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Published: April 15th 2009
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Hi all,
Had a 4 day weekend last weekend due to easter, so me Rou, and Jesse decided to do some traveling and headed down to Pangani and Tanga. We bought our tickets for the Simba Video Coach (despite its name did not have a tv on board) on thursday and left on friday. The trip down to Tanga took about 6 hours and the coach was packed, every seat taken and every space in the isle too. From Tanga we took a Dala dala (mini bus) down to Pangani, which again had no room spare, I counted 14 actual seats and there must have been at least 20 on that bus! (luckily I managed to hold on to my seat for the 2hour trip). We got to Pangani around 7pm and found a place to stay. The accomadation was basic, but cheap, 2000 TSH a night (which works out at just 1 pound a night!).
Woke up to a thunderstorm the next day, which lasted until mid-day. When it finally cleared we headed on down to the beach, only about a 5 minute walk away. The beach was nice, white sand coconut trees and all. A local kid came up
to us on the beach, I showed him my Ipod, which he loved and we played 1 on 1 beach football. The rest of the day was spent chilling out on the beach and then we headed out for food in the evening. We found a pretty basic but cheap bar/restaurant, the meal costing just 2000 TSH!
The next day we headed back to Tanga to go visit the Amboni caves, the largest cave system in East Africa and was only about 5 minutes taxi drive from the city. Not quite sure how we made it there tho, as the road to the cave was something only a 4x4 should attempt (or at least I thought!). The caves were amazing, outside we saw monkeys, crocs and giant centipedes (just like being on safari again). We had a guide to show us round the inside of the caves. The first area we came to was a shrine to a local deity that was supposed to help women who have fertility problems. People had left offerings at the site which mostly conisted of food, bottles and what ever possentions they had. As we ventured deeper into the caves we came across bat
colonies, most were just hanging on the walls, but some were flying around pretty close to our heads. At one point our guide told us the passage way was going to get narrow and it did, at one point I was crawling on my hands and knees, barely able to fit through.
That evening we headed out into town to find a restaurant but most places were closed due to it being Easter Sunday. We ended up eating back at the hotel in Tanga, before traveling back to Moshi the next day.
All in all it was a really good trip, definatley worth it.
On other matters, the teaching is going really well and I'm starting to get to know the pupils a bit better now (though it is difficult with 80 in a class!). I will go into more detail about the teaching in the next blog. Life at the house is also going well, it was one of the volunteers (Steph) birthdays on Monday and we played lots of fun party games which mostly involved lots of drink.
Hope all is going well back home.
Will try to write again soon.
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