Nyumbani Hotel

My friend and I stayed at Nyumbani Hotel in Mwanza after a couple of weeks of heavy bus travel. It was like a dream.

(I laughed when I saw the logo, "they nyumbani of your dreams" but have now come to joke about how accurate that is). The rooms were very clean.

The showers were always hot, and the water pressure was very good.

We also had air conditioning. We stayed in a standard room, The staff were all very friendly and helpful, particularly the manager and the head chef.

We went for a walk to the New Mwanza Hotel and the Gold Crest Hotel just to check them out, and they were not as nice looking, yet a lot more expensive!

Some Other Hotels and Safari Lodges

Also, just outside of those two hotels is one of the worst places in the city for being hassled by touts. We much preferred the peace and convenience of being just two blocks down the road.

Also, we visited Tilapia for lunch and a meeting and had a very annoying encounter there.

In Mwanza, the taxis are not marked with a stripe as they are in Dar, so it is difficult to know for sure if you are going with a registered taxi or not.

After lunch, the person at the Tilapia's front desk told us that they don't even supply hotel taxis to their residents, just a hotel shuttle to the airport.

You are supposed to just use one of the random cars outside the gate.

I said, but how do we even know they are really taxis? And the person at the Tilapia's front desk replied with a shrug, yeah there is no way to tell.

Then someone there offered to help us by walking us to the gate and making sure we went with a taxi driver that he knew.

I asked him in Swahili as we approached the car, Ok, what is this driver's name? He looked at the driver and asked him his name in front of me.

Then he said, see his name is John. I said, yes, but you don't know him. Finally, he had to admit he didn't know him! Mwanza is not a city that is particularly geared for foreigners, but of all hotels, I was told Tilapia was good about that.

Unfortunately, this does not appear to be the case. Don't pay the extra money to stay there. We declined the ride and turned around and called our driver from Nyumbani who was there within 5 or 10 minutes. Save yourself a lot of headaches and stay at Nyumbani. It is cheaper AND nicer than nearby hotels!