Hakuna Matata. Part 5. Monkeys and other animals. Paje and surroundings
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4 days. March 3
From the very morning we discovered a big plus of our guesthouse - they were well fed here. Breakfast did not differ in a special variety - fruits, pancakes or eggs, coffee, juice. But it was all very tasty. Respect to the chef!
After having a delicious breakfast at the guesthouse, we set off for the Jozani Forest. Kirk's Red Colobus monkeys live in this forest. These are local endemics, they are very cute, like cats)
I've marked the map so I won't get lost. Thanks to this label. . . we got lost)
We drove along good roads for a very long time, then turned onto a strange dirt road, which was poured right into the field, then drove into the forest, drove through some village, where all the locals looked at us even more eloquently than the night before I was watched by the guests of our guest house. They literally screamed with their eyes - where are you going?
Husband doubted:
Are we sure we're going to some popular place? The road does not hint at this at all.
- Exactly, exactly! Here is the label!
About 7 kilometers before the mark, when the forest road became impassable, and I began to think that we didn’t have enough water with us, I googled “Jozani Forest, red colobuses” and Google gave a completely different mark, next to the main road, near Paje.
- Damn! Let's turn around!
The natives in the forest village sighed with relief after us)
There are many cars on the access road to the forest. Yes, you can already see that the place is popular. By the way, in that real, forest thicket, we did not meet monkeys, except for one that crosses the road with its tail up with its antenna, far ahead)
Jozani Forest
We park in a picturesque clearing, look around and buy tickets with a tour. Just wandering around is not recommended - besides Colobus, other, less cute monkeys live here (although I know one who wandered without a guide and came out alive). We fall into the group of "slow walkers" - one family has a child of two years old, the second has a child of six years old, but the mother is heavily pregnant. Well, my husband and I are also not very frisky)
The guide leads along baited paths, shows Colobus and not only, both in front and in profile. . .
. . . sleeping and not so. . .
. . . up close and far away.
The sun is already high. We do not just walk through the forest, but often go out into open places, and soon we begin to smoke from the sun.
The guide finds a wonderful animal.
- Nobody wants to take it in hand? Look how cute she is!
This is an African giant centipede, the centipede's cousin, or second cousin, and it doesn't even look like a caterpillar, but people shy away from the cutie.
The centipede looks at me with sad eyes.
Come to me, my sweet! )
She has soft paws (400 pieces), she gently touches them and scares all my fellow travelers.
- Don't you dare touch me now, the husband whispers loudly.
The poison of the giant centipede is not dangerous for humans, but it is better not to climb into the mouth and eyes after communicating with it.
The guide at the end of the tour decided to joke, I guess. He leads us to an anthill, tells us that such ants are very dangerous and takes us out of there with some kind of chigirs, where we are attacked by... ants. I'm in trousers, they get under my trousers and gnaw at my knees. I get angry, I rub my knees with force to crush them and think with horror where I can take off my trousers so that these bastards do not climb higher. In general, the situation - you laugh. The husband is tired, wet, angry, bitten by ants, does not want to continue the tour, especially since the continuation is in the mangrove forest, and we have already seen the mangroves. So we're leaving.
On the way, the ants are atrocious in the man's sandals, biting him painfully. He yells, stops the car abruptly, right next to the police, and starts shaking out of his shoes. Then I jump out, with a rescue mission. The police officers were a little dumbfounded) We quickly dispersed the ants, my husband put on his shoes, and we left. And they are still standing there with their mouths open. We jumped out and jumped in so quickly that it looked like a raid)
Let's head to the cave, on the way we stop in Paje for a bite to eat.
The cafe is right on the road, there are a lot of visitors, the prices are indecent. We sit down at a table, the husband asks to bring the menu. The girl looks at us for a second, then brings... a huge board on which the menu is written) The husband jumped up from his chair, he became so uncomfortable)
We order a soup with seafood and a salad, they cook for an awfully long time. Before I went to Zanzibar, I read that it takes a long time to wait for an order, so we sit quietly and wait.
They bring soup, we are immediately attacked by flies. Just a swarm of flies! You have never seen so many flies! They obviously flocked from all over Paje to the smell of this soup. At first we decided that this place next to the kitchen attracted them. Moved. The flies followed us. We try to brush it off and then the waitress comes and starts fanning us with a towel! )
The situation is unreal. The soup is very tasty, but the black (god forbid) girl fanning us with a “fan” is incredibly embarrassing for us. Such a reference to slavery. We ask her to stop. She moves to the next table because the flies have already moved there. We have never had such an adventure before! )
Having fought off the flies, we go to the cave.
The entrance is not cheap, the toilet is lousy. The husband is shocked by the prices, I am shocked by the type of toilet) Really - a bucket of water and a ladle for draining. We saw this in Indonesia. But in Indonesia, everything is much cleaner. In general, I was in shock, until I was impatient in the Butsky Canyon, in my homeland. And everything was taken away by hand)
We go down into the cave. The descent is very steep, the steps are stone, wet, uneven, nervous. Below is a large fresh lake. Stuffy. Here the husband begins to whine that he is not in those shorts to swim, besides, breaking his spine is a piece of cake here (and he already has experience), and retreats upstairs. With him retreats and our escort. Weaklings! ))
And I'm not so easy to intimidate! I go down to the water, undress, leave sports sandals on my feet. I have slippers for swimming, but it seems to me that I would not go down the stones in them. In general, I didn’t take them with me, but I didn’t want to return to the car. Sports sandals for swimming, where it is scary to step on a stone, are very good, I have tested it more than once.
But I still can't figure out where the convenient descent into the water is. I hear Russian speech, I speak loudly, in Russian, to everyone, at once:
Who knows how to get down here?
With the help of hints, I descend and swim. The water is great! Clean, cool! But there are stones in the water and I get stuck in one place, afraid to swim further. Through the water, the stones seem larger, closer, it seems that now you can drive through the belly. And then the Poles turn out to be next to me, a woman literally drags me by the hand through a dangerous place. Beyond is a large deep lake. It's such a pleasure to swim there! After swimming enough and talking in Russian-Ukrainian-Polish, warmly thanking my savior, I climb out to the top. I would still swim, but I worry about my husband being alone.
I go out, he is sitting, bored. “My” Poles follow me, their group of 6 people, they immediately sit in a circle, waiting for entertainment.
I also read that cool guys here sing great songs and are in no hurry to leave.
Shortly a small concert starts.
We really enjoyed it. So relaxed and cool! But briefly) Maybe the concert would have lasted longer, but one of the Poles notices a snake in the straw, under the roof, above us.
I would never have noticed it, it looked like a thin blue wire.
The snake was very long. She crawled and crawled, now disappearing in the straw, then reappearing.
We got up to shoot it and then the guys who sang noticed all this. A commotion began, one of the guys took a stone and threw it hard at the snake. Missed. The stone bounced off and hit this Pole right in the foot.
I asked one of the workers, who looked phlegmatically at what was happening:
Is the snake poisonous?
Yes! Very much!
- Husband, it's time for us to go home!
Now I'm afraid of thatched sheds. Until the end of the trip, she was shaking, looking for snakes with her eyes. Brrr…
By the way, my husband didn't like Zanzibar. Dirty, intrusive, ebbs, flies, ants... But he liked the snake very much! ))
When we returned home, we found a fisherman and a fish) Tonight's dinner will be great! And, indeed, dinner in our guesthouse was even tastier than breakfast) If you are in Paje, you should come here for dinner. But they go to bed early, this should be taken into account.
Dinner will be in the evening, but while the husband was in the room, he was already breaking.
And I went to the beach. The sea had not yet come, it was just in that great mood when it was still possible to swim.
But shallow.
I suspect that there is always either shallow or waves. Because even when it's shallow, there are waves. After all, there is a constant wind.
But kiters!
Cows are even cooler than kiters. They walk slowly along the beach, add color.
Where their cakes are and what they eat remains a mystery.
The color of the water in Paj is absolutely incredible, even compared to the improbability of all Zanzibar water. She is green! And this green is not swamp, and not the green of leaves, but the green of bright, transparent, green glass.
I settled under a concrete wall and ran to swim. I just didn’t dare to throw a backpack, I tamed it to two girls who also rested there.
I talked to them later - they live in Nungwi, but they came here for one day. They really like it. And I don't like it. I miss Kizimkazi, it was possible to swim there, but not to splash around in shallow water.
The Masai walk and walk. And you want to send them. But they smile, and you smile back) And then you send it anyway, because it’s unbearable... you send it gently, delicately and affectionately) But they are very annoying! And this is the main reason why my husband did not like it in Zanzibar - there are Zanzibaris) Therefore, you can’t walk on the beach for a long time. But I'm patient, I walked until my heels began to lick the tide. The girls swam for a long time, I could not just leave, I stood looking out until they paid attention to me. I waved to them that I was leaving, they waved back. I wouldn't leave things there like that. The country is poor. And the tide was already such that things lay on the wall. And there are a lot of people walking back and forth, it doesn’t cost anything to grab a backpack. In general, I left, worrying about their things)
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