Bwejuu Blues

So after a hot night in Stonetown we set out for Bwejuu the "idyllic beachfront setting" where we would hunker down for Xmas. We had picked a hotel which will remain nameless. This place had a very spectacular website, but was less than spectacular on arrival. At the bar we met Steve, an English psychiatrist, and Jamal an Omani chemical engineer living in Kuwait. Steve showed me his mosquito bites from the night before and my blood literally ran cold. This guy had about 100 red welts all over his right hand and spreading up his arm. His hand was swollen and unusable. This discovery was unnerving at best, I don't like mosquitoes much and the fact that one dude had been savaged that badly in one night was not sitting well with me. We later learned that Steve had been bitten by something else and this was an allergic reaction, but I made some mental plans to heavily dose up on DEET before hunkering down under my net that night.

So after exploring the beach we set out for an interesting evening with Jamal, Steve and assorted other characters at the local watering hole. We were introduced to Conyagi, the gin like local moonshine, the story gets blurry here but we made it back to our room with dignity intact at some point in the wee hours that morning.

From this point on my recollection of the days in Zanzibar get a little blurry. We moved into a beachfront bungalow at the "Makuti beach club" this was a start up hotel by a charming Spanish couple Mabell and Peter (I got to practice Spanish) and Klaus their German local partner. They had been working for the previous two months to get their 5 bungalows renovated and up to speed. These guys were awesome and I don't think I would stay anywhere else if I went back. They had a great staff - Shaggy and Dida, who were amazing cooks. We ate there most of the time.

This is a little taste of a day at Makuti..Wake up late go down for breakfast, chat with Shaggy and Peter, eat. Lounge around the beach and read. I was reading a book a day here. We might have some forays into the water if the tide was in, a couple times in the eve we would take the paddle boat out to snorkel, play with the dogs. Talk business with Klaus, speak in Spanish with Mabell, walk on the beach. Take a nap. About 3 pm Klaus or Peter would ask us what we wanted for dinner, in the case of seafood they would dispatch Dida. He would head out to the reef at catch dinner, I will post the photo's of crabs he got. If we were doing anything other that lazing around it was a major production. The power was out so it was always sweltering, there was no aircon and your ambition to go anywhere or do anything was completely sapped. I now understand why equatorial countries have lower economic output that their northern or southern neighbors. No tv, no phone calls, no internet, no power, sometimes no water. This was Bwejuu. Just hang on the beach and eat amazing seafood. We did go see some monkeys one day, we also made several attempts at a sailing snorkeling trip, mostly I talked Zanibar tourism, hotel operations, and real estate valuation with Klaus. Xmas just involved a bit more drinking.