We came to Tanzania specifically to hike Kilimanjaro, and we honestly figured we could take up the balance of two months here without much problem. And that is certainly doable... if you have lots of money to spend.
But doing Tanzania on a tight budget is not that enjoyable. Now that we have our flights to Albania booked for March 14th, we feel like we are just biding our time until we can get out of here.
We are here in Tanga for another three nights yet. It's baking hot during the day (35C, 95F yesterday) so it's too hot to do any hiking of any length. It stays relatively comfortable inside the house though... there is usually a nice breeze coming through, and we have a lot of ceiling fans.
Except... the ceiling fans don't work when there is no power! They are installing some kind of new power line coming down from Kenya and the entire city of Tanga (the whole region, apparently) has no power during the day. It shuts off around 8:00am and doesn't come on until around 6:00pm. No idea how many more days that will last. Of course this also affects our laptop time. So we have been playing a lot of cards and yahtzee.
We were entertained yesterday by a group of five monkeys in our backyard...
And, we did make it out for a stroll around the neighborhood. Just down the road there is a tree that seems popular with a hawk like bird, so we walked down to take some photos. We think they are yellow-billed kites. Odd that there are so many of them all hanging around the same area...
The neighborhood.
Many of the homes in this area are quite large, although a lot of them look old and not well maintained. Not all, of course... but most.
Typical home.
Of course even in poor countries, some people are well off. Just down the road there is a new house that is nearing completion...
New home.
I saw a "house for rent" sign in the window of a local grocery store. The house looked similar in size to the one above. With servants quarters in the rear. Price was 500,000 shillings ($273 CAD, $215 USD) per month.
Now you know why even paying $20 a night like we are is probably pretty expensive compared to market rates for the locals.
We actually have servants quarters at our house as well. They are just shacks, really. Two people are living in them. A single woman teacher is in one, and a 15 year old boy is in the other. They come and go through our gate, but we don't really see them very much.
This fancy place is just down the road from us.
But it was too hot, and we didn't stay out for long.
Ruth made a nice curried shrimp for dinner.
Our hosts here have given us a couple of bicycles to use. They are local Tanzanian bicycles (think 1975!) but we will try to make our way over to the main beach area today just for something to do.
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Wow, 95 degrees and no power. You are much more patient that I would be. Did the Airbnb host tell you that there was no power from 8 am to 6 pm? I'd be out of there, cute monkeys or not!
ReplyDeleteOur Airbnb host told us when we arrived that there are sometimes problems with the power but normally only on Sundays and also that for the next four Sundays especially because work was being done to install new power lines from Kenya down into Tanzania. So we knew that this coming Sunday the power would be out all day. No one expected the power to be out for two days during the week though!
DeleteAs long as there is a breeze then we don't notice the heat in the house as it says very reasonable and luckily both the days that the power has been out there has been a nice breeze coming through the windows. There is no air conditioning here in the house only the ceiling fans and when there is no breeze the fans do a great job.
The monkeys were very entertaining to watch. :-)
What you are paying probably covers the cost of your phantom power.
ReplyDeleteGlad you are finding ways to bide time.
Be Safe and Enjoy!
It's about time.
Our Airbnb hosts have no control over the work being done to install new power lines in the area so what we are paying to stay here in the house has nothing to do with the power or lack thereof.
DeleteReading this, I am having flashbacks to power outages in Mexico, except that they often occurred during the night. The fans would stop and the air was so hot and humid, it was hard to sleep. We couldn't open up the house for security reasons, so it was not pleasant. Good thing you have your Yahtzee game, and monkeys! Shrimp curry looked delicious.
ReplyDeleteThat is something that we really ever noticed in Mexico but I guess part of that is due to the fact that we were almost always in our motorhome and rarely plugged into power. Nothing worse than being baking hot at night with no air flow!
DeleteWe also had our cribbage game, and yes the shrimp curry was delicious. :-)