Pete with cocktails at Kendwa Rocks
Erin
Our time on Zanzibar was split between two beach locations, Matemwe and Kendwa. We had heard about a region called Nungwe, but it was known to be more…. Party hardy. That’s not really us, so we opted for the more chilled out Kendwa, on the west side of Zanzibar. Matemwe had been on the east side, so it was cool to see both sides of the island.
We got to a place we planned to stay in Kendwa which was significantly nicer than Mohammed’s in Matemwe, but not as good as it could have been. For the price it was relatively poorly run and maintained, but it would do us for a couple of days anyway, and included breakfast. Mohammed’s had as well and let me tell you - Mohammed’s breakfast was infinitely better. Something to be said for price versus quality, especially in developing nations: higher prices don’t always mean quality.
Kendwa was a gorgeous little gated resort region with beach bars and restaurants set along a long strip of stunning, white sand. The sand in Zanzibar itself was very, very white, and you needed sunglasses constantly to avoid being blinded by the sun reflecting off the sand. Kendwa’s sand wasn’t as great as Matemwe’s, but the swimming was better and the water was bluer, so there were all kinds of giving and taking when it came to the question of Matemwe versus Kendwa. Kendwa had more going for it, but Matemwe’s beaches were nicer with less hassle than Kendwa’s… but only marginally.
One thing Kendwa had that Matemwe didn’t was beach parties over at the Kendwa Rocks resort, next door to our hotel. I say hotel, but our hotel was actually a property consisting of about fifty bungalows and some really pretty gardens you had to walk through. Our resort bar left a lot to be desired, especially in terms of selection and service. An hour for drinks? Screw that. We often went to Kendwa Rocks beach shack for drinks as it was about nine thousand times quicker and sometimes cheaper.
It was on one of these jaunts to Kendwa Rocks that we heard about a beach party happening that night. “Damn straight, let’s check this out!” we thought. “Sounds like a great time.”
So we went off to dinner at our resort which took, of course, like three hours. Afterwards, we headed over towards where we could hear the beach party going off - actually inside the Kendwa Rocks resort. Sadly, it cost money to access it if you weren’t staying at the resort and it was some astronomical fee like $20 per person. We didn’t have that much cash with us though, so we decided to say screw it and do something else.
As we were walking away though, we ran into a local guy who also tried to access the party but couldn’t due to the price. We walked with him a ways down the beach, back toward our own hotel’s restaurant and bar and we discovered his name was Roger. He asked Pete where in the UK he was from and they started talking about England and how Roger’s brother (or something) lived there. Pete was worried Roger was lying about it to try to gain our trust (you never can be too careful), but he knew far too much about it to be possibly lying. We ended up having a couple beers with him and he was a really cool guy.
As we were sitting in the pseudo darkness of the beach resort, lit only by candlelight and some vague beach lights, a crew of three blonde haired people in their 20s walked by and started talking to Roger. They’d met him earlier and they’d hung out with him so we invited them to join us and they did. One of them passed around a joint and we chatted for awhile. It turned out they were all from Norway and were down in Tanzania for a holiday. We hung out with them for the remainder of the evening and had a pretty cool time, almost a beach party of our own. So remember kids, when you can’t access a huge gathering or some hyped up event, sometimes the event you end up stumbling into yourself - even if it only features six people - ends up being far better than anticipated.
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