Almost paradise

From Mombo we hopped on a bus to Tanga, a small, flat, quiet city on the coast. My first priority in Tanga after checking in to the hotel was to see the ocean. Unfortunately the main part of Tanga faces a bay, so I would have to wait a day to see the open ocean. Most of our brief time in Tanga was spent in the company of a young “guide” who called himself Mr. Africa. He was friendly and helpful and never led us astray or asked for money but he was quietly persistent and we had trouble shaking him off. We considered spending a day in Tanga, renting bikes and perhaps going to visit some caves, but we were sore and tired from climbing down the mountain and Monday was rainy so after sleeping in and taking the opportunity to check our email and visit the ATM we headed to Pangani. With Mr. Africa, of course. I had mentioned that we were hoping to arrange a dhow to take us from Pangani to Zanzibar, something I knew we could organize through our hotel, but he took us to the Pangani Cultural Tourism Office. For the sake of convenience and because Mr. Africa had been helpful and would probably get a commission, we booked our boat there, after some careful negotiation on my part. Then we hopped on the ferry across the Pangani River and headed to the Beach Crab Resort, another German-run place where we were the only guests.

We stayed at Beach Crab for three nights. It was gray and rainy most of our time there, but still warm and incredibly quiet and relaxing. We went for walks on the beach and read and napped and sang songs and drank gin and tonics and had delicious 3-course dinners. I tried swimming once and the water was warm but there was too much seaweed and sand being brought up by the waves. The worst part was the tap water which made our skin feel waxy and tasted terrible for brushing our teeth. Still it was beautiful and except for some cute and friendly kids who were amused by our coconut horse, there was absolutely no hassle. We could have stayed longer, but Zanzibar was calling.