For the past five years, the exotic sounding Zanzibar and Mount Kiliminjaro, the highest mountain in Africa, have been top of my places to visit. Finally, on October 9th, I was beginning my 28 hour bus ride there!!! I traveled with another Crisis Corps volunteer, Maura Carroll, who just finished her six month assignment in Livingstone. We arrived in Dar es Salaam around 9:30 and were happy to plop into beds at the o so luxurious “Econolodge.” Actually, it was luxurious for $20! Very clean, bathroom in the room, and breakfast included. The next morning we did some banking errands and made it in time for the 10 a.m. ferry to Zanzibar.
Tanzania is full of “touts”, boys who will pounce on you offering you tours, accommodation, to carry your bags, whatever you could possibly want – or not want. One man at the ferry, in addition to ferry tickets, was keen to book our accommodation as well. He made the arrangements, but we didn’t want to pay him as that seemed rather sketchy. We arrived, saw the room, decided the “deluxe suite” – 2 rooms, bathroom, satellite tv, and breakfast included- was certainly worth $20, and stayed there 2 nights. Turns out the other guy was legit in that we could have paid him, but it would have been $30. The owner said to make sure not to tell him we stayed there, since he would have wanted his $10 commission. Seems a bit steep, doesn’t it?
We were in Zanzibar during Ramadan, the Muslim period of fasting. We were given information at the hotel about how to behave….eat in hotels that are serving, not on the streets, dress modestly, and behave decently ie- no kissing in public. That last one wasn’t a challenge, but it took us a little while to find places for food, and it was pretty hot an humid to wear too many clothes.
We wandered around Stone Town, looking at the crafts and shops. After the sun goes down and all the Muslims are racing home to eat, we found a great restaurant overlooking the harbor where I had coconut curry prawns, spiced coffee, and we split a passion fruit tart. Isn’t the holiday about the food anyway!
The next day we had booked a “spice tour” where we saw the spices growing and learned about them. I won’t bore you with too many details but a few highlights….you can mix turmeric and sandalwood to treat pimples…although on white skin, not sure the orange skin would really be an improvement! Boil cloves in water reducing 3 cups to 1, drink, stay near a toilet, and soon you will have an o so “clean” stomach. Peppercorns are little round green balls, and the black, white and red pepper are all just dried and treated differently. Nutmegs are beautiful seed pods with vibrant red covering. After seeing all this, we were given lunch using some of the spices we’d seen, and then of course had an opportunity to buy some. We then went to a slave holding cell. Slavery continued to exist in Zanzibar long after it was illegal, so these cells were down in the ground, surrounded by trees, with hidden paths to the shore. It’s hard to imagine the horrors that occurred there. We then had an hour on a beautiful sandy beach before heading back to town. That evening we went to a park on the sea shore where vendors have heaps of seafood of every type on skewers which you have grilled, piled onto a chapatti, and enjoy all for a few dollars. I think I had swordfish, tuna and lobster.
Maura is a scuba diver, so she arranged to go diving and I tagged along to snorkel. The few times I’ve snorkeled I’ve loved it but been a bit terrified as well. I’ve always been a bit creeped out even going to glassed in aquariums. Here the water was so clear, and the coral and fish so beautiful, I soon got over my initial panic, and had a wonderful time. In fact, I was the only snorkeler left in the water when the boat went to pick up the divers and was slightly concerned I may be snorkeling back to Stone Town! We pulled up to a white sandbar for lunch, and then the divers went out again, but the water was very turbulent so we were stuck on the boat trying not to get sea sick!
As soon as we got back, we grabbed our bags from the hotel and hopped on a local bus to the north of the island called Nungwi. This area is where they build dhows (the hand made sailing boats), fish, and host a lot of tourists…in spite of being a rather rural, conservative village. Here our accommodation went up to $25 but we had a great little cabin looking right out on the sea with little evidence of the bars and tourists slightly down the beach. We ended up running into two Americans we’d eaten with the night before… another public health person who is working for Red Cross, and a corporate lawyer working in Hong Kong who wants to make a move to more humanitarian endeavors in the near future.
Not realizing the wet suit and stripped off all traces of sun screen on my snorkeling venture, I found myself hobbling around in sun blistered pain for the next number of days. On the second afternoon I went sailing on a dhow (they do pretty well actually), snorkeling, lounging on another beach, and enjoying sundowners on the way back with a group of overlanders (people who see an insanely large section of Africa in a reasonably short period of time riding around in very gigantic trucks!) Again enjoyed a sea food feast for about $10 which was a lot for Tanzania but when you think what it would cost at home!
The next day, our beach paradise had to come to an end, so it was back on the dalla dalla (local busses, but differently from other parts of Africa, Zanzibar has these more open truck types which were kind of fun although dusty!) to Stone Town and the ferry back to Dar.
We never managed to find much of interest in Dar aside from a good Indian restaurant and a friend of Maura’s had been mugged there a couple times in as many days when he was there, so we were pretty cautious. We did buy our tickets to Arusha, where a whole new adventure was waiting!
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