Day 203: Pemba

We woke up not nearly as rested as we wanted to be, but then we were assured the buffet breakfast was included and we thought ok… maaaybe Russell’s Place isn’t so bad… Turned out, “included” meant that Yes, they could include it in our bill. Wasn’t that sweet of them? Andrew held his ground and we didn’t end up paying for the breakfast that almost (but not quite) made up for the smell of garbage all night.

We walked down to the beach, but it was too hot to stay out in the sun, let alone swim, so we played cards at a café there, and made our way back when the sun started going down. We had planned on staying at the lodge until two in the morning, but that was before we discovered Russell’s Place’s recommended taxi driver was going to charge us nearly four times the amount we paid during the day to drive us to the station at night. When one of the managers suggested we leave around eleven and go home with the wait-staff, we were told it would be free. We showed up to the bus “station” and crawled in between two other young men who were trying to sleep on the tarp covering the concrete stoop.

Again, around two thirty, we were able to board the bus before driving around town for two hours collecting passengers until it was over capacity and there was a sufficient amount of people standing in the aisle.