A TOUCH OF PARADISE
For the third week of our holidays, we decided to take a break by the coast. Rather than trekking to Zanzibar, we headed to a resort in small village near Pangani on the East coast

For anyone who wants to go, to get there we took a local style bus for seven hours to Tanga, which is East of Arusha and from there took a bus to Pangani. We got off the bus at Peponi's, around 15km South of Pangani.

Our initial bus journey to Tanga took seven hours and cost us only US$9 – strangely enough it only cost us $7 to get back… we think it’s because we used a different bus company but it’s hard to be sure! Having sat on a train in Thailand for 12 hours and been bored senseless, I was dreading the trip but in fact, it was pretty stress-free. The seats weren’t exactly luxury but they were comfortable enough. There was a lovely sunroof which allowed the wind to stream through the bus and the sides windows opened. Every hours or so the bus stopped, whereupon a million vendors would hover around the bus windows trying to sell us everything from bandanas to long, sharp knives to hard boiled eggs (yum). In addition to that, as locals got on and off the bus, we found ourselves talking to all manner of people. I ended up conducting a mini-English lesson with two locals, who in turn taught me Swahili for an hour. Time passed very quickly.

Weary from travelling, we spent our first night in Tanga, which is allegedly bigger than Arusha but it really didn’t feel like it. It's is a town built around a lovely port. Apparently dala-dalas (minibuses which act as buses but which are privately operated) were only introduced to Tanga in around 2001. Like the rest of Tanzania, few people can afford cars but in Tanga, most locals still cycle around on push-bikes. It has a lovely provincial flavour and lots of colonial-style buildings, albeit a little dilapidated. Our hotel there was much like the town – provincial, cute and past it’s best. But for less than US$7 each we got our own rooms, each with a huge bed (like, KING SIZE), mozzie net, an ensuite bathroom with a shower connected to the toilet cistern… AND an adjoining balcony to sit on and listen to the sounds of the sounds of the town including the nearby mosque. Plus breakfast was free, although it made a European continental breakfast look like a feast. I'd say we got our money's worth there.

The next morning, refreshed from our cistern shower, we took another bus for an hour to Peponi, which we had heard about from other volunteers. Our goal was to find somewhere by the sea with a nice beach where we could read and relax and hide away from the world for a couple of days. And that's exactly what we found - but it was even better!

"Peponi” means paradise, and this place was quite simply the closest I’ve been to paradise in quite some time. Set a few hundred metres back from the road, nestled in behind banana and cashew nut trees (yes, really... I thought they grew on bushes) , is a small resort with just 8 cottages and some space to camp. Around 20 metres from the beach, the individual houses are beautiful cottages made from local materials, like banana leaf and erm, other stuff that looked pretty local!


We were given a beautiful "banda" for the three of us, which had one main room with a (yes, kingsize) bed and another room off it with three single beds. And of course a bathroom. From the comfort our beds, we could look at the light blue sea and the navy skyline which met it.

The water in the bathroom is only warm for a few hours a day, as they have to light a fire to heat it up. But in this weather, a cool shower was lovely. Mostly they use rainwater but they have had to use tap water recently because there just hasn't been enough rain. Apparently this is the first time this has happened in a number of years.

As it was mid-week and the off-peak season, we were the only visitors there so we had the place to ourselves. So, having found our paradise, we spent the next three days swimming, reading, sleeping, eating local seafood and relaxing! The sea was warmer than I have ever expedienced – at certain times of the day it’s like stepping into a Jacuzzi or a warm bath. We also went out in a dhow (boat) to snorkel on the reef, check out a sand island… We found ourselves on this amazing sand island with nothing else in sight, swimming and eating our lunch.

It's pretty amazing to see how much of this resort was built from local materials. As I looked around, I could see that almost everything could be traced back to some local plant or material; tables, chairs, cushions, walls (banana leaf... I think), roofs (other kinds of leaves). It really is lovely to see such a self-sufficient method of building, and hopefully it's more economical too.

After two nights and three days there, we started our journey home via Tanga for one night and then back on the bus to Arusha. But God, I feel relaxed! And the best part - it cost us only US$105 for five days including our travel costs from Arusha to the resort and back and food, accommodation and snorkelling! It was worth every penny and more...