After breakfast Mattie, Annelie and I head out to find a motorbike rental shop. We get lost, of course. This alleys have a way of doing that, it messes with your sense of direction. Even with the map we bought at a bookstore yesterday we can’t figure out where to go. We ask a few guys sitting on a step to a mosque about “scooter”, gesturing in a “vroom-vroom” fashion. One of them instructs us to “come” and starts walking. And walking. And walking. We stop and ask him where he is going and he’s just “come, here, this way”. And keeps going. So we follow.
After more walking we come across what is probably a main road. Lots of traffic in dual carriage way lanes, cutting each other off and not indicating. Next to it is a petrol station and a few shops with parking lots. Our guide takes us to 3 guys sitting casually on some bikes, a hodgepodge of old Vespas, mopeds and a newish looking 125cc Chinese bike. Some quick Swahili before one guy introduces himself as “you rent bike?” I say yes, yes we “rent bike”. Smiles, “$45”. I guffaw! I don’t think I’ve ever “guffawed”, but it was a natural thing and the situation warranted a hearty guffaw. I say no no, I didn’t want to buy the bike, I wanted to rent it. He pretends that he misunderstood and that we meant that we wanted to rent a 4x4, gesturing to the busted Suzuki standing off to the right. I re-iterate that we want Vespas, and the price is $20. He agrees. Problem is, there only seems to be one Vespa. Mattie wants to rent the newish looking 125cc, but they say no because it doesn’t have any registration tags (we can’t tell the difference). Meanwhile, one guy gets on the Vespa and drives off. I ask what that’s all about and the other guy says he’s going to fetch another scooter, just wait.
Guy comes back with a scrambler instead. Mattie approves.
Annelie produces the international driving licenses (we went through HELL to organise these, so it’s about time we really use them. Thanks mom :) xx) and fills in what looks like a contract form. All the dates are from 2007, and there are a few rather interesting clauses in there which my wife changes and alters with impunity.
In the meantime, the Vespa dude and I head over the busy main road to the dusty parking lot on the other side for a tutorial.
Anecdote: I’ve never driven (ridden??) a Vespa before. And they seem to come in manual transmission only.
For the uninitiated (like myself), here’s the layout:
Left lever on left handle (what should be a brake lever on a bicycle) is the clutch
The left throttle is marked off from 1 -4 with a little dot marked as neutral
The right handle bar has the throttle and front brake (front brake doesn’t work on this, er, “particular model”... this is not by design...)
On the deck of the scooter, by your right foot is a brake pedal (which works. Which is nice.)
The heads up panel has a speedometer and a fuel gauge (which I later discovered doesn’t work either. And then all of a sudden, it does, and it indicates that it’s Tuesday. Which it wasn’t. Not very helpful for a fuel gauge.)
The rest of the body (including that of my own) was in remarkably good shape (that’s cus I work out)
So the action would be to step on the brake, clutch-and-twist into “dot” and kick start this piggy (the “start” button didn’t work. Just like on a Windows PC). I follow these instructions. I fail horribly, as the Vespa shoots forward. I guess I didn’t have it in neutral. Try again, and again, finally manage to start the damn thing! W00t!
Now what? Ok, clutch-and-twist to “1”, slowly release clutch and throttle slowly. I clutch and twist and nearly rip my head of as the little pocket rocket jumps forward before stalling. Twist-and-dot, kick start, twist-and-turn-to-DOT and kick start, try again (this is looking bad) and third time lucky. Ok, twist-and-1st, pole-pole, POLE-POLE!... haha! We have movement! Very jerkily, the rental and I shoot off into the park lot, legs spread eagle and what must have been a really surprised look on my face. I regain my composure and put my legs into a seated position. Dude, I’m like totally riding a Vespa... so, how do I stop again?? Try the right brake, no dice. Thought I’d try it again just to be sure. Didn’t work the second time either. Step on the brake, bad idea, I’m still in 1st. Bike sputters and bitches to a stall. At this stage, most of the parking lot was my own, since every pedestrian in a 50 meter radius wisely left the area. That list includes my instructor.
Twist-and-dot, kick that piggy, starts! Twist-and-one, pole-pole, gas the throttle, jerk forward (but less so), head off back to the instructor spread eagle legs finding a home on the floor board. Clutch in slowly, pull front brake (old habits die hard), forget that, step on the brake pedal, come to a stop... eventually. That concludes today’s tutorial.
Yikes.
Now it’s my turn to drive over the busy main road, cars and bikes flicking this way and that. I wish I could say I did so gracefully, but I do eventually pluck up enough courage to make it across. (why did the chicken cross the road?)
There’s a gas station right here and Mattie is already busy filling up the monster scrambler. I go over to Annelie to sign the form, hand over $20 deposit per bike (down from $100 per bike. Never try to out negotiate my wife) and we get a helmet for her. Which I believe is the same kind used for horse riding. My own helmet is the instructors’, and it’s not in any better shape.
Back to the fuel station and the Vespa (who I have now christened “Betty”) is good to go. The instructor asks me when will I bring it back. I reply casually tomorrow morning, 10:00 (it was about 09:45, and we have the bikes for 24 hours). He gets a look on his face of a man that’s walking home tonight. Something fell neatly into place at this point: this wasn’t a rental company. These where these guys very own personal modes of transportation. HA! That’s probably why they wouldn’t let us rent the new 125cc, since it’s owner probably didn’t want some knuckle head tourist trashing his pride and joy. Heh heh heh.
So now comes the hard part: where the hell was our hotel?? Annelie jumps on the back and I realise that I struggle to keep myself upright on this thing, never mind a passenger. She asks if I’m ok and I reply in all the macho I can muster “of course, woman!”. Twist-and-sot, kick, start, pole-pole, really pole-pole as the scrambler and Vespa meanders into the tight alleys and corridors of Stone Town, honking at pedestrians and other Vespas as we go. We get horribly lost and hit at least one dead end but we kind of make it there. By this stage I’ve got the clutch control kind of down. Early morning but it’s already sweltering! We go upstairs and grab our stuff, but not before spending 10 minutes under the sweet aircon in the room. Back downstairs, Marietta is not impressed. It takes some convincing to get her onto the scrambler, but Mattie eventually manages.
I locked the Vespa when I parked it and can’t get it unlocked! After struggling for about 2 minutes the hotel manger (who was standing outside with an amused look on his face) comes over and offers some help. He removes the key from the storage box in the front and places it into the ignition, switches it on and unlocks the steering.
Doh.
He asks us with a worried look if we have international driving licenses. We reply of course we do! We’re men! I think he was really concerned we won’t be back to pay for our rooms.
Twist-and-dot, kick, jump forward, damnit, twist-and-DOTDamnYou, kick, start, horse riding helmet on and I ease Betty into 1st. No sweat. Only, I was.
Back into the busy, dark corridors and alleys, wires sticking out overhead, trash in corners. Turn into another dead end, lot’s of Muslim men screaming at us (oops), twist-and-dot, reverse (I make little “beep-beeep-beeep”-ing sounds in my head), double back and head down another street, honk honk! Crazy white boys with bikes coming down the road, get out of the way! We come across a market that reeks of fish guts, spot a 1.5 meter reef shark lying on the pavement (charming), inch our way through traffic (people, carts, Vespas mostly). Then the Vespa dies. Twist-and-dot, kick. Nada. Kick. Nothing. KIIIIICK... dead. Crap. People everywhere looking at us, scrambler idling behind me. KICK!!!
Mmmm, now what? Put the bike on the kick stand and try a few more time. A local finally releases me from my limbo and offers help. Takes the key, opens the seat compartment, checks if there’s fuel in the bike. He is genuinely surprised to find the tank full. He seems to approve. He gets on the bike, takes it off the kickstand and leans is all the way left. Then all the way right, and left again. Aaaaah. “I’ve flooded it, haven’t I?”. Man nods. Kicks, sputters, kicks again and Betty springs back to life. Betty chugs out a ton of smoke. I thank the stranger, in the most macho way I can. Recompose, no pressure, I now have to pull away without stalling in from of everyone. I do so beautifully. Well, it was very beautiful in my head.
On with the show! We eventually reach the main road where we “rented” the bikes. That map Annelie and I bought a few days ago comes in handy since Mattie’s GPS seems to be useless in this place. We agreed that we want to take the road south to Kizimkazi, head up the east coast and cut back through the middle to Stone Town. Speaking to a rental guy yesterday he reckoned it would take all day to do the whole island, so we’re only doing half. We want to also check out the resorts down there to determine which one we’ll move to tomorrow.
Back into this mad traffic, Annelie repeating “oh shit, oh shit, oh shit” like some sacred mantra in my ears. Betty roars onto the madness and I even indicate “left” as I turn “left” into the junction that should bring us to the southern road. At this stage, I’ve even discovered 2nd gear and we manage a whopping 40 km/h. We make a wrong turn and stop, inspect the map. A local asks us where we wanna be, we say south, he says we must head the other direction and hands us his business card for tours. It’s during this turn around action that we lose Mattie and Marietta somewhere. We decide to carry on, maybe they’re ahead of us (they weren’t, we later realised). I was also seriously getting the hang of this and kick it into 3rd gear. Still going 40 though, traffic is thick, but Betty sounds more content in 3rd. Before long we clear the city and head into the centre of the island. Very beautiful here, lots of trees line the streets. We pass a few farms and forests, the National park on the island (LOTS of colobus monkeys), a Butterfly farm where we stop to ask for directions and many lush, almost overgrown pastures. The landscape changes to predominantly palm and banana trees as we approach the ocean.
We have to go off road just a bit to reach our first stop, Karamba. Betty doesn’t do off-road, and she almost kicks out from under us. Pole-Pole. Very nice place, it has its own private beach, big bar area, hammocks in the trees and (I’m getting tired of mentioning this) turquoise, clear-as-tap-water ocean lapping gently on white sandy beach. PS: I say sand, but it’s of such a fine texture you could make baby powder from it.
Anecdote: yes, it’s good to be the king.
We ask about pricing and availability before heading off again. I’ve 1st down now and deftly swing Betty around and nurse her over the loose sand before collecting Annelie (who looks friggin’ ridiculous with the horse riding helmet).
Our next stop is a place called the Swahili beach resort. After shaking the papasi we picked up outside the gate we move to reception. Very nice, upper class joint, huge rooms with sea views, but no beach really as the water is high tide and breaks right onto the break wall in front of the hotel. Big pool though. We bargain down the prices of the various rooms, as we do. Hop on Betty onto the next place, La Madrugada Beach resort, owned and run by a very elderly looking Spaniard and his very young looking Taiwanese wife. Also a nice place, big pool, bar, aircon, etc. Price is right, since they “like South Africans”. We SMS Mattie with our location and agree to meet back a few km’s at a junction to our next pitstop, hopefully we can get some lunch too.
At the junction, in the searing heat I hop off the little Vespa that could and give Annelie a rundown of how to drive it. Being much shorter that I, she has a wonderfully difficult time kick starting the bike, even with all her weight on the lever. I step her trough the clutch-and-twist thing, the brake and so on, before kick starting it for her. Lots of false starts and she goes through the motions of learning the sweet spot for the clutch and getting the coordination down. I video the entire process, of course, in between laughter. Eventually she gets the bike going and I run next to her like a dad with his 5 year old daughter learning to ride her first bike. Now comes the hard part: stopping. She too pulls the right brake lever before remembering about the brake pedal and stops abruptly. Annelie laughs her ass off. Once she’s recovered we try again, I kick start the bike and she pulls off jerkily again and keeps going, screaming all the way (screams of joy, of course). I think she even managed 2nd gear. By this time Mattie joins us, Marietta clinging onto him for dear life. Apparently the scrambler keeps dying on them when they stop and won’t kick start again, so they were having a hard time. Now regrouped, we head off to another place, Coral Rock. The most fantastical view we’ve seen so far, Coral’s bar area is all open windows and see through plastic. Nothing but turquoise fills your peripheral, it’s like being at the IMAX. We stop and have some chow, King Fish, fresh and delicious! Wash it down with a Savannah (drinking and driving, tut tut). Mattie and co checks out the rooms, seems like they’re happy with the place and book in for tomorrow. We say we’ll keep looking.
PS: I’m very comfortable riding Betty by this stage and we hit 60 on average, with 80 on the long stretches. 80 Km/h seems to be the top end of Betty’s ability. The speedo is marked off to 120, but I think this is very generous. Maybe on the day she rolled out of the factory, on a 30 degree downhill slop, driven by a bulimic 40KG horse jockey, with a gentle 50 km/h backwind she may have managed that speed. I do manage to coax her to 87 at some stage, but downhill, and with a gentle backwind. It also dawned on me, sometime during the day, what will happen if we came off the bike? There is NO ONE around. And then I thought, what are my travel insurance details? Who do I phone? And did Mattie pack his Epipen, for in case he gets stung by a bee? (Answer: no).
I digress. After lunch we’re back on the bikes heading in separate directions. Annelie and I check out one more fancy 5 star hotel, don’t even remember the name but it was fully booked anyways. Full of pensioners and young kids, meh. Our last attempt to view more resorts hits a brick wall, literally. The road on our map is cut off by a very high, very unpleasant looking fortification. We are forced to turn around and double back, to the main road. We try and get to more resorts but eventually end up at the gates of a very large private residence. It’s getting late and we still need to ride all the way back to Stone Town so we go for it. We need to cut through forest and little houses to get back to road, lots of little dead ends too (I ask Annelie more than once “where the fuck are we??”).
Betty doesn’t DO OFFROAD!
I nurse the protesting Vespa back to glorious asphalt and we head north a bit before cutting west across the middle of the island. Very scenic drive again, lots of trees and green to enjoy. Pass a few traffic stops, smile and wave. We fill the petrol tank with another litre of gas, just to be safe (fuel gauge reckons it’s 15 minutes past Winchester cheese).
A few kilos out of town I stop the bike and hand it over to Annelie. We go through the motions again, laughing our asses off. She eventually kinda gets the hang of clutch again and I hop on the back. What’s the worst that can happen? She JERKS us into motion, hesitates half a second and gives it horns! Away we go, into 2nd and even 3rd gear. Annelie squeals in delight! I hang on for dear life. Once I relax a bit, and get blood running back to my hands I get the camera out and snap some pics and video. Pretty cool :)
Once the traffic starts to thicken again as we reach town we swop since I’m more comfortable with both traffic (cycling in London is hectic!) and with handling Betty. We get lost and have to ask for directions a few times but we reach a road that looks familiar. I comment that this is the road with the taxi ranks. I didn’t want to drive the road with the taxi ranks. And whad’ya know, here’s the gas station and the spot where we rented the bikes! The scrambler is there already and we ease Betty into the spot next to it. It was a sad goodbye, I really enjoyed that. We hand over the keys and receive our $20 deposit. It’s almost sunset so we make our way to Mercury’s to enjoy it. Breath taking yellows and reds splash the entire landscape of clear water and boats. After the show we head back to the hotel for some brandewyn and coke (we have a fridge in the room, awesomeness). Meet up with Marietta and Mattie and head back down to Mercury’s for dinner at around 19:00. Had the baked onion soup (onion sound, covered with bread and cheese and grilled) and more King fish (not as nice as Coral Rock).
After dinner Annelie and I head to Livingstone’s for some drinks. They have a live band here tonight and they’re very good. Lots of people around, everyone having a good time. And as luck would have it, Annelie runs into an old friend from her university days at Stellenbosch. They make chit chat and catch up, I can’t be asked and get another drink and observe the crowd. Lots of interesting characters out tonight. Lots of white, rhythm deprived tourists trying to dance to African music. Lots of Africans moving like jellyfish to the phat beats.
Tomorrow we need to pack up and head to another place. Annelie mentioned that since it was the weekend we should really try and find a more happening spot and that the south is too chilled. The north beaches are renowned for their wild beach parties. So that’s what we’ll do. Same game as before, we’ll park off with the huge bags at one place and she can go and find us lodgings.
Few more drinks later we stumble back to the Asmimi hotel, again through very dark and gloomy alley ways, shaking off papasi. We wake up the guard to open the door for us (some guard) and get to our room around 02:00.
It was a good day. I dream of Betty.
Highlights: Touring one half of Zanzibar!
Learning how to drive (ride?) a scooter
Wearing my Ray-bans, because catching a kamikaze bug at 80 km/h with your face isn’t as fun as it sounds.
[G & A], out
It’s always better when we’re together
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