Travels in Tanzania

How to Cure a Haunted Hotel

19 341 feet: Kilimanjaro Part VII

When I was twelve, The Shining scared the shit out of me. The haunted emptiness of an abandoned hotel was just so perfectly spooky.

We are the only guests at Marangu Hotel.

Penford, our driver, takes Claire, my cousin Stan, and I through the hotel gates on an overcast morning. We have just passed through Moshi, a town full of hot orange dust. The cool mountain air of Marangu is a welcome luxury to our lungs.

Each room at the Marangu Hotel is nestled in its own tan and red-roofed house. Stone pathways, lined with African violets and weeping bottlebrush trees, connect the structures like old village roads. Luca and Amy, the caretakers of the hotel, are wonderful and welcoming, but their abundant hospitality can’t dispel the ominous feeling of wandering through an abandoned hotel.

It’s the empty chairs. There are dozens of chairs set out on the lawns, chairs lining the swimming pool, chairs in the Hemingway Bar, chairs outside of every room. Each vacant seat betrays a scotched hope. Marangu Hotel is like an old throne in the rainforest, marking time before the foliage swallows it whole.

Luca assures us that have arrived at an unusual time. “Two weeks ago, there were eighty climbers here. You are lucky. You have it all to yourselves.”

The filthy rich of this world pay for this sort of exclusivity. They rent out every room in a resort just so they won’t be disturbed as they sip gin & tonics and play croquet under the wild date palms. We are stepping in to richer, rarified air. We should be thrilled.

I want to stay awake, to acclimatize, but jetlag keeps closing my eyes. Claire and I excuse ourselves for a nap under our bed’s mosquito netting. The next time I open my eyes, the daylight has left our windows.

Claire and I strap on our headlamps. Electricity is unreliable in this part of the country, and Marangu Hotel has been plunged into darkness. The grounds are huge, but if we are determined to walk until we stumble upon our dinner, or at least until we stumble upon someone who knows where our dinner is.

We step out of our room, lock the door with our giant metal key, and start down a stone pathway. That is when we see him.

A Tanzanian man is striding across the lawn, almost at a run, but now he sees us and stops. He doesn’t say a word. He is wide eyed, searching us over with a flashlight as menacing as a billy-club. I can’t tell if he is surprised, afraid, angry, or bewildered.

Claire and I are frozen. I’m about to wave and say ‘Jambo’ — Swahili for hello — when the man abruptly resumes his maddened march across the grass. It’s unkind to say, but it felt like an animal encounter, like we’d brushed up against a beast stalking the hotel grounds. Like tigers meeting in the jungle, stopping to investigate, and then both dissolving back into the vegetation.

My cousin Stan, the photographer/videographer/content creator who invited us to climb this mountain, joins us on the path.

“Did you see that creepy guy?”

“He was very creepy,” Claire agrees.

“That was like a scene from ‘Get Out’,” Stan says.

I have to believe there is a logical explanation. Luca or Amy will surely tell us that this man is a security guard, or a gardener, or perhaps an unexpected guest. But wouldn’t it be entirely horrifying if we ask our hosts about the man we saw roaming the grounds, and they say: “What man? The three of you are the only people at this hotel.”

This dining room is large and beautiful, with big bay windows overlooking the garden, an old fireplace, and an old bookshelf. In my mind’s eye, I can see a crowd of returned climbers, drinking celebratory scotch around a fire, reciting their own harrowing adventurers to one another. Tonight it is Stan, Claire, and I, sitting down to an unexpected four-course meal. We are served by the lovely Rita, who brings our plates and then stands in silence thirty feet away, holding a water jug in case one of us sips our glass below a third full. I hate being so steadfastly waited on, but it would be incredibly rude to serve myself in this situation. I won’t make Rita feel obsolete.

It is quiet. Every clank of a fork against a plate reminds us we are alone. We are whispering our dinner conversation for no particular reason, other than a desire to fit in with the scenery. It feels like Jurassic Park — an exotic facility designed for hundreds, but something is terribly wrong. No Tyrannosaurus yet, not even so much as a big iguana, but give it time.

We are somewhere in the second course — samosas, damn good ones too — when I feel a disturbance in my belly. I know it’s a fart — I just don’t know how long, or loud, or foul a fart it might be. It is often unwise to have faith in a fart in Africa, but in the last forty-eight hours all I’ve eaten is airplane food. Surely that uninspired frittata I had at 30 000 feet can’t cause too much trouble.

I trust the fart.

. . .

I have never brought a conversation to a grinding halt with flatulence before. It was seven seconds long, and if I thought the clank of cutlery had a loud echo, the reverberation of this disgraceful trouser trumpet might as well have been an atom bomb.

My dinner guests pretend to be mortified, but they can’t keep their faces straight. In an instant, Claire and Stan are laughing. I am laughing. Even Rita, patiently waiting on us from a safe distance, can’t help but cover her mouth and titter. I have no defense for my actions. I can only summarize.

“Africa farts.”

While admittedly nauseous and untoward, I believe my seven-second stinker served a purpose. Nothing cuts tension quite like a fart. For the rest of the evening, Marangu Hotel was no longer reminiscent of The Shining, or Get Out, or even Jurassic Park. Against all odds, my bottom burp has christened this hotel. Its sweeping empty spaces are now just a little bit warmer.

If you’re ever staying in a hotel that makes your hair stand on end, I implore you: let your cheeks have a squeak. You’ll suddenly feel right at home.

Catch the latest in my Kilimanjaro series here: