From Heathrow to Honeymoon

Both still dazed by the events of the last 72 hours, having to pack for a ten day honeymoon was even more arduous that it would normally be. The task was further complicated by my reluctance to even get out of bed! Pippa did her best to encourage me to at least have some verbal input into the suitcase loading, unfortunatley her usual powers of persuasion were at an all time low, which was not good only having been married for some 48 hours.

Eventually even I realised that I would have to at least lift my head from the pillow to get to Zanzibar.

John, my new father-in-law, arrived at the arranged time, ready to taxi his new family to Heathrow Airport. Pippa's initial enthusiasm for packing was now beginning to wane, even though we were sharing the task, after all I had just carefully written both luggage tags. Running through our travel checklist of tickets, money, hotel vouchers, keys etc we reached the point that I am sure many couples reach when preparing for a trip "If we haven't got it, we'll go without". What Pippa really meant was 'If we haven't got it, we'll buy two or three more to replace it when we get there...."

The cases were loaded into the leviathan 4x4 and we were on our way to Heathrow, only the M1 contra-flow and M25 bank-holiday traffic now stood in our way.

Arriving at the airport four hours before departure is quite a novel experience for us, as in the past, last minute check-in has been our motto, just leaving enough time for a swift vodka before boarding. However, increased security at Heathrow following the recent averted terrorist attack on US bound flights was abundantly obvious. With more guns on display than a John Wayne shoot-out, the police presence was haevy and almost intimidating. As we queued for check-in we discussed the security measures and Pippa said how difficult it would be "to get a bomb through this lot..." at this moment, I had visions of Pippa being snatched from the crowd and pinned down and searched at gunpoint..... in fact nothing happened, but I did ask her not to use the 'B' word again.

However, after check-in and whilst waiting to pass through security, Pippa was singled out by a female security guard and whisked away to a cubicle.

I had feared that hyper-sensitive microphones had been placed around the check-in area and Pippa's ill-chosen words of earlier had come back to haunt her. But, Pippa with a big smile on her face, marched obiedently off to a cubicle as if looking forward to a mini-adventure. Whilst I waited in a snail-like queue following everyone removing belts, shoes, nasal hair etc, Pippa received a full body X-ray and was provided a short-cut through the rest of the security checks.

Once through the security screening, we now needed to occupy the next two and a half hours before boarding our first plane of the journey.

Pippa had the forethought to pre-book us into the Holodeck lounge, where we could kick back and relax before our marathon journey to Africe. With complimentary drinks, snacks, papers and TV, the time was soon to pass and the long awaited "BOARDING GATE 11" appeared for the flight bound for Nairobi.

To describe a 4250 mile trip on a Boeing 777-200 is both pointless and boring, suffice to say movie, meal, drink, suduku, sleep, movie, land.

6am at Nairobi airport, 3 hours to wait, I could picture a thousand other places I would rather be, however, here is where we were and it was a neccessary juncture en-route to our dream honeymoon.

Duty-free shops the world over over, sell the same trash, just in different currencies. Why anyone arriving or departing from nairobi airport needs a suitcased-sized bag of Toblerone is beyond me. What felt like days, marching from end to end of the terminal building was in fact only a couple of hours. Our departure gate expedition ended in the Java cafe, where we both fell asleep over a cappucino.

Finally, the flight to Zanzibar was announced, 30 minutes ahead of schedue, whihc was most welcomed. We had now started to wake from our zombie-like state as we realised we were on the last leg of the journey to our honeymoon hideaway.

The travellers constant fear with any transit flight is the successful transfer of suitcases from one plane to another. However, the canny Kenyans have developped a fool-proof system to cope with such potential dilemas. They line up all the luggage on the runway, adjacent to the departing plane and ask boarding passengers to identify their own luggage whcih is then loaded, piece by piece.

The 85 minute hop in a turbo-prop ATR 72 was uneventful, with only the 18 page inflight magazine to pass the time. Precision Airlines obviously have little more than a word-processor, without spell-check, to produce their in-flight material.

As we started our descent into Zanzibar, various small island groups became visibile, so did the dark rain clouds that covered the sky like a black hessian duvet, keeping Zanzibar all snuggly but damp. We dismissed the slate grey clouds as a passing tropical storm, whihc it sort of turned out to be, it just took a bloody long time to pass.

The contrast in security between Heathrow and Zanzibar was incredible. I'm sure if we wanted to, we could have got off our plane, strolled to another and taken a quick trip aroun dthe island without anybody raising an eyebrow or missing the plane. Neither Pippa or myself hold any form of pilot's licence so this was not an option. As we left the aircraft, a few people said hello but gave no indication as to where to go, although there was only one large cow-shed type building to head for, so we followed the flock.

With no visibile passport control or security, we collected our bags and made the 30ft journey to the outside of the airport. The Kuoni luggage tages on our slightly battered new suitcases was the only indication the 'tip-hungry' smiling African cahppie needed to identify us as part of his 'group'.

"Welcome Zanzibar, you Hobbs Richmond?" we pointed out that we were the Hobbs party and we were asked to wait with our cases until he found the Richmonds. Rain is an absolute bummer at the best of times, but when it starts as you touch down on your honeymoon on a tropical island, its a real shit. However, Pippa's eternal optimisim shone through, after-all she married me!, so she really does look hard for the silver lining. The Richmonds arrived two minutes later, a late twenties couple, eminating from somewhere near Coronation Street, but with Brookside names, John and Stacey. We all followed the happy African cahppie to our 1980's 8 seater mini-bus, complete with ornate lace seat covers. The first of the dollar tips were handed out to those that carried the cases and a couple of tips for those that watched the cases being loaded.

We boarded the honeymoon shuttle bound for the North of the island, "Not long now darling, only another hour and we should be there" Pippa reassured me. The love-bus started its bumpy journey on unmade roads as it quickly left the miniscule airport. We were soon on a sort of tarmac surface with the odd roundabout style junction, but these were the only things we could call normal. The roads were lined with little more than shanti-huts which either served as a bicycle repair hut or fruit stall. The numerous bike huts were due to two very good reasons, thousands of bikes and crap roads. Other road traffic comprised of mopeds, ridden by an adult but with numerous children strapped or hanging on to anything they could. There were also local hop 'n' stoppers whcih were covered pick-up trucks, carrying upto twenty passengers or hangers-on, literally. We were'nt sure if it was a lack of road-sense , rules, driving licences or worries that contributed to the organised chaos on the roads around Stone Town, but it was a minor miracle that people weren't being killed by the minute in the cacophony of powered and non-powered moving objects on the road. Looking back, it was almost a precise choreographed vehicular dance, with each bike, pedestrian, cow and truck knowing when to swerve, stop and accelerate. What we didn't realise is that we were seeing was relative oppulence as the journey took us North into the more sparsely populated areas of the island.

The dwellings became more sparse in numbers and even more humble in construction. Open sewers at the roadside, which was also occupied by filthy malnourished chickens, tethered cattle and piles and piles of what can only be described as rubble.

In the UK you have cluster homes, terraces, semi's and detatched properties. In Zanzibar, a similar 'order of things' seems to exist; corrugated steel roofs affixed with nails appear to be better than those held down by rocks although much fewer in numbers. The basic cinder-block construction again was better than the sticks and mud version, however doors were noticeable by their absence. Doors by there very nature in Zanzibar are (1) somewhat supurfluous and (2) expensive and hence why over the centuries, the grandure of your front door indicated your wealth and standing in the community.

When you see poverty on the TV at home, you shrug your shoulders and think 'but what can I do about it...' but when poverty is ten feet away, mile after mile it is jaw-droppingly real and pangs of guilt regarding how much we had spent in the last four days on weddings & honeymoon haunt you. Yet in true western-world style, we self-justify by telling ourselves that our tourist dollars do help the local communicty in a small way. Pippa and I have both seen poverty in Rio and Jakarta respectively and now we saw this together. It became apparent that as with everything in life, poverty comes in degress of severity, these people were poor, dirty, with no running water and apalling living conditions but they had food but most of them smiled constantly. Poverty with food can be a life and evidently a life with relative happiness, however the smiling stops when the food is scarce, luckily Zanzibar was exhibiting happy poverty.

Just like in central London, where you have 'retail zones' for clothes, high fashion, jewellery etc, the road running from the airport to Nungwi was also zoned, there were meat areas, carpentry areas but everywhere small tables of fruit and veg could be seen. The pattern of shops and houses repeated themselves approximately every five to six miles, which identified a village, these villages were clearly punctuated with a msulim school or 'Skuli'.

School buildings with dirt paths, lined with dirt paths, lined with white rocks leading to single storey concrete buildings with no doors and only spaces where windows should be. From what we could see the school population was 90% female all immaculately dressed in identical uniforms, ankle length navy blue skirts and white wraps that covered from head to naval. It appeared to be lunchtime as literally hundreds of schoolchildren converged onto the roadside on a march to god-knows where, 'home for lunch?' maybe. Although traffic on the roads was relatively light, our minibus hurtling at 50kmph toward countless groups of schoolchildren gave no indication of slowing, although he did give the occasional 'toot' on his approach to single-track bridges. Amazingly after passing nearly a thousand children, we didn't even as much as clip one with a wing-mirror.

At a couple of points, midway up the island we did slow down for a very durimentary police check point, consisting of a swing gate across the road and a small hut by the roadside with a hand painted 'Polisi' sign. The purpose or function of these check-points was unclear (guidebooks indicate something regarding the prohibition of smuggling cloves from the south to the north of the island?) but they seemed to mark a move from the south of the island to the nort with a no-mans land in the middle.

About 8km south of Nungwi, our final destination, the poorly tarmacced road came to an end. It was to be replaced by a compounded dirt, lunar-style track. To avoid the largest of the pot-holes, the driver would snake the mini-bus from side to side trying to avoid the occasional on-coming traffic. The suspension on the bus showed bone-skaing signs of having travelled this road many times before and having been some time since calling into a Kwik-Fit for a check up.

The Wedding BBQ

Detail to follow

Getting Married Today !

Detail to follow...............