Walkabout - The long way home

After a bit more that the usual amount of arguing with the bus conductor and driver (and entire village that appeared from the woodworks to put their two cents in!) we got to Pemba town.   Unwilling to pay the extravagant taxi fee to the backpackers place, and being in serious need of some exercise, we decided to walk most of the way, and then hitch if necessary. As it turns out that the guy who gave us directions wasn’t fully accurate in his description of the distance. He said “it is faaaar, when it should in fact behave been: “eish, it is faaaaaar! Thankfully we didn’t get all that far before a Chapa (a truck in this case) picked us up and dropped us at Wimbe Beach only faaar from the lodge!). We stumbled into “Russell’s Place” only wheezing slightly and I promptly set up my tent (after haggling the price down a bit) at the far end of a nice lawn (what seemed like an ideal spot at the time, but later proved to be flawed in one very serious way…). Pim, eager as ever to catch u...

Having spent a great and relaxing time with my cousins around Iringa, I decided to make my way to Mozambique. And, not wanting to go all the way back to Dar for a visa, I decided to to the 'easy way' - via Malawi. The fact that the Malawian one month visa is free may have just tipped the scale for me. So I set off for the boarder and after two very long bus rides back to back, I arrived in Tukuyu - not far from the boarder. I stayed in yet another dingy guest house/brothel and carried on the next day to the boarder. At the immigration desk I was greeted with three grinning faces - two of which I recognized. It was a group of Israelis two of which I'd met in Zanzibar a couple of times. After greetings were exchanged their smiles vanished as they told of how they'd been held at the boarder for three days! Turns out they'd bought a car in Dar and intended to sell it in S.A when the drive down there. There were however some issues... Anyway it just so happens that...

Luckily Franko (the guy from the bus) did offer to show me to a cheap place, because Dar is crazy!! The matatu/ dalla dalla system is much worse than Nairobi's! Anyway his wife was waiting at the bus-stop with a Taxi (which they kindly insisted on paying). It turns out that the place he showed me to was literally next-door to his house and they invited me round for dinner after a quick but essential shower! Franko and Lucy (his wife) then insisted on taking me to see a concert, which didn't work out in the end - the band was 4hrs late and I was really tired! The next morning, again on Franko's insistence, he showed me to the ferry dock, where we'd already missed the early one and had a few hours to kill. He showed me round the fish market then we ate some soup and chapatis then he left. While waiting for the ferry I started talking to a Dutch couple - quite strange people. Like me they'd paid for the full VIP lounge on the 'slow' ferry (the man in ...

First of all sorry for the 2 weeks of no news - island life is great for many different things (mainly relaxing), but one thing it is not good for is internets! Especially Zanzibar, which has had no electricity for over 2 months now! So where am I now??? In Dar Es Salaam, just got back from Zanzibar this morning! Lamu was fantastic.. really the best place I've been so far by a long way! Zanzibar was more beautiful in the classic sense.. but Lamu had more style and was less commercialized (at least where we stayed). For the first few days in Lamu we did get hawked a couple of times a day by captains offering dhow trips.. but it's such a small town, that they all recognized us after the 3rd day! The predominance of Islam on the island does however mean that there are only about 2 places (in the Lamu town itself) to get a drink, one is called roof top bar, the other is at the police canteen! On our 1st day we went there for a beer there and ended up eating, then playing vo...