Loshoto - Day 1

Arriving in Loshoto

Like the town, the Lushoto bus station is small but it has all the accoutrements of bus stations everywhere … cab drivers, touts, food vendors, newspaper vendors, etc. all hawking their wares or services. Standing there with our suitcases and looking like antelope to a pride of Lions we freaked and tried to scurry up the road to safety. A few of the more persistent official tourist bureau guides followed us. We succumbed to one of them and went to the official tourist bureau office. With hindsight, I think it might actually have been the official one, but then, who knows?.

Our guide suggested two hotels in our price range (read that cheap). We stopped at the Sun Hotel, the closest one, first. They wanted 12,000 TSh for a hot room with torn up linoleum flooring. We politely said we were checking out another place and would get back to them (hah).

The second choice was St. Benedict’s Hostel, just up the road and behind St. Benedict’s Church. It was a small, fenced-in white cottage surrounded by shrubs and flower pots of geraniums and other house plants. We walked into the entry porch where two African Nuns in crisply starched, blue and white habits sat over their bibles. Soon we were greeted by a very pleasant, soft spoken man who seemed to be a cross between the business manager and hotel gofer. He wanted 20,000 TSh per night. We asked if we could have a discount if we stayed for two nights. He disappeared for a few minutes to discuss this with father. When he came back he agreed to 17,000 TSh plus he would toss in breakfasts.

We took a cheery white room with pinkish curtains and comfortable twin beds with blue mosquito nets folded over frames above. The bathroom was a bit grim and the shower didn’t work. We learned later that due to a severe water shortage we would have to take showers from a bucket. But this was soon forgotten when we opened the drapes and found that our room overlooked a small glade below with green grasses and small stream. On the opposite side was a primary school compound with dorms and classrooms nestled into the hillside of trees.

We ordered a lunch of samosas, omelets, and chapattis. Soon our smiling manager do-everything guy brought them to us. The chapattis and samosas were fine but the omelets were a bit greasy and very salty. I was delighted to find that they also had Old Stoney, a ginger beer like drink bottled here by Coca-Cola. It wasn’t chilled though, so the bubbles really bounced up my nose.

After lunch Marie tried went to the internet café a block or so from our hostel, but there was now power, so she couldn’t get on. I sat with our gofer guy helping one of the nuns learn participles. She was trying to learn English on her own from a book. It was really quite funny with both of them commiserating in Swahili after each word we worked on. By then it was getting dark so Marie & took showers and turned in for the night to the sounds of croaking frogs in the stream behind us.

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