End of season

The end of the tourist season on Mafia brings many things; much needed rain, we are getting daily downpours now, eagerly received as they cool the air, the humidity has been incredibly oppressive. Respite from the hordes, by this point you start to be 'a bit over people', their demands reasonable or otherwise taking precedence over your own. The chance in a few weeks to slob out occasionally in front of the box, have a lie in, read a book.

We've had some mixed feelings about this season, I would say around 98% of the guests have been lovely, or at least they have enjoyed themselves which is reward enough for us. Just a few have been awful, one particular group threatening to write up bad reviews on Trip Advisor if we didn't heavily discount or give them things for free, another recent group nicking everything that wasn't nailed down in their rooms, the theft of all our snorkeling equipment I could go on but frankly it's too depressing.............

One interesting bit of news was that the Ministry of Tourism and the Tanzanian Tourism Authority have decided that they need to come up with a new classification for Lodges such as ours. i.e lodges that are trying to run on sustainable grounds either environmentally or conservationally or with strong provable community links (or all of these). We have been asked to come up with suggestions for the classification system. Whether or not in the final analysis they will actually take anything we say into account remains to be seen - the more cynical might think 'ah ha so we would have been a 2 star under the existing system (no a/c, no tv, no business centre),therefore our licence fee was low, now they will bring in the 'eco' classification and suddenly we are a 5 star with a six figure licence fee to match' - i couldn't possibly comment, watch this space!!