Karibu Tanga, Pangani and Lushoto

Jambo!

Since my last update, we've travelled quite a lot. After posting my lat blog, we managed to catch the 4pm bus from Tanga headed towards Pangani, a coastal village described by the guide book as a 'small and delapidated Swahili outpost'. The journey was incredibly bumpy (surfaced roads aren't all that popular here) and I was sure that the small bus we were on was going to fall over into a ditch. For this reason, I spent most of the 2 hour journey working out elaborate escape routes if such an event were to occur. Fortunately we arrived safely in Pangani, if not a little shaken and were immediately met by a tour guide from the local Cultural Tourism Programme, who was called Ali - but prefered the name 'Rasta man Ali'. We had decided on accommodation before we arrived, but found out almost imediately that it didn't exist anymore. Ali was able to show us another hostel though, called Seaside, which was run by tiny nuns who we kept seeing riding around town in giant 4x4s.

The hostel was great, with a big bed, mosquito nets, running water and was right on the beach (which is where we headed after dumping our bags). The beaches in Pangani are incredible and completely deserted - with only tiny crabs for company. I think word got out, however, that there were a couple of pale looking 'Mzungus' on the beach and we soon had a small fan club (mainly of small kids singing Westlife to us). We had some dinner at the hostel, and turned in early. There was a bit of a party going on next door when we went to sleep, with loud music and singing - which unfortuantely continued till about 4am. The earplugs came in handy.

The following day, we spent walking around the town and lazing on the beach. Pangani used to be a major export point for ivory and slaves in the 19th century and you can still see the ferry port where the slaves were loaded onto ships, the original customs house, and Pangani's oldest building, the "Boma", built by the Germans, who buried a live slave under each of the building's four corners to ensure sturdy foundations. Despite all this, Pangani is a really happy place, and very laid back - sometimes a bit too much - but everyone is friendly and willing to help ridiculous looking tourists like ourselves. The region produces over half of the total output of coconuts in Tanzania, so there are massive coconut shelling camps at either end of the town, where you can see huge piles of cocnut husks. Ali took us to see one, and we were even treated to a freshly cracked coconut, which we ate on the way home.

The following day, we arranged to sail to Maziwe marine reserve, about 30km off the coast. Rather than go in a motor boat, we decided to take a tradition Dhow, and set off at about half 7 in the morning. The Dhow was a great experience, but maybe not one I'd do again. Our captain had to keep bailing water out of the bottom, and kept plugging the leak with cotton wool (which wasn't massively effective). Highlights of the trip to Maziwe included a small ghecko, which appeared on my shoulder, jumped onto Kate's head and then threw itself overboard (apparently the Dhow was too stressful), seeing dolphins just off Maziwe beach and snorkelling amongst the coral reefs. Maziwe is pretty much jus a bit of sand in the ocean, and although the weather was a bit windy, we managed to see loads of different coloured fish amongst the coral, as well as Starfish, Sea Urchins and dolphins. The journey back to land was a bit more stressful, mainly due to the fact that one of the Dhow's supporting wooden beams snapped in half. We were obviously a bit worried, floating around in the middle of the Indian ocean in a broken home-made boat, but we were assured there was no problem and successfully made it back to shore.

A two hour nap ensued, followed by dinner at a local house - served to us by a lady called Mama Amina, lovingly nicknamed 'biggy' by the town's residents. Biggy certainly knew how to feed her guests - we ate a massive portion of rice, beans, spinach and barracuda fish.

Today we made the journey from Pangani back to Tanga, where we caught another bus to Lushoto, which is where I'm writing from now. Our bus broke down on the way, but in keeping with the laid back African way of life, we were packed onto another bus which came along shortly afterwards (too many people in one small space) and arrived at about 2pm. Lushoto is high in the Usambara mountains, and definitely much cooler than Pangani. We've found a great hostel here, and are spending the rest of the day settling in and seeing what Lushoto has to offer.

We've been brushing up on our Swahili as we've gone along, but some on the key phrases we've been using are as follows:

Jambo! - Hello! (mainly used for tourists)
Sawa - OK
Asante Sana - Thankyou very much
Wapi? - Where
Hoteli - Hotel (when in doubt, just put an 'i' at the end of the English word)
Lala Salama - Sleep well
Bomba! - Fantastic! (a slang word, apparently bomba literally means 'water pipe'
Paca - Cat

Some more Swahili nuggets of wisdom in my next post...

Hope everyone is well - I will be updating again soon.

x x