The North Coast

Tanga, Peponi, Pangani

I decided to take another bus to spend my last few days in Africa with Laura and Rhi at the coast. The bus took me from morogoro to Tanga where I hailed a Bajaj to take me the 30km down the coast to where the girls were staying. The road was like driving on cobblestones and the drive was impossibly slow and uncomfortable, after an hour we had managed to get just halfway. I was a little surprised when my driver abruptly stopped the vehicle and arranged for me to balance with my two rucksacks on the back of an adolescent’s motorbike to complete the journey. Whilst much quicker and more comfortable I spent the entire ride grimacing as I clung onto my bag and my driver, but managed to avoid falling off long enough to get to peponi (paradise) beach resort.

It certainly was a paradise, especially relative to some of the previous places I’d stayed. I’d become a little weary of staying in the worst hotels I could find and so was happy to pay a little more to share Laura and Rhi’s beach hut. It had a hammock looking out onto the Indian ocean and there was even reliable hot running water.

The following day we rented bikes, all rusting clunking single-speed machines and, initially at least, a joy to ride. We applied a generous layer of suncream and began to slowly make our way towards Pangani, 18km to the South along the coastal road. Amazingly I managed to transform both my T shirt and hat into a darker colour over the course of the trip using my powers of perspiration. Eventually the potholes took their toll on our comfort, my saddle broke as we reached our destination. We stopped for lunch at a deserted hotel where I sampled the mysterious “spaghetti with egg”, literally a spaghetti omelette about 2 inches thick, excellent carb-loading for the trip back.

We cycled around the town and visited some of the grisly decaying buildings used when Pangani was a slaving port. There are numerous horrific stories form this period, for example it is said that slaves were buried alive in order to strengthen the foundations of some of the buildings. Other buildings where slaves were imprisoned or executed have deliberately been left to ruin and are overgrown with trees whose majestic roots are hastening their downfall. I suppose that rather than preserve these buildings or commemorate the events with plaques the local people would prefer to let these memory be erased – stories from the slave era are still common as they have been passed down the generations.

The customs house, a site of previous slave imprisonment.
 It's now used to store coconuts and other products.

I tried to spend my last night at Peponi in the gently rocking hammock but even though I had carefully covered as much exposed skin as possible I was savaged by mosquitoes on my face, hands and the small area of briefly exposed skin on my lower back. I took refuge for a few hours in the hut but returned to the hammock early in the morning to watch the sunrise.