On the road again...

On Friday we hired a van and driver to take us to Mkoma Bay on the coast just north of a little village called Pangani.  We had tried to decipher the bus system here but Pangani is one of those places "you can't get there from here".  Well more accurately, we could but it would have involved taking three different bus lines with no indications of schedules and the local bus lines are typically staffed with drivers that have had a few too many drinks and fill the buses to capacity times two.  Not really the way we wanted to spend 12 hours.  So we sucked it up and hired a driver to take us here.  The drive down was very pretty.  We had the Masai Plain on one side of us and the volcanic ridge of the continental plates on the other.  That side really reminded me of Hawaii... only it went for at least 4 hours!  The whole drive took us about 7.5 hours most of which was on pretty good two lane paved roads but the last 2 hours were across 40 kms of very rough one lane dirt track.  I couldn't imagine doing that on a public bus!

We're now about 380 kms from Dar es Salaam on the roads but only about 100 kms by water.  The place we are staying at is really nice (Mkoma Bay Tented Lodge).  We had been told about a different place up the coast a bit but they had Canadian Tire style tents with no fans and knowing how hot it is here, we opted for this place which gave us the same price for committing to a long stay.  We later found out that we'd have the entire resort to ourselves most of the time!

The first few nights we were in separate (brand new) Tented Lodges on a common flagstone porch.  That was quite nice although since we were the first guests ever to use it, there were a few minor teething issues (not all the holes were sealed up so the mosquitoes were a bit of a challenge - although all the beds had mosquito nets).  As I've mentioned before, these tents are not really tents as we know them... these were 20x40 thatched roof bungalows with canvas sides.  We had tile showers, very modern toilets and fashionable bowl style sinks on bamboo dressers.  No sleeping bags either... large king sized bed for Jen and I and Shawn/Rachel had their own beds.

The place is owned and operated by a Dane (Ulrich) and his Californian wife (Lisa) and is very nice.  We're on a half board plan which means that we get full breakfast and dinners.  We typically do yogurts for lunch.  After the first 5 nights, they moved us into the "Swahili House".  It's a large (80x60) elevated house that is half open balcony and has a kitchenette, 3 washrooms and four bedrooms.  They use this as a conference facility and is overlooking the Indian Ocean.  Its quite stunning.  This isn't quite how we pictured staying in Africa to say the least!

We are fronting on a beautiful 4km long beach with clean sand.  We're in a very wide bay that has the Pangani River feeding into it at the far south end.  It's not deep, only about 5' at low tide but the tides here go up and down about 12' so its plenty deep for swimming otherwise.  Unfortunately with the river it is a bit murky and we've managed to find the odd jellyfish by accident which has kept us a bit nervous about swimming in it.  Fortunately, the place has a nice pool (and a very well stocked bar) and kayaks, windsurfers, etc that keep us well entertained.

The kids have been doing a lot of school work and we do beach walks most days to find shells and the like.  The kids have found some amazing shells from little conch shells with amazing details all the way up to huge 2' clams.  Jen would much rather be at a place with clear water but I'm quite happy here (although I must admit the beach in Costa Rica was nicer for swimming).  We've seen about 15 people on the beach since we've been here.

We also charted the resorts motorized Dhow and had them take us out to a big sand island about 15kms off the coast (between Zanzibar and Pemba Islands where that ferry went down this September).  It was a fairly windy day and we had the odd 6' wave but all made it without losing their breakfast and we had some amazing snorkeling.  There were lots of fish but the colours and varieties of the coral were particulary amazing - and I've dove/snorkeled Fiji, the Great Barrier Reef, Hawaii, Puerto Rico, Bermuda, Florida, Costa Rica.  The island was also home to two species of birds somewhat like gulls but much prettier.  They'd stay put on one corner of the sandbar or the other and then take flight when you got too close.  The kids had great fun making them fly up all around them.  We had a picnic lunch on the island (under a canvas sunshade they erected for us) and then had a second snorkel before heading back to the resort.

The weather here is just about ideal if not a bit too warm.  It's typically about 32-35 in the day (with a nice sea breeze) and then it cools down to a nice 27-28 at night.  You can't survive without a fan for long - so the power outages are a bit of a PITA but you never have to put on a sweater or jacket and it almost never rains.  When it does, it comes down in a deluge but that's at night or early morning and by the time we're up and ready for breakfast things are dry again.  Tonight we are having a beach barbecue under the full moon.
I think I've found another spot to retire!