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Published: November 19th 2007
Business class
La grande traversée: Kipumbwe-Mkokotoni (Zanzibar)... 10 heures ça nous a pris... FRENCH
Après Mombasa, on a pris la direction de la Tanzanie… Dernière étape. On est arrivé à la frontière vers les 5 heures de l’après-midi, après plusieurs heures de boda-boda...
On a commencé par changer tous nos shillings kenyans en shillings tanzanien... juste à temps pour entendre l’officier des douanes coté Tanzanie nous dire quelques minutes plus tard qu’il n’accepte pas la devise officielle de son pays pour le paiment des frais de visa... On ressort. On change nos shillings tanzaniens en dollars américains... On a pas gagné au change, c'est clair, mais au moins
we've spread the love comme on dit...
Après la douane, on était un peu bloqué... Pas de boda-boda pour Tanga. Pas de bus non-plus... La nuit arrivait et on a été assez fou pour donner 40,000 shillings à 2 inconnus et monter dans leur 4X4... Au début, ils avaient l’air ok... mais après quelques minutes, ils ont commencé à avoir l’air un peu suspects...
On suivait un autre 4X4. Pour essayer de faire un peu la conversation, on demande à l’un d’eux (l’autre ne parlait pas un mot d’anglais):
- So... Where are you from ?
- Tanga.
- And so... What were you up
Where's Wally (in her life jacket)
Une seule personne à bord avec un gilet de sauvetage... to in Kenya ?
- Oh?!... We are clearing a car. Business. With the guy in front of us.
- Clearing ? What do you mean by « clearing » ?
Pas de réponse...
Les deux 4X4 ralentissent...
- Why are we slowing down ?
- No problem! No problem!
...Et il se tourne vers nous avec des yeux fiévreux et un sourire de malade mental...
On continue notre chemin... Les deux 4X4 ralentissent à nouveau... Le mec qui baragouine 3 mots d’anglais ouvre sa portière. Il sort de la voiture en nous disant « No problem, no problem» et va s’installer dans le 4X4 de devant. On redemarre... avec le mec qui parle pas. Au bout d’une heure et demi de route, le mec revient dans notre voiture et il s’exclame... toujours avec une tête de dément :
- I’m angryyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy !
- You’re what ? You’re angry ? Why are you angry?
- I haven’t had any lunch. I’m angryyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy !
- Aaaaah ! Ok. Good... You mean you’re hungry!
- Yeah... Are you going to buy me dinner ?
La paranoïa s’est arrété quand il nous a déposé devant notre hotel. On leur a pas payé à bouffer. Qu’est-ce qu’on était content d’leur dire au revoir à ces 2 là...
Après cette soirée mémorable, nous avons pris le lendemain soir un bateau pour Zanzibar... un bateau à voile (et il n'y avait pas de vent)) qui prenait l’eau... 10 heures il nous a fallu... Je garde les détails croustillants de cette dernière histoire pour vous les dire de vive voix!
On a passé nos 2 dernière semaines à faire les lézards à Zanzibar... Z comme Zanzibar, Z comme la dernière lettre de l’alphabet et la fin d’un voyage...
ANGLAIS
Our final frontier. Kenya into Tanzania at the Tunga/Horahora border crossing. First we took a matatu with a one legged showman of a conductor, then a tuk-tuk in the rain, then braved a mob of money changers, travel agents and their hangers-on who shoo-ed away the
bus parked beyond the immigration office and proposed we pay $70 for a private car. In the end we haggled with another “agent” provocateur who hooked us up with a guy who was “clearing a car at the border”. Strangely he drove past us and parked down the road, walked back and offered to take us to Tanga for the equivalent of 4$. This cause pandemonium amongst the assorted “agents” so he reverted back to the 40$ we’d discussed. It was obvious he wasn't a professional stranded tourist rescuer/exploiter. Then as we prepared to drive away all hell broke loose as half a dozen dudes yelled and thrust their grasping hands in through the car windows demanding a cut of the guys $40, some of which he handed over to chill those mofos out. Not the most tranquil way to roll into Tanzania.
Anyway let's get to Zanzibar island. Sounds easy. It should be, but we had the wrong info and were "helped out" by a guy called Emmanuel Petrol (Hot-hot to his friends) of the Pangani Coast Cultural Tourism Programme, who met us as we got off the bus and obligingly dropped everything to arrange a "tour" to
Zanzibar. All we wanted was a boat but it wasn't that simple. We learned from Hot-hot that the boat we thought we could take from Pangani to Zanzibar had stopped running after some trouble with reaching its destination. Something to do with there not being an engine and or wind to fill the sail. Instead he told us there was another boat from Kipumbwe village, an hour away, that took businessmen regularly to Zanzibar and that was equipped with a sail and an engine for when the wind dropped.
- "Is it safe?" Nathalie asked
- "Of course!"
- "Are there life jackets?"
- "No, but I can rent you some for a small fee"
- "Is there a radio?"
- "No, but the captains have mobile phones"
Well that's ok then. After some deliberating we (or I) figured that whoever else was on the boat, not least the captains would also want to get to Zanzibar by breakfast (as Hot-hot had said we would) and wouldn't want to sleep with the fishes anymore than we did. So off we went.
After handing over 30 odd dollars each we embarked a journey that turned out to be the icing
on the cake. A cake you wouldn't want to eat every day. There was a short canoe trip across a river as the ferry was out, then a dala-dala (jeep/bus) where you had to dodge sound system speakers as they fell off the roof, followed by 6 hours sitting at the port (the tiny fishing village of Kipumbwe), where we were given a Swahili lesson by Hot-Hot. After a surprisingly good dinner of barbecued octopus in the village, we slept in the "hotel" Hot-hot had sorted for us, in the Paris suite no less and woke at 3am to board our dhow to Zanzibar.
We'd imagined we'd be two of only a few passengers and so were surprised when we found every flat surface on the boat occupied by sleeping men, children and women with babes-in-arms. Not a suit, briefcase or laptop in sight. After an hour waiting for the rest of central east Tanzania to board and squeeze themselves into spaces that didn't appear to be there, we set off, only to stop 15 minutes later. This was for the captain to extort a further 1000 shillings from each passenger, apparently to cover the cost of petrol as
there wasn't enough wind. (We had a new friend by then, called Hamad, who translated for us). Strangley extra fuel didn't appear out of the darkness and we never rendezvoused with a passing oil tanker, but just phut-phutted on toward the Spice Island (we thought). Four hours and two heavy rain falls later we could still see the mainland, but not Zanzibar. After some shouting at the captain that wasn't asleep at the back, some random guys decided we were doing it all wrong and that they would hoist the sail and head in a different direction. Excellent. A mutiny! Happily we seemed to make some progress with the wind, though it rained again and the boat was leaking. Nathalie did her bit to help by periodically gesturing toward the hold to point out when things had started to float down there. Ten full hours after we boarded the boat we stepped off and onto Zanzibar. Ten hours wasn't too bad Hamad told us, as sometimes it takes a full day even with an engine. Lucky us. To top it off the immigration guy decided that two salt encrusted tourists were a good source of some beer money and made
up some skank about sea-port tax, due he said, because the boat was for locals not tourists and wasn't insured for us. Insurance! For boat with no life vests, when our only contact with the non-existent coastguard would have been by the mobile phones that only got service five minutes before we landed. My ass! We stood our ground, as having paid ten times more than anyone else it seemed only fair that the circle of skank didn't end with us and with the help of Hamad we managed to spread the love/deflect the rip off back to Hot-hot via the boat captain. Justice not just us.
So here we are. Rolling like Jay-z and Beyonce on the be-ach, cocktails in hand. Maasai warriors in Gucci shades selling bead necklaces ....Maasai warriors on the beach! Are you lost? Kendwa beach was beautiful. The snorkelling was good, the diving better and the beach just the right colour to go with the sea, the sky and the fluffy clouds. And they had a sunset everynight. We spent some time in Stone town shopping and for Nathalie's birthday (happy birthday again ma petitie ange), where we dined on the roof Swahili style.
We also stayed on the beach on the east coast at Paje which we reached on a dirtbike which came complete, for safety sake, with horseriding helmets. We christened the bike Dobbin. Back in Kendwa we lounged some more. A perfect place to spend our last two weeks holidaying from a year long holiday.
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