2008-02-17 – 2008-02-21
Summary
- Kitete Beach Bungalows (Paje Beach)
- Beautiful beaches
- Hot & humid
- Limited dining options
- Changed rooms to get away from restaurant noise
- Massage
First impressions of the beach accommodation, on Sunday, were that it looked lovely. The water was a beautiful aqua colour and the sand was very white. Those were the pros, we soon found out the cons to staying here. There was no air conditioner. 32 degrees Celsius doesn’t sound much, but combined with humidity and lack of a breeze, it feels bloody hot. The fans we did have did not do much, they spun very slowly as though not getting enough power. Showers stayed warm (not really warm, more so just not cold) for maybe a minute or two. It probably sounds like we are being very whiny and too expecting, but this was intended as a time for rejuvenation and all these cons make such rejuvenation harder. We walked to the next village to get some bananas; we did get some but they were quite small and most of them had splits along the sides of the skin meaning that peeling them wouldn’t ensure hygiene. We ran into more little kids that ran up to us calling ‘jambo, jambo, jambo’ (jambo meaning hello) and grabbing our arms. After we got back, we went for a swim at the beach and the water was so warm. The sand quality was poor in the water though, it was a kind of sludgy clay texture. I still think we Australians take our good beaches for granted back home. The beaches were scattered with dhows that were anchored along the shallow waters. It was impossible to walk anywhere along the beach without the local ‘beach boys’ coming up to you and making conversation then trying to get you to go to their local restaurant or on their snorkeling tour, or fishing tour, etc. We had pizza for lunch at the hotel’s restaurant, then went to a neighboring restaurant for dinner. With the seafood restrictions, I had chicken. I barely touched the chicken as it was not hot at all when it was served and some of the pieces still seemed a bit raw. We didn’t go back there for a meal again.
Our room was right next to the restaurant of the hotel. When we went to bed the music continued in the restaurant and the stairs from the back of the restaurant (staff stairs) are right next to our room’s window. Windows of course were left open as it’s so hot, hence all the staff’s conversations from the bottom of the stairs came straight through the window. Same deal first thing in the morning when they prepped for breakfast. We went for breakfast at about 8:30am on Monday and it was reasonable. We had a plate of fruit; paw-paw (yuck, Skye can have that), watermelon and pineapple, then a pancake, scrambled eggs and 2 pieces of toast. The water at this point had gone out about 200 metres further than it was yesterday; the tide change is quite significant, leaving all the anchored dhows out of the water. After breakfast I went to speak to the lady at reception. She is such a cheerful, happy lady. This is something I haven’t really touched on yet, just how happy a lot of the people are over here, especially the children, they are full of joy. Anyway, I asked her if we could change rooms as it was too noisy by the restaurant. She said she’d move us into room number 11. Upon going back to the rooms I saw number 11 was the next one along, so thought I’d get even further away if possible, so negotiated my way into room 15. Room 15 turned out to be a twin room, so I think she moved someone out of room 16 (with a king bed and a double bed) into room 15. I’m not sure what was with that, perhaps they were staff who were sleeping there. Anyway, room 16 was very quiet and peaceful, however the heating element didn’t work at all on the shower but I wasn’t going to change rooms again. Cold showers for the following days weren’t all bad anyway, at least it cooled you down from the heat.
Monday and Tuesday brought a touch of rain and a stronger wind, Monday more so than Tuesday. The kite surfers were having a blast with the strong wind on Monday, getting about 10 metres of air, if not more. The sand here is very fine and hence gets picked up by the wind very easily, so everything gets covered in sand; including your bed sheets since the windows are open to keep the room cooler. The rain and wind were much appreciated by us though as it made the humidity more bearable. We walked to the ‘supermarket’ today, a 10 minute walk that took us nearly an hour as we walked straight past it without realising. My throat was getting quite sore and my sinuses were feeling a bit gluggy; not sure if it’s a cold or allergies. Generally don’t get allergies but then I generally don’t breathe in fine sand 24 hours a day. We had a burger for lunch; we’d asked what was on the burger and were told ‘ham and cheese’, ‘no salad?’, ‘no, no salad’. So the burger comes out with tomato and lettuce on it…here I thought tomato and lettuce is salad… So we removed the lettuce and had our burgers. Not sure if I already mentioned the avoidance of salad; it’s because the salad has usually been washed in the local water before you consume it. We haggled a US$12 for 30 mins massage down to US$20 for both of us, 30 mins each. In hindsight we should have showered first since we’d been swimming earlier that day. It was a very gritty massage, more of an exfoliation really. She was very soft with her hands, I tend to like a more hardy massage. We ate dinner at the hotel restaurant, Le Galawa Restaurant, to the sounds of Missy Elliot and JD, amongst other hip-hop artists… they have some interesting choices of music at this restaurant; last night it was a few oldies and some English songs I’d never heard before. I had a Swahili dish, Kuku Wa Kupaka, for dinner: chicken in thick coconut sauce… well this chicken hardly got touched either. There was a piece that looked like it still had feathers on it and most of the other pieces were mostly just bone. It was at about this point when we were really missing Moses, the camp chef from our last tour. We really didn’t appreciate what we had (Moses) until it was gone. He really was a good cook! As we left the restaurant we ran into Noleg, a girl from our Tanzania tour who had just arrived that night. She said she had been ill for the past day or so; another one bites the dust.
Tuesday we just bummed around most of the day. Breakfast saw mango and banana hit the fruit platter as well, but we lost the pineapple. We bought some bottled water in the morning, as we usually do, but the seal was broken so I took it back and had it swapped for another who’s seal was intact. We didn’t actually go swimming today as such, but I did walk out to the dhows and took some shots while the tide was out in the morning; Skye was having a nanna nap on a beach chair. I’d been meaning to take the shots again when the tide was in, but didn’t get around to it. I walked all the way out to the water’s edge a couple of hundred metres off shore and saw a bunch of sticks poking vertically upwards. I established that these were seaweed farms. Each pair of sticks had a string tied between them and the seaweed would entangle itself in the string. I spoke to one of the ladies in the water collecting the weed. She knew very limited Engligh and was able to establish that they collect the seaweed for eating. Once the tide was back in, the kite surfers took to the seas again. They weren’t getting much air today, but I decided I’d take a couple of snaps anyway since I hadn’t previously (the day before by the time I’d gone and dug my camera out of the room they had called it quits for the day). I spoke to one of them, Robert, who was a kite surfer from Holland. He was working at the kite surfing school on Zanzibar. We had a late lunch at about 4pm as Skye hadn’t been hungry, which is a big surprise from her! While checking out options for lunch, we saw a place with massage for US$8 for 45 minutes and felt like we didn’t get such a bargain after all. I ordered pasta from the hotel restaurant and Skye ordered garlic bread. It took us an hour until the garlic bread came out, then it took at least another 15-20 minutes before my pasta came out. I know we’re on ‘Africa time’ here, but I was not impressed. For dinner we were avoiding the hotel restaurant as they were just so slow getting your food out. However, all the other restaurants were also ruled out (one having been booked out for a Swahili Dinner show, another being the bad chicken restaurant with little much else but seafood and another having mainly seafood and salad burgers… we hadn’t seen any other restaurants) so we ended up back at the hotel restaurant. I ate Mboga ya Mchicha,a vegetarian dish, unwilling to try my luck with any of their meats after last night, and Skye had vegetarian pizza. I tried a Swahili dessert tonight called Saffron Kaimati, which was deep fried balls of flour dipped in cardamom flavoured syrup; it was quite nice. This was actually the first meal at this restaurant where I was quite content with the service.
The following morning, Wednesday, my nose was running like a tap. The sneezing and itchy throat suggest maybe I am allergic to something over here. Breakfast was the ultimate fruit platter combo today; pineapple, banana and watermelon, and we also got an added bonus of a muffin with our pancakes, egg and toast. Check-out was at 10am, but our ride wasn’t coming until noon so I started catching up on my ‘journals’ or whatever you like to call them; all the stuff that’s written here anyway. We asked for our itinerary sheet back from the hotel staff as they’d taken it to enquire about our tour after we were unable to provide them with an invoice for our payment of the hotel accommodation, since we were never issued with one. Of course they couldn’t find the itinerary sheet we’d given them, just as well we had backup copies. Another couple came and sat nearby and heard our situation. They were also on the same extension as us ‘Zanzibar Revealed’. They too had not had an invoice for the hotel. Obviously the extension changes its accommodation regularly since the hotel knew nothing about the tour.
We had a chat to the other couple as they were on the same transfer as us back to Stone Town. They had been on tour in South Africa and were going on to Tanzania for a safari. They said that they’d had to pay 60,000 Tsh for the transfer from Stone Town to Paje Beach, which was supposed to be included in the extension tour price. We got ours free of charge, which was correct. Hearing everyone’s stories of how they’ve been screwed in the past makes us feel lucky thus far, our stuff ups have only been minor really. This couple told us how they had boarded their flight from Johannesburg to Dar El Salaam and sat there for 2 hours before being told to get off the plane as they were taking it into the garage. The flight was then delayed to the next day. On the previous tour, people had frequently had trouble with their tours where bookings had been lost or where details were mis-communicated and they had been at the wrong meeting point at the wrong time. Seems to be a common occurrence in third world country travels.
Kitete Beach Bugalows’ Restaurant
Kitete Beach
Dhow at low tide
