Zanzibar, Tanzania - Day 187 - Boots on the Loose

Decided to stay an extra day in Arusha after the Safari before moving onto Dar es Salaam, then Zanzibar; figured a day NOT in a vehicle was needed plus Arusha looked like it had something to offer. After returning to town (after the day of the Safari), decided to go out for dinner with the Irish boys as a bit of a celebration. The restaurant we decided on was a bit out of town, but was the first one named in the Lying Planet, so you would think it to be fairly popular… or at least accessible. Anyway, pulled off the main road onto a secondary one, and drove in maybe a km of what could be the worst road I’ve ever seen in my life. It was literally a gutter; I felt so bad for talking the taxi driver down below the $5 he wanted. For a while I thought he was taking us somewhere to steal all our belongings. When we finally got to the gate, guard opened the door to the compound, Jen on my lap in the front seat, 3 guys in the back, music blasted so loud with the treble knob so out of control that Expensive Italian Hotel next door to where we stayed it made my brain hurt, Dave (possibly the least personable of the 3) yelling at the driver to turn it down but him not understanding English, meanwhile the driver taking multiple attempts at trying to get the vehicle up the craggy hill to get us the last 20ft there as I tried to tell him it was okay, we’d walk up the hill to save his clutch, but again him not understanding. I couldn’t help but sit there laughing hysterically at it all (inside of course).

Didn’t do a lot the next day except buy our bus ticket out of town, then wander around a little. Highlight was going to Kahn’s bbq for dinner which is a mechanic shop by day, and a restaurant by night (great concept!). As with many businesses in East Africa it’s Indian-owned so cooked delicious curried meats, salads, nahn, etc. It absolutely poured rain the whole time (the whole night for that matter… a sign of things to come on Zanzibar) which caused a nice strobelight effect on the town’s power grid (had to switch to the generator maybe 4 times throughout dinner). Bus left the next morning at 6am; thought we’d be taking a taxi 3 blocks as it’s still dark that early, but instead got an escort from the hotel guard, Dominique, a very nice Masaai fellow (much cooler than any taxi driver!).

Bus from Arusha to Dar es Salaam took roughly 8 hours; went through Moshi, the town where all the Kilimanjaro tours leave from but unfortunately it was too cloudy for us to catch a glimpse of her. During the drive everything looked fairly similar to what we’ve seen most of the trip (other than our trip through the Serengeti of course): lots of small villages with people sitting around under trees, some farmland with lots of dry, baren land all around… Pulled into “Dar” in the late afternoon; had a sort of Los Angeles feel to it – stuck in rush hour, palm tree-lined boulevards, poor black people selling things at the traffic intersections. Met up with our good ol’ friend Jamie at the Jambo Inn which was in the somewhat shittier end of town, but was walkable from the bus station and had a good selection of alternative hotels around it. They say Dar is the new Nairobi, but in all honesty I got a WORSE feeling in Dar (at least at this end of town); there’s really not a lot to do there except leave for Zanzibar (on the way back after Zanzibar however, we stayed in the nicer part of town which had a bit more to offer).

Had dinner around the corner, then took a taxi out to a nice, new Irish pub for some celebratory pints of Guiness. Jamie had just got back from 10 days on Zanzibar; unfortunately he didn’t get the message in time that we would be there to meet him, so he came back to Dar, but then made the decision to return to Zanzibar with us for another 5 days (unfortunately it’s $35 a pop on the ferry)… Ferry crossing takes 90 minutes, and is very well-run (in a rather chaotic sort of way). Luckily it was calm on the way over, but apparently the seas can very easily get bad enough that the boat turns into a bit of a barfathon. As far as I understand Zanzibar is completely part of Tanzania (in fact, I just learned that the name Tan-zan-ia came from a combo of Tanganyika and Zanzibar when the two colonies combined) but oddly upon arrival you must go through and get your passport stamped (oh well – a cool stamp that says Zanzibar!).

The island has a lot of really neat history that most people seem to at least be aware of: it was one of the biggest Arab trading posts in Africa in its day and thus has a strong Islamic influence, it mainly traded slaves and spices and is now fairly famous for it’s Swahili influence, particularly furniture design and a lot of exterior doors. What I DIDN’T know before coming was that Freddy Mercury is from Stonetown (you should be able to visualize Jen rolling her eyes as we pulled into the port with me blasting “Fat Bottomed Girls” on the IPod)…

Stonetown is cool. A great place to get lost in. It would be as good as Lamu if it weren’t for all the people harassing you (although it’s not as bad as I expected, and only got better the longer we stayed). Wandered around town for most of the day until the rain started; not far from our hotel during the day is a muddy/grassy patch of nothingness right on the waterfront. At night however it turns into a bustling, street-meat strip known locally as “The Gardens” where all the fishermen have the day’s catches filleted onto skewers, and you can order an array of seafood (including $2 skewers of lobster!) that they cook up for you, and you stand around enjoying with a delicious mug of sugarcane juice. We’re normally not too concerned about where we eat – usually quite happy to help a back-alley local food stand out with some business… but it just seemed a little odd the massive amount of food on display, with little to no refrigeration for saving it until the next night (SURELY all that food isn’t being sold every night). The last thing I wanted was to spend my first week on Zanzibar ill, but alas all was well the next day.

Next morning we took the “tourist” bus out to Kendwa Beach on the north end of the island (about an hour’s drive); note that the only thing to ever leave on time in Africa has the word “tourist” in it. Alternatively it’s possible to take a local daladala (truck with benches lining the back sides of the cab) but we were told it could take up to half a day. Anyway they say it’s the best beach on the island because it’s nice to swim at no matter what the tide’s doing (others become unswimmable at low tide). For our first 4 days at the beach, the sun hardly came out, with rains every morning and afternoon. It was apparent that the rainy season was upon us but there was no escaping it, shy of rushing 1000km or more into southern Africa. Despite all that, the beach was still enjoyable with plenty to see and do, the temperature was kept at a more comfortable 30C or so (though very muggy), the water very warm and enjoyable… even still possible to get a tan through the cloud layer.

On the fourth and final day Jamie would be with us, we went on a snorkelling trip to a reef at an island around the other side of the northern tip (Jamie’s second time on the venture). Woke up to the usual cloud cover but since it wasn’t raining decided to go for it. Sputtering north you could pretty much see the line where the open ocean started and the sheltered west side ended. Right around the time we hit the waves, the clouds rolled in and opened up on us; me sitting there with the Gilligan’s Island song in my head and people barfing over the sides all around me (including our very own Jamie Walton), I began to wonder how desparate these guys running the boat were for money during the low season.

A good hour of this passed by and as we pulled into the shelter of the island, it was like the Gods decided to shine down upon us – the blue sky plowed through the clouds like a bulldozer, the ocean turned into a sheet of saran wrap, and since then we haven’t had a day where we didn’t get at least 2 to 3 hours of clear skies to complain about how stinking hot it is. Snorkelling was great, lunch was even better – fresh Kingfish bbq’d on the beach, delicious pineapple and mango, chipatis. Mmmm… Hopping out of the boat and wading to the shore felt like something you’d see on a postcard. As we pulled into shore back at Kendwa, it was like we came back to a completely different place. It’s unreal what the sun can do for somewhere (as anyone from Vancouver already knows) – the brown sand went white, the navy ocean went turquoise…

The plan had always been to come to Zanzibar halfway through the trip for a little mini-vacation; so far I’d say we’d done what we set out to do. Six more days of Kendwa and we were out of money (Zanzibar is likely the most expensive place we’d been to since Italy). Left our packs at the hotel and headed back to Stonetown for a day or two to get money. Feeling slightly guilty about following the footsteps of the Italian package tourist, we decided to sign up for a spice tour, if nothing else to catch a glimpse of a different part of the island. For only $10, they picked us up at our hotel, walked us around at a spice farm to taste and smell every spice imagineable, fed us a locally made lunch, took us to see the Slave Caves used during the 1800’s slave trade (nothing too informative, but only a little imagination could easily get you depressed), brought us to a little-known beach, returned us around 4:00. Best deal in town I’d say.

…and back to Kendwa for another 4 days; we’ve now befriended most of the locals and become a bit of a local fixture. Was funny upon our return when we started talking to an American couple and they told us they had heard about us from someone else in Stonetown: couple Canadians doing Africa for a year on $40/day, one of them works on video games, etc… ha!! We kept trying to tell them how much easier it is to do than they think… hopefully we’ve planted a seed. They seemed rather envious (as do most people we talk to about it) – surprisingly (at least to us), the only mzungus (other than a few precious) we’ve met that aren’t working or volunteering are drunk 19 year olds on overland trucks. Rather disappointing really… Similarly we recently met someone working in Dar es Salaam for a number of months and they were telling lots of negative feelings about “Africa” and “Africans” and how they were looking so forward to returning to Europe. Amazing to think that almost every white person here is a volunteer or overseas worker and probably has similar thoughts because they equate the rest of Africa with Dar es Salaam… there needs to be more people like us!! 😉

On our second to last night on Kendwa we managed to hit the fullmoon party; sounded like during high-season it rivals a fullmoon party in Thailand but due to low-season it wasn’t much more than all the local village kids hanging out at one of the beach bars. We did however get to watch a group of acrobats that the bar had hired (local acrobats even). Some decent enough handstands and flips but the juggling could have used some work. Next day hung out with Nancy and Amy once again from the Dragoman tour through Libya. Was a mear hiking boot away from going back up to Arusha to do Kilimanjaro with Nancy. Decided I would likely be one of the 2/3’s that don’t make it due to my not having any equipment (plus still having so far to go, 700km north was a bit too much backtracking).

Nancy and Amy were staying around the corner at a town called Nungwi (about a 1/2 hour walk down the beach – but only accessible at low tide). Jen and I walked over numerous times but got stuck over once again while visiting -first time we took a $12 boat ride back which seemed a little ridiculous; this time we waited out the fullmoon and walked back after dark. Was SUCH a beautiful walk – felt like the type of thing you shouldn’t do for safety reasons but the moon was so bright that the landscape looked like one of those cheesy night effects in an old James Bond movie. Just remembered, during our day at Nungwi, decided to pop in for a visit to the aquarium. We weren’t going to go (an aquarium in Africa sounded rather suspect) but Nancy said it was actually good. Turned out to be more of a sea-turtle conservatory instead of an aquarium, but it WAS really good. Apparently they pay fishermen $0.50 to bring in babies which they raise then re-release… even recognized by the WWF (don’t know why Vince McMahon would care about turtles 🙂

Headed back to Stonetown for another day; were going to head to Dar but decided it would still be there in another 4 days, so we hit the east coast to check it out. As we were warned, the big waves (coming directly off the Indian Ocean) break probably close to a kilometre from shore, and the tide swings the entire distance between here and the shore. …which means absolutely no swimming unless it’s hightide. On the plus side, the beach is full of locals (playing, fishing, farming seaweed, bringing sand and water to the village, etc), the village is right there so if you want, dinner’s available for around $1, and somehow the seclusion makes me feel that much more relaxed. On our last full day we discovered the hotel pool next door overlookng the ocean (free to use if you buy a drink) so the lowtide swimming became a non-issue. Stayed at the Red Monkey Hotel which actually had plenty of Red Monkeys around, often sitting in the trees eating.

And back to Stonetown the next morning, headed for the 1pm ferry to Dar es Salaam. Enough on Zanzibar; it’s been a pleasure spending this much time here and in one place and although it’s cost us more than we’d like, it’s been worth every penny! We leave tuesday morning on the train from Dar headed for Mbeya, then down into Malawi…