Murphy”s law states” if something can go wrong, it will”.  An addition to this law reads” usually at the worst time”.

It was my very first time using the Airbnb site when  travelling solo. I chose this because it was the cheapest option ya I know that I am a cheapskate.

A week before the trip I got an email from my host giving me a briefing of my stay. Firstly, there is no reception, secondly he also doesn’t stay there and lastly, he gave me two codes, one to open the front door and the other to open the ladies bedroom which sleeps four.

After reading this email I went straight to the print icon  but then paused for a moment and asked myself “when am I gonna stop being old fashioned by carrying loose printed papers every time I travel, can’t I just store everything on my phone?”

The mouse was already on the print icon, so I clicked the icon anyway not knowing this would save my life.

The flight was extremely long, 18 hours from Johannesburg to Washington via Accra. And from Washington another 3 hours to Tampa, so you can imagine how exhausted I was.

Arriving in Tampa, I decided to have lunch at the airport so that when I get to the hostel I can just throw my luggage on the floor, take a very long hot shower and then jump into bed for nothing less than 8 hours of sleep.

So I got on to a bus from the airport to the hostel and what was nice about the bus is it had WiFi so I kept track of the route and realized that the bus stop is 3 blocks away from the hostel.

Walking out of the bus to the  blazing hot sun was finally a relief. Remember that I haven’t bathed for just over 24 hours, my carry-on bag is heavy and jet lag is killing me as well. You know the feeling that you get when you have to do the last squat of a set of 4 squats of 20 reps, that’s exactly how I felt. I only had 1 more push left in me.

So I put the bag down to take out my sunglasses and as I stood up, BOOM!  my phone fell and before I could pick it up, I knew it was over. And indeed the phone was dead.

What now? I only had 1 phone and no cash on me. I can’t request  uber to take me back to the airport and just go back home. I did not authorize my credit card for international use and I don’t have enough money on my debit card to buy a phone.

To add on my problems, this hostel is in the ghetto, there’s groups of guys in every third house whistling, greeting and blocking me as I walk to ask fro my  numbers.

Luckily when I got to the hostel, there was a guy checking out and he was kind enough to let me use his laptop to transfer funds. He then told me that this is not the safest neighborhood, I will be much safer in the house or in a car. You can imagine how nervous I was since I was the only guest in the hostel that night.

I rushed out to the nearest cellphone shop which was 2 blocks away but unfortunately they couldn’t fix my phone nor sell me a new phone since all their phones were sim locked. He offered to call a taxi for me so I can go to town.

The challenge was having to walk outside to the ATM, how am I gonna call 911 if I get taken like the movie taken? I guess that’s why we need to have faith, to give us hope that there is God who is always looking out for us. On that day, He was all that I had.

I managed to get an unlocked phone in town which was pricey. Then when I got to the hostel, BOOM! there’s no WiFi.

But then I had my global sim card and guess what? Yes, you guessed right, it had no data. I called customer service to recharge my account, guess again, my credit card declined. So now I only have my debit card, I can’t even view the balance and now I have to blindly use it to by data, I could be using my last penny you know.

It has been over 10 hours from the time I dropped the phone to now that I have a new phone that has data. I am all alone in the hostel and still nervous. All I want now is to talk to anyone from home, hopping they will reassure me that I will be fine.

I download WhatsApp but fail to login because I couldn’t receive the verification code.

After a series of misfortunes, I still managed to have lots of fun.

Moral of the story

I’ll leave that part to you, I honestly don’t know what to say or how I can advise you. Thinking about this experience still exhausts my soul.

Normally, it takes me more than two months to plan a single trip. From looking for special offers to familiarising myself with the place.

But I didn’t get a change to do  proper planning for Zanzibar because I went  there two weeks after my birthday trip to Portugal. And as you know, if you fail to plan then you plan to fail.

Since this was just a weekend trip to a resort in Jambiani, I thought that I had it all figured out.

Arriving to the hot and humid airport in Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania  was finally a relief. My beach vacation was long overdue. I had spent the previous year chasing snow from the Alps mountain in Munich, Germany all the way to Iceland and even had a white Christmas in New York.

The plan was to use a ferry from the mainland to Zanzibar, but couldn’t because there was not enough time to get to the harbour. The last ferry was departing in 30 minutes time. Blunder number 1, I didn’t check the ferry timetable.

Clever me opted for a flight, but when I got to the flight counters, I was told that all flights are fully booked due to a music festival that was to begin that night in Zanzibar. Blunder number 2, I didn’t check activities happening that weekend.

So my only option was to use a charter flight, I didn’t even know what a charter flight was, I had to google it on the spot, which was departing in the next 3 hours. I bought a return flight ticket from the one agency. He told me that he doesn’t have a speed point so I had to use cash.

As I was withdrawing from the machine, my friend and I kept debating on how much money we should withdraw, then suddenly a message popped on the screen saying my ATM card has been swallowed. Blunder number 3, I only had one card with me.

I honestly have no idea what I was going to do if I was travelling solo because when I called for assistance, I was told that they can only help me on Monday, while I had to fly back home on Sunday morning .Thank God for my friend who came to my rescue.

After buying the tickets, the agent told us to take a pic of the reference number and then off we went to terminal 2 to wait for the charter flight.

We were told that the flight was going to leave at 17:30, by the way it was my first time using a charter flight. So we sat down and waited.

At 17:35 some random guy came to me and asked ” are you waiting for the chatter flight? it’s gone. Look at the time now. These guys robbed us, they didn’t even give us flight tickets”.

My body just went cold, I looked at the reference that we were given and it was only for our Sunday morning flight. I was just speechless.

The guy sitting in front of us told us that we must relax, he uses the charter flight all the time. Apparently you don’t get a flight ticket for a charter flight, strange ne!

15 minutes later we were called by name class register format, a guy came to collect our luggage and the chatter flight was finally here. I walked out of the airport building to my worst nightmare. I had a serious phobia of small aircrafts. But there was no turning back, I had to conquer my fears.

Man, these flights just fly on top of people’s houses. I couldn’t even take selfies or look out the window, all I did was pray. The flight was a very long 15 minutes flight across the Indian ocean and the thought that I still have to use the same mode of transport on Sunday morning was killing me.

We landed safely; thank God ! Now our biggest challenge was to withdraw money for the taxi to the resort. Tanzanian shilling is a bit confusing, I still haven’t figured out how it works. I think the biggest challenge was, I use ZAR and they were telling me the price in USD and I had TZS notes and no internet connection to use the currency converter.

And to make matters worse, we didn’t even know how much we withdrew since we had no internet connection in Zanzibar. So we had to ask locals to help us. Only to realise that we wanted to give the taxi driver R4000. Insane, I know.

Waking up to such beauty made up for the chatter flight experience. The weather was just so perfectly warm. Reality matched the pictures I would see on the internet.

PEACE AND TRANQUILITY

Need I say MORE?

This was exactly the kind of a vacation I have been yearning for. Just to be away from all the city noise and get that inner peace.

SUN KISSED

RELAXATION

PURE PLEASURE

Guess who went snorkeling, me,  undoubtedly . This was more of a lip of faith because firstly, I’m not a good swimmer and secondly this is no swimming pool where you can stand on the floor.

But there was no ways I was gonna let my poor swimming skills hinder me from seeing the beauty of the underwater world.

So brave me decided to put on a life jacket and jump into the ocean. Well,  I used the swimming board as an extra safety measure. Boy it was fun.

Spent the evening watching the Maasai dance.

The Maasai tribe are a semi-nomadic African tribe mainly residing in Tanzania and Kenya. Very friendly people and extremely tall.

So I really enjoyed watching them dance and got a chance to mingle with them and bought a few souvenirs

And ended the night playing a game with the waiters, well my friend was playing and I was just watching.

My Maasai friend that I’m still in contact with.

Well that’s the beauty of travelling, making long lasting friendships that will last a lifetime. The sad part of it is, you might not meet your friends again.

What was supposed to be a trip to Rome ended up being a second visit to Barcelona. My last night in Iceland kinda made me change my plans. As I have mentioned on my post about Iceland that I was depressed by the darkness, I just wasn’t sure of what to expect in Rome. So I decided to play it safe call me a chicken it’s fine , and I went to Spain for the second time in 11 months.

I had so much fun during my first visit and couldn’t even do everything I had set on my itinerary. Barcelona has a lot to offer from hikes in the colorful Park Guell to the majestic Sagrada Famillia.

But since this was not a planned trip, I decided to do it like a local. I met up with a friend from Belgium who has been staying in Barcelona for some time and he took me to all the hidden gems.

I stayed at Kabul Hostel because it’s more central, just a walking distance to all the hot spots. And it’s just behind La Rambla street and a walking distance to the metro.

Started off the day by visiting the harbor

Then some beach time with local food inbetween

Feeding ducks in park Ciutadella 

Then finally…

  just a random city walk and I came across the Arc De Triomf which used to be the main access gate to Barcelona in the 1800

Everyone kept asking me “Are you out of your mind?  Why on earth would you wanna visit Iceland in winter?” Well, I do loose my mind here and there , but this time it wasn’t that.

The thought of seeing the Northern Lights just overcame all other aspects about the trip to Iceland and as you know that you can only see them during winter.

Landing in Iceland was a complete trauma for me. The time was 10am and it was completely dark outside. I had read from another blog that Iceland has short winter days,  but I just didn’t expect complete darkness. Don’t ask me what I was expecting lol.

The darkness kinda affected me throughout the trip. I’m normally that brave girl who likes living on the edge but this time it was different. I had an awesome time during the day,  or let me rather say while there was light.  When it becomes dark then I just wanna go back to the hostel and for the first time became homesick.

On the first day, I got to the hostel at 12 midday and there was light finally, though it was a cloudy day. That was more normal and the braveness kicked in.

So I left my luggage in the luggage room and walked down to Reykjavik to the meeting spot of the Free Walking Tour. It took me 30 minutes to get down to the city center and I really enjoyed the stroll down the quiet streets of Reykjavik.

The walking tour guide was very informative and showed us the historic buildings, told us about the vikings, answered our questions and even took us to the famous hot dog stand where people like President Clinton and the Kardashians have once tasted their tasty footlong hotdog. It’s the best hotdog I’ve tasted by far.

The following day I went to the Golden Circle tour which was pricey but worth every penny. By the way, Iceland is very expensive.I paid about R1300 for the tour. I should have hired a car apparently it’s cheaper.

The tour started at 8am and for the next 3 hours the tour guide kept on saying ” If it was summer you could be seeing 1,2,3…” You can imagine how bored I was.

When light finally appeared, it was as if I had entered a different planet. The natural beauty of Iceland is just so heavenly. Mountains on either side of the road covered by a blanket of snow. We were driving on the moon I tell you.

The good part about Iceland is that there are no entry fees to see the attractions. So booking the tour was enough.

In some places it was very slippery, it was as if I’m walking on the ice rink. Well my tour guide had spike shoes on, so he held me by hand. 2 or 3 people kept on falling.

When we got to the Geysir area, that whole area is full of smoke coming out of the ground as a result of hot water springs. Like one of the scenes of a scary movie.

Since my tour was 8 hours long, I decided to have lunch there. Bought french fries, 3 fish fingers and coffee for R250. I could buy the same meal in my country with less than R50. Well like I said, Iceland is very expensive.

The tour guide told us that predictions of Arora activity are looking very good and read 6 on the scale. Cloud coverage was a bit of an issue since we needed a clear sky to see the Northern Lights.

That didn’t stop me from booking the Northern Lights tour that evening. They fetched me from my hostel at 20:30 and we drove out of the city.

Took out our tripods, smartphones and cameras and waited in the cold  to see the Northern Lights. An hour passed and there were no lights, instead the clouds covered the sky and by that time I had frozen. So I went inside the bus because I could not take the cold any longer.

The tour guide offered me a blanket and that really helped. He also mentioned that the lights are most likely to be seen around 22:30 to 23:00.

Around that time, in a small gap between the clouds appeared a green light and everybody screamed.

Shortly after that, we started to see bits and bits in different directions. Then finally God answered my prayers, clouds moved and the Northern Lights just filled the sky.

I was so excited, wiping my tears as I set up my tripod again to takes pics and some videos. In the midst of that excitement then boom, my memory is full.

Quickly deleted all those stupid watsapp videos and took more pics. That was not just a bucket-unlist moment, but more of a dream coming true. Moral of that story is always check the memory of your photo taking device.

The plan for the last day was to visit the blue lagoon. But the tickets during day light were fully booked. So after arguing with myself for a long time I decide that it was not worth to pay over R2000 to go to the blue lagoon and not see a thing.

Instead I went to the local swimming pool. On my way I got lost and went into a random shop to ask for directions.

Luckily, the one guy in the shop said that he’s also on his way there, so we can walk together. He went into his car and grabbed his backpack and walked away without locking the car.

I was so shocked, and he went on telling me how safe Iceland is with a crime rate of zero percent. Come to think of it, the guide from the free walking tour did mention that Iceland is safe when he showed  us a building which used to be a prison but was now has been abandoned since there were not so many law breakers.

Before you enter the swimming pool you must shower naked since it’s a geothermal pool and they would like to keep it as clean as possible.

There are 4 pools with different temperatures and depths. I first went into the 38 degrees pool then moved over to the 40 degrees pool where I spent the next 2 hours chatting to a local.

He insisted that I take a walk and get lost in the streets of Reykjavik.

So as I walked out of the pool, ready for the adventure, then he shouted “drink water because the pool dehydrates you.”

I had a glass of water and then went on to take a shower. As I stepped inside the shower room, I got so dizzy that I almost fainted. I drank more water and chilled a bit. Little did I know that I was supposed to constantly hydrate myself while siting in the pool. Well, that’s another lesson learnt.

Apart from the darkness, I really enjoyed my visit to Iceland, though I don’t think I’ll  go there in winter again. It felt as if I’m in prison, a very dark one, or probably down a hole.

Nonetheless, I’m looking forward to visiting Iceland in summer to see how green it gets and do all the other things I couldn’t do in winter.

Apparently, they have longer days, meaning minimum darkness.I wonder how do they sleep.