back at my hotel, where he asked for payment which I refused. Maybe I should have given him something, but I was happily walking around and didn’t ask to be joined!

Went out again at 3pm – walked along through some old shops and came to Africa house – had two cocktails and dinner/lunch thing for 30,000TSH (£12) I had pasta because everything else was expensive. My cocktails were called Dawa – vodka, konyagi (don’t know what this is!), lime and honey. Yum yum!

View from Africa House with my Dawa :)

I watched the sun starting to set from the beach opposite Africa House Hotel and walked along the coast a short way until I was back by Fordhaani Gardens. There were so many pretty boats, and the beach was full of young teens doing back flips down the short incline. Some brilliant moves! I decided, just as the sun was setting, to head back to the hotel and good job too as I got lost and got back just as it was getting dark.

(sunset photo)

Going home early was a bad idea. The internet was down, there was no one around at all and for the first time I suddenly felt really detached from my friends and family back home. I couldn’t communicate with them and there were no other hotel guests around. I felt so lonely, and wished I could just go out, even though the streets/alleyways surrounding the hotel were dark and probably not good for a solo lady to walk through. Eventually got a bit of internet to email back home before bed, but I wish I’d just gone out and found people rather than staying in for my own safety!

Journey. And drama.

Well after a late night and a long queue in Heathrow I boarded my first flight to Istanbul. It was a pretty big plane, and the food was nice (Turkish Airways). Short and sweet, I was in Istanbul after just 4 hours, waiting for my next connection, which with more queuing at the transit security desk gave us like 30 mins before the next one. This was a smaller, one aisled plane which I found strange for a 7 hour journey. Guess it was primarily to do with the amount of people that needed to travel on that route. I had somehow luckily managed to book myself in to sit in a ‘lots of legroom’ seat, which was one of three in front of an attachable baby crib. This was eventually used by cute American baby, giving me much enjoyment and ways to brood during my flight!

So then Dar es Salaam happened. The airport seemed really unsafe to be in, and although the odd guard was around it wouldn’t be difficult to run off with someone’s luggage (which is potentially what happened to my small rucksack) NOT HAPPY. Want my rucksack please.

Oh well. Then I had a long LONG wait in Dar es Salaam airport, afraid to go to sleep because I was on my own, and very very tired!

Small plane happened – probably sat about 50 people? Tiniest plane I had ever been on, and I was crossing water! How do these little things stay up in the breeze? Precision Airways flight was fun though – up and down within 20 mins, no time to undo your seatbelts!

Collected my remaining bag – its waterproof ‘jacket’ that I had popped over the top was ripped... brilliant. Bad things happen in threes right? What’s next?

Not going to lie, I’m quite a confident lone traveller but I am starting to wonder if this was a bad idea :( Counting down the days until I meet my awesome group and head to Lindi, at least I wont be on my own in the evenings!

Feelings of good will welcome to my email orangenie@hotmail.com or my facebook.

I'm not gonna cook it but I'll order it from ZANZIBAR!

So I'm a little excited, as you can tell. Booked my connecting flight to Zanzibar :D Was £60.. hummph. There were cheaper options with 'unknown airline' which sounded dodgy, and one that started as £50 but had a booking fee for using anything other than an American Express. 
So I went with Lastminute.com and I'm just happy I've booked it! I did not like the idea of getting off a plane at 3am, waiting for sunrise, then getting a taxi to the port in Dar and trying to get a ferry with loads of people trying to sell me a ticket. Just seemed too manic when I had just landed. Nice peaceful plane so I can nap in the departure lounge. 
30 minute flight though. Not even much point getting out of your seat! By the time were up we'll be descending again right away!

I have accommodation booked in Stone Town, Zanzibar for the first 4 nights; a nice little cheap hotel with my own room and AC. Lots of exploring to do! 
No idea where I will stay up the North/East coast after. I'll book something when I get there I guess! In Nungwi or Pongwe. Go with the flow!

I wanted to post my visa on here - got it back the other week! A whole page of my passport with a mug shot of me on it. Seems a bit silly to plaster my details on the interwebs though haha.

Keep you all posted! Packing to commence next week.... ugh.