Ukerewe Island

On my second weekend in Tanzania (seems so long ago now!), Megan was going to check out Ukerewe Island with her friend, Catherine.  They invited me to tag along.

Mwanza, where I am located, is a port city on Lake Victoria.  The Wikipedia link here.  Fishing is a major industry here.  Ukerewe is only 45km away from Mwanza.

Side note: People have been asking me about the weather.  I found this on Wikipedia.  The temperature doesn't stray far from 30 during the day and 20 at night.  EVERY. DAY.  EVERY. SINGLE. DAY.  Some days it feels warmer than others but it depends on if there is a breeze or clouds or it rains.  But essentially, it's hot - not as hot as I expected - but hot. 

We got up VERY early - 6am - after both Megan and I had about 3hrs sleep.  Catherine picked us up at 7am and off we went to the ferry terminal - which we thought was a long way away. Turns out it was only a 10min drive and we probably could have walked it!  We ended up at the terminal extremely early for the 9am ferry.  Oh well...time for Megan to nap and me to people watch.

All Aboard!

Megan hogging three sea

We purchased our tickets and they turned out to be for the 'first class' section or the upper deck.  Fancy us!

The ferry ride seemed interminable.  It was 3 hours long and it was the longest and loudest three hours of my life!  Megan took up the three seats behind Catherine and I and slept off the night before.  ;-)  I dozed on and off but couldn't really get comfortable.  The main problem was the TV that was playing at the loudest possible volume and it was playing the most god-awful movie - complete with screaming child track.  And every time I woke up to look out the window, there was a guy staring down at Megan and I - it was extremely unnerving!

A bajaj.  Interesting is all I will say. 

We finally made it to the island and we took a bajaj to our hotel, La Bima.

The 'front' of the hotel that faces the 'main' road.  Essential a hopping bar in the evening. 

My room which cost 10000tsh = $7 CDN

The hotel was quite nice and clean.  We stopped in to drop our stuff off and we needed some lunch. 

View of outside my room.  :-)

The outside foyer area.  

A dish of note in Tanzania is chipsy mayai -essentially fries cooked in with eggs in oil.  Surprisingly, I like it! And when it is the only option, I like it a lot! Thus sated, we headed for the town 'Info Centre.' Turns out it was right next door to the hotel!  And the guy who rented our bikes was the guy who took our lunch order.  Multi-talented!

Chipsy mayai

Here we were told we could rent bikes to tour the island.  Definitely could rent bikes - curiously, they only had three - lucky us - but no map.  Only a crude postcard, with red lines that represented 'roads' on the island.  Oh, this was going to be fun. 

See the green 'i'? - Ya, we didn't either. 

After we waited out the rain, we set off!

Transportation

Three white girls on bikes.  I felt a bit like a side-show - stares, even more than usual, kids flocking to the side of the road to see, chants of 'mzungo, mzungo.'  The occasional sweet sound of 'Shikamoo' - which means 'greetings of respect to an elder' from a child on the side.

  

Megan and some rice paddies

Catherine and I and some of our admirers. 

It really was quite stunning.  Very rural here.  Rice paddies, corn fields, banana groves, palm trees, livestock and sparse housing.  Lots of cows here and there and all very different looking from each other.  Not like the ones at home at all. Goats and chickens running amok as well. 

This tree was, um, interesting!

A Fork in the Road - we chose to the left. 

More rice paddies.

Some very cool boats in progress.

Wild life - a cow, some egrets and a marabou stork. 

The goal was to get to the top of the hill to get a shot of the whole island.  Well, we did get to the top of the hill, but then, what was on the other side, so we kept going.  The 'road' got narrower and bumpier and rockier and I wasn't about to go off-roading in a strange place with no map!  We stopped to rest and then turned down a lane because we could see the shore line.  Turns out we were about to get a lesson in Tanzanian Aquaculture and it was quite interesting.  

Couple of my favourite photos I have taken on the trip so far. 

We were greeted by a couple of gentlemen, whose names I've long since forgotten, and asked if we wanted to see their fish farm.  We said, why not!  One was a Pastor, who kept asking us our religion, and the other was the manager.  They farm tilapia and recently, catfish - I don't know why!

One Fish Pond

Megan checking out the fishes while the workers do whatever they are doing. 

They were then dredging one of the ponds to remove some unwanted fish, I think.  There were several kinds of fish in this one pond and I'm still unsure as to what they were doing but it was fun to watch the two guys with the net trying to corral them all!  We got to help 'rescue' some and some others were collected as 'bad' fish but I suspect they were to become dinner for them!

Unrolling the net

All stretched out.

Almost there.

Removing it all from the water

The spoils - which didn't look like much to me!

Fishy kissy

All smiles!

I was getting a shot of the heron in the background and I caught an escapee!

After all this excitement, we headed back into town to pay for our rental (3000tsh for 3hrs = $2) and grab some much needed refreshment.  

Relaxing with some Balimis on the patio

Catherine and I opted for BBQ - we were not disappointed! 

Megan's dinner - tilapia she said was amazing!

We opted for the early ferry home as we all had some things to attend to.  After a fight with the cab driver over our fare, Megan WINS again, we purchase our tickets and loaded on.  This ferry was slightly smaller than the previous one and it filled up fast - no hogging seats!  I was then tapped on the shoulder by a very nasty man saying I was in 'his' seat!  Turns out the tickets had numbers written on them - well, EVERYONE was in the wrong seat! If I moved, everyone would have to move!  And we tried to say so.  He persisted and eventually got the guy in charge to come and move me.  He could see that everyone was not in the 'correct' seat and got a couple people to change so I could move to make this guy happy - and then he didn't even sit in that seat most of the time! argh!

After that, is was smooth sailing and I even got up the courage to go out and take some photos.  Here are some more photos of the ride with captions.  This is a photo heavy blog post but it was a weekend in pictures more than anything else!

Take me home!

Our ride

All aboard!  -->

Rocky outcrop as we near Mwanza

Island in the distance

Fishing!

Large fish market to the other side.

The Beach Boys were in port

We live in this general direction as you head into port.  

These are Marabou Storks and are quite frankly, the most disgusting and fascinating bird I've ever seen.  Commonly, known as 'The Garbage Bird' you can find them anywhere there is a garbage pile pillaging for spoils.  And they are MASSIVE, easily half my height.  And so nasty but people stay out of their way

All in all a short but fun weekend that probably cost less than $50CDN all in with food and travel. Sweet!

Well, this is a very long post and I hope I haven't bored you all!

Kwa heri,
Shannon

P.S. I apologise for the formatting.  Blogger makes me stabby!  And I'm too tired to fight with it any more tonight!