Zambia World Wide

The Africana Beach was a lovely hotel, right on the edge of the beach. It was quite obvious that before Tanzania took up Communism it had been a very exclusive hotel. Today we could see where it had deteriorated over the years and although it was still a very nice hotel, I would have liked to see it as it had been in the past. The chalets were Rondaviles set out in the grounds and surrounded by tropical trees and shrubs. The bird and animal life was unbelievable, I have never seen such a variety anywhere in Africa. It had a spacious swimming pool with a poolside bar. Unfortunately the bar was no longer in use. The restaurant was first class, although as things were to turn out we would not be using it too often. We really could not have found a better place to stay. It was possible to sit at the swimming pool bar area and see the Coral Reef just off the beach. Many things happened on this holiday which today I find amusing although at the time it was not always so. Craig had been able to swim for some time before we came here but we had been unable to remove his arm-bands as he was convinced that without them he would drown, there was no air in them but he would still not take them off. Whilst we were here we finally managed to convince him that he would not sink if he swam without them and of course he didn’t. We had a great time wandering along the beach which was white fine sand and swimming in the crystal clear blue water which was very calm as the Reef broke most of the incoming waves. One little incident that comes to mind was the time I stepped on a sand fish, I am not quite sure who was the most surprised the fish or me. The sand fish is washed onto the beach as the tide comes in and very often becomes stranded until the next ebb tide takes it back out to sea. Walking down the beach with Jan and the boys I suddenly found the sand move under my foot and nearly fell over. We then noticed what seemed like a fish shooting through the sand at quite a rapid pace. When the sand fish is left high and dry it buries itself in the sand to keep moist until the next tide arrives. It would seem that I had stood on one which it obviously took exception to and in self-defense took to flight.

This was to be a very relaxing holiday which it was for the first four day’s. “wait for it” could anything go wrong “of course”. At this time there were no credit cards the only way to obtain money abroad was by cash transfer from one bank to another. Two months before we travelled here we transferred £500 from our UK bank to the Bank of Tanzania in Dar-es-Salaam, we took a taxi into town and went to the bank Surprise! Surprise! The funds had not arrived. At this time the British Government had imposed currency restrictions on travelers going overseas from UK.

Pete and ourselves had been out of the UK for so long that we were exempt from the restrictions.

Our UK accounts were classed as overseas accounts, the others had not been abroad very long and so the restrictions applied to them. We were therefore transferring funds to cover everyone. Pete and I had no money which meant the others had none either. Over the next four to five days Pete and I seemed to spend most of our time either in the British Embassy or the Bank of Tanzania. Meanwhile we were all reduced to eating coconuts, for breakfast, dinner and tea. I won’t go into details, it is enough to say that the British Consul was a total waste of time. It was the manager of the bank that got things moving and we finally got the money that we needed. We celebrated by going out that evening and having a top class meal and a few bottles of wine. The rest of the holiday went very well until it was time to leave.