Geography 101

Many people (well, at least two) have expressed confusion about the whole Lake Tanganyika / Zambia statement. Strangely enough those who know me have never questioned the "free range" or "child bride" statements; they choose to focus on the where rather than the who. From a South African perspective, I guess, it is in that part of the continent where maps are marked "Here be dragons" since the education system ignored anything between southern Europe and the Limpopo river for so very long.

Lake Tanganyika from space, courtesy Wikipedia. The bit on the far right of the picture is in Zambia


Lake Tanganyika is an African Great Lake (3° 20' to 8° 48' South and from 29° 5' to 31° 15' East). It is estimated to be the second or third largest freshwater lake in the world by volume, and the second deepest, after Lake Baikal in Siberia. The lake is divided between four countries – Burundi, Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Tanzania and Zambia (Wikipedia again) 

The African Great Lakes. Lake Tanganyika is bottom left, looks a little like Italy I've always thought


The problem with Wikipedia, of course, is that it's factual and dry and cannot possibly hope to do justice to the lake, which is the size of the United Kingdom. That's a fair bit of water (apparently one sixth of the world's freshwater) and when I was living there nobody knew how deep it was. 


My dad ran a small game lodge called Kasaba Bay (http://africanadrenalin.co.za/Kasaba/) before the president of the day decided he'd quite like it as his personal holiday home. 

The main lodge with the giant winterthorn tree


Can't fault his taste, and since it was a national lodge in a national park it wasn't as if it was ours to begin with. Sumbu National Park covers around 2,000 square kilometres - it's one of the smallest in Zambia and not well known at all.


My time at the lake was filled with fishing, exploring, adventures and trying to avoid radio school. To this day I have fond memories of Zambia (the sweet-tempered elephant who lived at the lodge) and I still wake up nights in a sweat having dreamt that Jack (the elephant who didn't like women) is sneaking up silently behind me to charge. Jack taught me that an elephant can hide behind a single blade of grass. I remember how my brother and I would scatter chicken bones outside the guests' chalets to attract hyenas and then giggle the next morning when they arrived - puffy-eyed and near hysterical - at breakfast to relate stories of man-eaters and werewolves. 


 I remain firmly convinced that there's no better way to grow up. Free-range indeed.

The Vaal adventure

Bob's outing to the Vaal

"Come to the Vaal for Christmas" said my sister cheerily, "it's only an hour and we're terribly easy to find"

The most important thing to remember is that you should never rely on one device to get you safely there AND back. Bob 2.0 (Nokia GPS system, updated in preparation for the trek following an unfortunate mis-direction through Kempton Park of all places) requires a trailer-load full of batteries to operate. This small design flaw seems to have slipped past the various testers surely employed by Nokia to prevent this sort of thing. Or maybe you can't drive for 4 hours in Sweden.

Getting there was simple enough, if a tad far for a day trip - taking us around 2 hours. I had used the search function to find the address and saved the route so as to be prepared. Bob was calm and confident, full of "Follow the course of the road" and "Turn left now" advice, with only a brief moment of understandable confusion when we joined the highway from Malibongwe road. He became more adventurous as we went, with "turn left now" instructions taking us on seldom-used back roads through sleepy dorps and lush fields in a general southerly direction.

We arrived at exactly the right house in exactly the right town and had high praise for Bob before letting him take a well-earned rest so as to be refreshed for the return trip in the late afternoon. I should point out that I had suggested a sleep over to avoid travelling after dark. There's more than enough room and even though we had appointed the newly-licensed 18 year-old the designated driver we do not have a good track record of uneventful trips back from the Vaal in the dark. The last return trip involved a pot hole the size of a tank trap, a broken wheel rim and changing a tyre in the dark in a spot with no emergency lane just outside Sebokeng.  I was outvoted on this, however, even though it later emerged that the vote was rigged, Mugabe-style (Brian's vote counts more than the others)

The 18 year-old in full Christmas regalia

After lunch everyone went sailing (excluding my sister and me, of course, since I am fully aware that all boats have but one purpose: to take you to the bottom when you're least expecting it) We spent our afternoon in the pool at the yacht club with a glass or two of wine and waited for the family's return.

At six we climbed back into the luxury sedan and instructed Bob to take us home. Looking back, the first sign of trouble might have been the 15 minutes it took for him to find us and give us our first instructions. He seemed sluggish and didn't sound quite as confident as he had earlier. We foolishly ignored this, mistaking it for confirmation of our innate navigation skills. There was lots of cheer and singing, slightly sunburned well-fed happiness and a beautiful sunset to distract us so it's understandable that it took a while for us to realise that Bob had been silent for some time. It slowly dawned on us that we were alone in an unknown place with no landmarks or directions home.

It was dark and Bob had deserted us on a rural road in the middle of nowhere. The few signs we saw were of no help at all - and we hadn't packed a map, obviously, since we had Bob. There was an unusual silence in the car and the music was switched off to allow us all to concentrate.

After a while we spotted a sign to a town and decided our best bet was to head straight there and throw ourselves on the mercy of a garage attendant. This took some negotiation, since Brian is obviously a boy and obviously doesn't believe in asking for directions. He confidently predicted we would cross a highway shortly. After 30 minutes he agreed we should stop and ask. Fortunately we found both a garage and a kindly attendant who told us which street lead out of town to the nearest highway.

At this stage the 18 year-old took control, ignored the parents and directed the scientist to download Google maps, enter the name of the town and our destination and ask for directions. The scientist is, strangely enough, not tech-savvy so it took a while, but eventually we had a clear set of directions without any aid from satellites. I am fascinated that this is possible, albeit a little disturbed that an American search engine knows how to get me home from Meyerton.

The problem with directions, rather than voice guidance, is how non-specific they can be. Take the N12 offramp, then the N3. YES, BUT WHICH WAY? The intricate design of the interchange doesn't allow for hesitation - you need to be decisive and move quickly to avoid the thundering taxis and luxury 4x4's doing 140 in the 80 zone. All 3 of us were yelling conflicting instructions at once - and, apart from one or two near-death experiences involving unsafe lane changes, he managed to get onto a road we knew without panicking, shouting or throwing things at us. (Proud mother moment - that's my boy, keeping a cool head in a crisis)

We circumnavigated Johannesburg and arrived home 3 hours after leaving the Vaal to a dark house - the power had failed (or perhaps a cable was stolen) only to be restored 24 hours later. Bob had a long rest

Perhaps an analogue back-up system (a fold-out map comes to mind) is not a bad thing in this digital age.

Finally - an iPod

I finally have an iPod, so spent practically the whole day yesterday trying to get it set up. Before I sent my laptop in for repairs I very carefully backed up my iTunes music to an external hard drive so that I would still have it when I got it back. However, having to re-load iTunes meant that accessing the music from the external drive was impossible. I tried everything I could - from copying folders to trying to open in iTunes - all to no avail. I also couldn't register with iTunes without giving them my credit card number, not something I'm comfortable doing.

So I spent hours and hours putting in the CDs to load them onto iTunes again, half of them are missing and I'm extremely annoyed about all of this. To make matters worse I can't seem to load my Nokia Music onto iTunes either.

At least the 18 year-old is back from matric vac today so I can hand it all over and ask him to make it work...

Day 4, The spice farm, Stone Town and going home

The Palace Museum in Stone Town

Day 4 and we were up early since we had arranged an earlier transfer so as to visit a spice farm and do a very quick tour of Stone Town before flying home. This is actually the day when I took the pictures, having been far too lazy to do so beforehand. I only figured out later that there was obviously some humidity on the lense, hence the slightly hazy quality of the pictures. Being middle-aged I just assumed my lack of reading glasses was responsible for how they looked. That, and the ridiculously small viewing screen. I am still waiting for a kind soul to donate an i-Phone so that I can take magnificent pictures and do all sorts of other things at the same time.

Even the ashtrays are decorated with fresh flowers

A bowl of hibiscus and frangipani flowers outside the spa


Neatly raked sand at Mapenzi Beach Resort. Not sure what time they get up to do this, but it's always spotless

A hut overlooking the beach, with comfortable chairs and a hammock if you're in need of a short nap

There was a brief panic when we couldn't find the beach cards; really didn't want to spend $50 on a fine, but it turned out we had given them to a different pool attendant and once he was tracked down they were safely returned

They were here all along?

Muraji appeared at 9.30 and we set off at breakneck speed for our first stop - a spice farm. On the way we saw a government-owned coconut plantation as well as a rubber plantation. I was once again struck by the incredible beauty of the tropical forest and the huge baobab trees, although I had expected more birds. At the hotel we only saw house crows - they seem to have taken over there. The hotel has put up strands of what looked like fishing line between the beams holding up the thatch. I think this is to keep the crows out. The only wildlife we saw was a gorgeous bush baby that appeared on our roof one evening (I thought it was a cat until it leapt 6 metres into an adjacent tree!) Apart from that we saw some egrets and a couple of herons, but then we didn't actually go looking for birds or animals at any time (good thing too since the binoculars were also left at home by mistake)


Muraji, our fearless driver/tour guide. Please note the road... this one heading in to the spice farm

The spice farm initially appeared to be a small clearing in the forest with a little thatched "sales" area - the spices are packaged into little packets and it took some time to understand the options (if you buy this and this I give you this free) Clearly my education in spices is lacking, I was somehow entirely unaware that spices come from trees (hence the forest)

Spices neatly packaged and laid out for you to buy

Some of the local children rushed out to see us but became quite shy when I started taking pictures. I bought quite a few spices including vanilla pods, saffron (officially the world's most expensive spice and apparently grown on Pemba island) black pepper, coriander, as well as some of the perfume bases - ylang ylang and jasmine essence. The smell of fresh vanilla is quite intoxicating and nothing at all like the bottled essence in supermarkets.

Then off to Stone Town to buy a few gifts before heading back to the airport. We went via Bububu, the highest point in Zanzibar at around 120m with a great view of the town. Unfortunately I didn't get a picture, the phone camera showed a tiny speck in the distance...

Stone Town harbour and the park

Stone Town is a World Heritage site, with very narrow winding alleys rather than roads. We entered near the House of Wonders, Beit-El-Ajaib, built by the Sultan Seyyid Barghash as a grand palace for ceremonial purposes. It was also (according to Wikipedia) the birth place of Freddie Mercury. We had to park the taxi and walk - it's spotless and wasn't too crowded.

House of Wonders

Muraji took us to a contact of his who owns a store where we could buy some gifts for the children (and a cute t-shirt for the border collie's firstborn, Michael)

Brian and Muraji in Stone Town

After some shopping and sight seeing it was time to make our way to the airport for the flight home.

Departures is easy to find - it's on the pavement outside the airport. Checking in was relatively painless but unfortunately the airconditioned restaurant is not accessible once you have cleared customs. We were pleased to find out that we didn't have to pay any departure tax (no-one could clarify this for us beforehand) and there's no smoking area either.

The dutyfree shop is fairly basic and I was glad we had done our shopping in Stone Town. We bought a couple of books, some water and snacks and found a spot to wait. Although there are a few asthmatic standalone airconditioning units in the departures lounge all the doors to the runway were open so they weren't really much help.

After a while we saw an Avis jet landing (Avis airlines?) and it was only when we were boarding that we realised it was advertising on the 1Time plane. We had yet another long delay with a passenger being offloaded and luggage removed, and they had also double-booked seats with the manual seating system so it took a while to find 2 seats next to each other. The cabin crew was very helpful but the mid day heat and humidity on a runway near the equator is stifling.

We landed around 40 minutes late, then headed through the new arrivals area (ready for the influx of tourists for 2010) where there is a duty free shop to wait for our luggage. This was the longest part of the process and when I spotted "Delayed" next to our flight information on the screen I sent Sarah a text message to let her know we had, in fact, landed.

Safely home, another trip over. Well worth it, but a bit too short

Day 3, where we got our energy back

I forgot to mention the deadly sarong-man-of-war incident. This is a true story and happened while we were attempting to snorkel on the local reef.

Being both paranoid and neurotic I thought I'd covered off most of the lurking dangers of the deep in terms of blue bottles, sea urchins, stone fish and lion fish. All of which do nasty things to you if you stand on them (understandably so).

However, whilst snorkelling with my sarong tied around my costume strap a piece floated free and I caught some movement out of the corner of my eye. At once I realised I had forgotten the devilish Portuguese Man O' War (which can apparently kill you almost immediately with one touch) and assumed the worst. This is exactly what happens when you don't consider all possible dangers. It's not easy to scream through a snorkel so it was more of a strangled yelp that came out, and, at the same time, I propelled myself right out of the water (well, up to waist level anyway) and leaped about frantically to get away from it, thrashing my arms around, but it had me in its deathly embrace already!

Of course Brian heard the commotion, saw this and nearly drowned he was laughing so hard.He immediately told me that now he had a story to tell about me (apart from the tequila one, which happened 22 years ago so doesn't count), so best I remember that next time I tell the story about how he tear-gassed himself in Sarah's car. He thought I was concerned it was a shark (how could I have forgotten about sharks too?) which I denied.

Now that the record is straight....

Day 3, hard to believe the trip was almost over. Off to the dining room for breakfast

Yum - all kinds of options available, and the chef makes your egg selection right in front of you. Fresh juices and fruit (Bungu juice - apparently a real fruit, a little like passion fruit and quite tart) but the best is the mango juice.

Later, in a fit of madness, we did the water aerobics class - we felt very virtuous afterwards and Brian had custard with his pudding at lunch since he'd earned it.

After lunch we snuck out separately past reception so as not to raise any suspicion. Since we didn't bring a useful kit bag we took our snorkelling kit wrapped in a sarong (a different one, the other one brought back bad memories) and walked up the drive to meet our black market tour guide who was to take us to Mnembe Island to snorkel.

The black market operators are not allowed onto hotel property so it's very undercover as the hotel doesn't approve.

As it was low tide we had to drive quite far past little villages (the Zanzibari villagers seem to keep ducks and goats rather than the chickens and goats one would find in mainland villages) on a shocking road. These are not dirt roads, they are coral roads, all pointy rock and gravel, but the spotless, airconditioned taxi managed well. Not sure I would risk my suspension and tyres for all of $100 that had to be split a few different ways. Arriving at the far north of the island we boarded a little traditional boat for the trip to the reef

This is an example of traditional boats, not the actual place we embarked (didn't have a camera after all)

Mnembe/Mnemba Island (seems to have different names) is apparently owned by Bill Gates, according to our tour guide "Captain Peter" and has a lodge that charges $1500 per night. Not sure how true any of this is, but if the boat operators land on the island they are fined $100 so we stayed well away from the beach.

The reef is a marine reserve but local residents are allowed to remove some shells and octopus. Obviously we didn't remove anything, nor did I buy the shells the beach boys were trying to sell us on the beach. Imagine the ecologist's (Sarah)response if I had

Again - not my pictures, but this is really what its like. Quite unbelievable sea colour and visibility

What followed was the best snorkelling I have experienced anywhere in the world. Forget the Maldives, Mauritius, Lake Malawi, Sodwana, Knysna, Ilha do Sol - this is paradise. Captain Peter brought us cushion starfish to look at (carefully put back in the same place afterwards)

and there were blue starfish as well as a little electric ray, sea-snake cucumber, thousands of tropical fish like sergeant-majors, emperor angelfish, surgeon fish, wrasses, and quite an ugly moray (sorry - but it's true) trumpet fish, damsels and others with split caudal fins we couldn't identify. The coral is incredible, Captain Peter carefully brought up a loose piece of hard coral and warned us not to touch anything, explained the difference between hard and soft coral and then took it back down again.

Brian and I both popped up and said "Rosie would love this" (my dive buddy/travelling companion/good friend/fixer of things and great photographer)

I saw a banded sea snake following a trumpet fish, but by the time I called Brian to look at it, it had disappeared

Brian and I swam into each other at least twice, it's quite ridiculous. Perhaps it was the fact that he didn't have his bootees, which meant his fins rubbed his toes raw, requiring me to sacrifice my leopard-print dress to lovingly tear strips to wrap around affected toes. Personally, I think this caused him to swim in circles which meant I had to keep an eye out for him as well as all the dangerous things.

After around 2 hours we got back on board where our captain (not Captain Peter, who was our guide, strangely enough) had prepared a tray of fresh fruit, lovely sweet pineapple and mangos. There was also a cooler with mineral water and some cold drinks. All of this is included in the price (so far: 4 people to pay, new tyres and suspension, a boat, fuel and the food and drinks) so the value for money is outstanding. Our contact had mentioned that a $10 tip would be more than adequate.

I saw some dhows returning from sea and asked if it was a regatta (since my sister and her captain Peter are boat people I can speak boat) but no, it was the local fishermen returning with their catch. I also asked about sharks - but Captain Peter assured me "There are no dangerous sharks here, only mako, white shark, tiger shark and hammerhead. Only dangerous fish the barracuda. She will definitely bite you if she sees you". If only I'd known!

We headed back to shore. Since it was high tide we landed much further south - almost back to the hotel in fact - and found our taxi which took us back to the hotel.

We had also decided not to give up an entire day to do Stone Town/Spice farm, and had asked Gilbert of Gallery Tours to arrange for our airport transport to come a few hours earlier on the final day. This is well worth considering if, like us, you have little time and a mid-day flight.

Day 1 (continued) and Day 2

Some photographs of reception - this is truly a beautiful hotel

Steps leading down into reception

Dhow display

Spice chests with actual spices in them - these are the spice islands after all. Lovely smell of spice wafts through reception

Black pepper and cloves

Cinnamon chest. Brian said he thought it was bits of bark, and seemed quite surprised when I confirmed he was right....

Had the most fantastic tuna and salad for lunch, it's all buffet-style with 4 different tables to make your selection from (entrees, fish, salads, curries, meats, puddings, cheeses etc) Loads of fresh fruit and smiling waiters on tap. I wonder if we can bring a few home to train the South African waiters before the world cup? I'm especially thinking of how much Cape Town would benefit from this....

Brian was tasked with figuring out how to operate the safe and immediately locked us out of it - requiring a call to reception to come and unlock it. I couldn't say anything about this at all, since I managed to do exactly the same thing at least 3 times in India.

LONG afternoon nap (holidays are tiring)

Followed by our briefing - which was thorough and fortunately didn't involve any disco lights, music or dancing. Just what was included in the price (practically everything) and things like operating hours for pubs (most important) The Italian "sports manager" is frightening; who has that kind of energy in this humidity? We narrowly escaped being drafted into a water polo tournament by claiming pensioner status

Fabulous dinner on the beach with entertainment in the form of traditional dancers, and bed (like I said, it's exhausting being on holiday)

Day 2

Awoke to a beautiful morning

We decided to check out the local reef before buying a tour to go snorkelling, you can see the reef from the beach and it didn't look too far away. Hah. At low tide you have to walk around a mile, I'd say, in thigh-deep water.

The reef is the dark blue bit in the far distance. The darker water closer to shore is actually a seaweed farm. I should mention that the ocean provides no relief from the heat (being around 29deg C) or the humidity (obviously, since it's wet)

A seaweed farm

Visions of sea urchins and stone fish meant we took shoes (well, Brian took his crocs, I took my slops because I'd only managed to find one of the reef shoes before leaving)

Being paranoid South Africans we also refused to leave our things on the beach which meant we were carrying everything while we walked out. When it got a little deeper I wrapped all the things I was carrying into my sarong and tied it around my head, Rambo-style.

At around this time Brian discovered he had not checked the mask before we left home so the strap was in need of some repair and he started looking around for something to use to fix it (in the middle of the ocean?) Once we got to waist-height we tried a little snorkelling but it was soon clear that we wouldn't be able to do much, encumbered as we were. Also we kept swimming into each other, regardless of the fact that there was a whole ocean to swim in.

After about 15 minutes of this we gave it up as a bad idea and trekked back to the beach. The beach boys, who had been watching us with great amusement, tried to sell us all manner of snorkelling trips - and they are not easily put off. "King Solomon" was especially committed to making a sale and I felt sorry for him, thinking of us as wealthy tourists.

We hit the swimming pool - again, around 28-29deg C, but there's a walkway over it that provides an opportunity to lurk in the shade and cool down.

We resolved to take a tour, and I met with the guest relations manager to discuss the options with the contracted operator. Visions of Sodwana, I'm afraid - where guaranteed clientele leads to arrogant service.

We decided to contact the black market operators and managed to track one down as he was briefing potential clients. Now these clients (South Africans in the middle of emigrating to Oz) were clearly wealthy, just wanting something a little different.

We retired to the bar to discuss it over local beer (Tuskers and Kilimanjaro - both great beers) We decided that we would go the next day and made our arrangements which required us to meet the transport off the hotel grounds. This didn't seem too risky to me, since we could chat to the other clients who were going that very afternoon.

We found a couple of books in the library (I use this term very loosely, really a few shelves behind the sound booth in the "disco") and settled down at the pool to read and swim.

Around this time I decided it would be a good idea to take some photos, and switched on my phone to do that (I don't have a digital camera) I was sitting peacefully reading a book when I noticed a message. I have never activated the roaming option (lacking sufficient funds to pay the upfront deposit) there was clearly something sinister in this so I switched it off immediately and locked it away in the safe for good measure.

Later on, however, my curiosity got the better of me and I switched it on again. A few messages from MTN welcoming me to Tanzania, a dialstring code to establish the costs (reasonable, in my opinion) and a rude message from the credit card company who still hadn't sorted out the problem with the online transfer. I called the children (who had thought they were perfectly safe since we were out of the country) to establish their whereabouts and check they were flossing.

We had booked for dinner at the pizza restaurant (1 free pizza included in the package) which undoubtedly makes the best pizza on the continent. We decided to skip the karaoke evening and went off to bed early. I love the airconditioning in the room.

Jambo Zanzibar

Day 1 - Johannesburg to Zanzibar





Whose bright idea was it to schedule this flight for 07h45? Brian didn't pack the night before (which is how we ended up with a mask that didn't work and no bootees for his fins...) so it was up at 4.30am to pack and get to the airport on time.





My airport paranoia kicked in early, with Flea demanding to drive and refusing to engage in argument with me about her driving (through clenched teeth: "I will not argue with you on the day you go on holiday") her speed, her lane choice, highway construction or any other subject I chose. That's kids for you...









The new ORT layout is confusing at 5am, which terminal? The electronic confirmation didn't help, resulting in some aimless wandering once dropped off. Note to 2010 visitors - demand that your travel agent provides you with a map of the airport!








The trip was fairly uneventful. Of course the luggage was wrapped at ORT (Brian insisted they re-do it as it wasn't done properly the first time - and eventually the sullen wrapper agreed), and all arrived in good order on the other side. We didn't buy a camera in duty-free because we were running out of time and needed coffee (the check-in process is quite ridiculous, check in for an international flight in the domestic departures area then schlep all the way over) We were also told that the return flight would be back an hour late since they're extending the runway at Zanzibar airport necessitating a stop in Dar es Salaam to refuel (so it's not long enough to take off fully laden with fuel). This required a call to flea to let her know how to organise her day when fetching us - as well as checking that she got home safely and managed the "dodgy" offramp with all the construction work going on.













It's 1Time, so you have to buy your food & drinks (much scuffling around in purses for money, eventually the credit card was hauled out - you'd think an international flight would at least include a bottle of water and some peanuts! Some passenger didn't get on the plane, so luggage had to be offloaded, then 1Time changed their minds and let her on - requiring the luggage to be onloaded again. Welcome to Africa



















Zanzibar airport is - well, rustic. The 90% humidity level hits you as soon as they open the doors of the aircraft - then it's a general rush to get inside. There are 3 queues for visas, this is quite a high-tech affair in a low-tech environment. It involves getting a photo with a little web cam and then waiting while they glue this into your passport. Oh yes, and US$50. It works quite well, though, then you go through to the "luggage collection" area where you can see the luggage carts being offloaded and track your suitcase from beginning to end (which, for a South African, is comforting). Brian was asking why there's no luggage carousel, but that's just because his came off last while mine was one of the first. Everyone's luggage is opened, then it's outside to search for your transport. I should mention that there is no litter lying on the ground outside, this struck me as a very good start. We had Gallery Tours, really professional. Muraji greeted us with very welcome wet towels, cold bottled water and a spotless, airconditioned taxi.





The ride to Mapenzi is around an hour - at breakneck speed on narrow roads with much polite hooting to warn cyclists, scooters and pedestrians. I spent the entire trip looking out the back window so as not to see the oncoming trucks/cars/pedestrians.





My first impression, once we left the city, was of the trees - great big fat African trees laden with fruit. Frangipanis, mango trees, breadfruit trees, banana trees...We passed rice paddies as well, but mainly tropical forests and small villages. Mapenzi is on the east coast of Zanzibar, near a town called Mahonda


















The hotel drive is is a riot of Bougainvillea and hibiscus with some small palms and no less than 2 security clearances. The building is enormous, bright white palm-thatched with moorish touches and loads of wide, tiled stairs. Very clean, airy and promising, lovely touches. Check-in was relatively painless but I wasn't altogether sure about the dayglo orange hospital tags firmly attached to our wrists to identify us as hotel guests (why? in case of having to identify us later? - visions of sharks...) We were instructed to meet at the "disco" at 7pm for a briefing





Our room - no 174 - had a double verandah with a day bed and 2 chairs and table.

and a wonderful view down to the pool...

and then we rushed down to the beach to see the sea



Did I mention the humidity? Although not that hot (for a Zambian, anyway) at around 32deg C, the 90%+ humidity is a killer. This requires lots of water combined with very few clothes (problem 1 for a fat middle-aged woman), fortunately the room was airconditioned.