Victoria Lodge in Zanzibar

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We only meet travelers by the way that we travel. We are in the cheaper hotels, the cheaper eating places, and the cheapest Internet places. By and large, we are in the cheaper shopping districts, since I guess that most tourists stick pretty close to pre-marked prices in the hotels or in the special shops to which they are directed.

Not us! As a result, when we meet fellow travelers, our conversations usually center on where they have been, where they are going, what they recommend, and what they don’t recommend. Sometimes we see the same people from time to time.

For example, the guide books and several groups had recommended Jambo Hotel on Zanzibar Island, and when several agree, we tend to their advice. However, when I called ahead to make a reservation, the answering person told me the price and then said, you do understand that we have common baths and toilets, and other places charge the same as us, but they are self-contained.

Well, same price AND self contained? He shot himself in the foot on that one. So, moments before we left in the morning, I asked a single woman traveler if she could recommend a place, and she did, and that is where we stayed:

Victoria Lodge, Zanzibar Island.
It turns out that the owner, Eddie, (otherwise known as Mohammed by his mother and family) had left Zanzibar when he was 12 for education in England. After finishing a college computer degree, he got a job essentially, if I understood him correctly, entering data (college degree not really necessary). He was home for a visit, happened to stay at Victoria Lodge, and was dismayed at how rundown it had become since he had visited as a small boy.

He inquired, by chance would you consider selling the hotel? and yes, the owners would. So, Eddie flew back to England, sold his house for a profit, and is now, at the young age of 30, in the process of renovating a stone, three-story, nine room lodge/hotel, and adding a restaurant.

When we first arrived, Eddie wasn’t there, but his mother was, and she told us, there is no room at the inn because the toilet isn’t working. Bill said, I am a plumber; let me see if I can fix it. Since the part was missing, and Bill wasn’t carrying the right one, it looked as if we couldn’t stay. However, at precisely that moment, Eddie showed up, showed us another room, and said that we could have it IF we stayed away until 8 p.m. when he assured us that the bathroom would be working.

Eddie and his potential guests determine what they will pay, in our case, I was bargaining in Tanzanian shillings and Bill paid him in dollars, so Eddie came out ahead by about 15 percent! Two nights for $25. We learned today that anyone who has stayed during renovation gets two FREE nights after the renovation is complete. I wonder if we will return to collect?

No mosquito net, but lots of spray and good screens on the windows. The first night, I think that I got bitten (pray that the doxyclycline works), but the second night, I figured out how to survive the lack of air conditioning and fear of mosquito bites.

I simply soaked the sheet and lay under the wet sheet…thus accomplishing two things: keeping away the mosquitoes and cooling me during the drying process. I learned during the night that it takes approximately 2 hours for the sheet to dry enough to require my waking up to wet it again.

Perhaps in the whole scheme of things, we are getting too old for this type of traveling. But then we return to Dar (as we call Dar es Salaam) and pay $24 for a kinda of air conditioned room (Bill removed the air filter that was so dirty that no air could pass through, so it is now much cooler).

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