The second half of our Tanzanian Adventures took us from the Pare Mountains to Dar es Salaam on the mainland and finally to the fabled spice island of Zanzibar. We traded in our safari hats for swimsuits and went through at least 10 cans of mosquito repellent (malaria is alive and well in East Africa). We dodged venomous snakes (well, one – that we know of), survived another memorable bus journey, snorkeled off one of the world’s most exclusive islands and logged in some extremely serious beach time.
BEWARE THE GREEN MAMBA
Our guide for the day’s hike, Good Luck (he still wonders why his parents gave him that name), showed up for our 7-hour hike wearing a buttoned oxford shirt, khakis and dress shoes. This contrasted with our pack full of food, water, sunscreen, bug spray, hats, sunglasses, cameras, Altoids and other survival gear. Off we went to climb to a peak from where we could see down into Kenya on one side and Tanzania on the other.
On the way down from the day’s climb, Good Luck led us through a steep field of tall grass. Alexandra was walking several steps behind him, and I was bringing up the rear when we heard him yelp and jump out of the way of something. The something turned out to be a Green Mamba, one of the most dangerous snakes in Africa. He had seen it moving by the side of the trail when it disappeared. He kicked over a log, and that’s when it slithered in front of him, climbed into the trees and began making its way toward me six feet above ground, perfectly camouflaged in the green leaves.
A bad bite from a Green Mamba can kill a man within half an hour. Fortunately, he told us, the Tanzanians have a certain type of rock that, when applied to a snakebite, sucks the venom out and leaves the victim good as new. His explanation for how this works was much better than the one for why he wasn’t carrying one of these magic stones. “There are times,” he told us, “when you can hear the Green Mambas slithering through the grass there are so many.”
AND WE THOUGHT INDIAN BUSES WERE BAD…
As our local bus stopped at the main road coming down from the Pare Mountains, a wave of aggressive touts poured onto the bus and headed straight toward us Wazungu (white people). We pushed our way off the bus, shoving the touts away as they grabbed for our bags coming down from the roof. Everyone was yelling, and there were no less than five men trying to get us to ride with their bus to Dar es Salaam.
Once we agreed on a price with one of the touts, he showed us to what was to be our home for the next six hours. Covering the entire back of the bus was a painting of Saddam Hussein, and on the inside were far too many sweaty passengers. As we were taking our seats, the ticket guy came to collect our money and pulled the old, “Nooooo! It’s 10 shillings PER PERSON.” It always happens, and I suppose we can’t blame them for trying, but this attempt to charge us twice the negotiated price prompted me to let him know in no uncertain terms how I felt about his ruse.
The over-ripe smell of the passengers (there’s a real business opportunity for deodorant salespeople on this continent) was only matched by the frantic efforts of the touts to sell us anything. At every stop, peddlers flogging mangoes, water, brooms and TV antennas, all of them yelling and shoving one another, swarmed the bus. Alexandra was about to take a shot of the mayhem at one stop when one of the salesmen/thieves jumped up, reached through the window and nearly relieved us of our digital camera.
As the bus hammered down the road like a scene from the movie “Speed,” Alexandra decided she had had enough of the insane speeding, tailgating and swerving our driver was doing. She marched from our seats in the back of the bus with all eyes on her up to the front and pleaded with the driver to slow down, yelling “Pole-pole!!!” Surprisingly, the driver immediately reduced his speed. The other passengers, none of whom would ever make the same request, heaved a collective sigh of relief and turned to us both with big smiles, acknowledging her as their spokesperson and hero as she returned to her seat.
A REALLY BAD NIGHT
For our last leg in Tanzania, we flew to the islands of Zanzibar and Pemba. Sitting around mosquito coils drinking beers one night, the lodge owner of our guesthouse in Pemba told us of a woman who had the most frightful night there a few days before.
The woman, a reporter for the BBC, awoke one night in a panic as she realized that there was a bat trapped inside her mosquito net. She leaped out of bed and ran down the stairs in the dark screaming for help. At this, the two guard dogs, a German Shepherd and a Ridgeback named Mr. Dog, came charging toward her barking like trained killers.
This terrified the poor woman even more, and her screams escalated to a horrifying pitch. Suspecting that one of the female guests was being attacked, the two guards on the property grabbed their machetes and came charging at her from the other direction. The combination of the bat, guard dogs and knife-wielding men took her to new levels of fear as she packed her bags for the first boat back to the mainland.
R&R ON ZANZIBAR
Alexandra’s mother Lexi asked us, “What do you mean you are going for some R&R on Zanzibar? Haven’t you been on R&R for the last four months?” Her point was a good one, yet we were steadfast in our determination to verify the rumors that Zanzibar has some of the nicest beaches in the world.
Agents Beckey and Frankland scouted out a 10 star resort at the Northern tip of Zanzibar called Ras Nungwi that they said was somewhere between heaven and whatever is better than heaven. So for our last three nights on the island we committed to giving in to a bit of excess. The bell hops carried our dirty backpacks to our air conditioned thatched room with four-post bed and we settled in for a taste of the Good Life.
The 126 staff members of the hotel did an exceptional job of looking after the 19 guests. Heather, the South African manager of the hotel, went out of her way to make sure that our wine stayed cold, our room had extra bug spray and the smiles stayed plastered on our faces.
They beat drums for dinner each evening, as we were treated to four courses of sumptuous island fare washed down with bottles of delicious South African wines. The wheels came off the dinner wagon the night they served the guests, each at their own candlelit table, on the beach.
The toughest decisions we made each day were whether to relax at the pool, in the hammock looking out over the beach or take it all the way down to the beach where cushions, pillows and towels were laid out for us. Our plight was compounded by the friendly staff who drifted by each afternoon with platters of sliced fruit on toothpicks.
Our favorite spot of the whole resort was half a mile down the beach and 50 meters out. When the tide was low, a sandbar the length of a football field appeared with no more than an inch of bathtub-temp turquoise water washing over the powdery white sand. Our afternoons disappeared on this sandbar as we faced the very real possibility that we may have seen the most perfect spot on earth.
CLOSING SHOTS OF TANZANIA
Our five weeks in Tanzania gave us a good taste of what one South African friend calls “the Real Africa”. We will forever be reminded of the smiles from strangers, women carrying things on their heads (we saw an empty-handed woman one Sunday carrying a bible on her head), good-natured laughter at our use of Swahili, Kilimanjaro, Tusker and Safari beers, aggressive touts and ripe-smelling buses, dozing lions in the Serengeti and bathing elephants in Lake Manyara, Christian programs on every TV, chips and chicken and still no good coffee, the food stalls in Zanzibar’s Stonetown, sweating in Dar es Salaam, watching our waiter Tunda do back flips on the beach, seeing Maasai men in native dress chatting up Norwegian women in bikinis, lighting mosquito coils, drinking fruit smoothies and soaking up the Good Life at Ras Nungwi.
Our compasses set for a southerly course, we’re off to Mozambique, Swaziland, South Africa and Namibia…
