Encountering myself: African Adventures: Part II

Zanzibar was an interesting one. The island lies about 40km off the coast of Tanzania and has been influenced by various cultures over the centuries including Indian and Arabic. It is part of the archipelago known as the Spice Islands, made up of Zanzibar and Pemba. We took the excellent Sea Bus ferry across there for $35US, which included Arnie Schwarzenegger movies to our delight, got our passports stamped at ‘Immigration’ and then got surrounded by men who wanted to show us how to find our hotel. How about this – LEAVE US ALONE!! But no such luck, as much as we tried to look like we knew what we were doing, or tried walking in the opposite direction, or walking super fast or super slow, we couldn’t lose them. In the end I assume they got commission from our hotel. We stayed in Zanzibar’s capital, Stone Town, for 3 nights. I think we felt a bit let down about the island because all I’d seen of it before is the picturesque photos of white sands and beautiful sunsets, which yes we did see, but for the most part Stone Town is a dingy, dark cobweb of alleyways. It was one of those places that you don’t want to be walking around in after sunset. In fact our hotel manager warned us to keep our stuff away from the windows in our room because he’d heard of a man who could climb up the wall and reach inside to steal things, ‘but don’t worry, he can’t get inside, he could only reach inside with his arm’. Sure, I believe that these wooden shutters with broken slats and no locks would be able to keep someone from entering the room! We wanted to move up a floor, which the guy finally agreed to after the third time we asked.

One of those things you ‘have to do’ is a spice tour where you’re driven out to a spice farm in a mini bus, walked around and shown different plants and trees for a couple of hours and then given a lunch made using some of the spices that you’ve just seen. We did this on our first day and it was actually really cool seeing cinnamon, cocoa beans, cloves, lemongrass, turmeric, star fruit (not really a spice..) and vanilla pods in their original form. Our lunch was also pretty nice and I bought an ointment made from lemongrass that soothes itchy or sun-burnt skin AND acts as a mosquito repellent! After the tour we were dropped by the sea front in Stone Town and wandered back to our hotel in the sun, stopping for a drink to watch some boys jumping into the water. Walking through the alleyways we came across the Zanzibar Coffee House which apparently serves some of their best coffee. There was a poster nearby for the up-coming Tanzanian Barista Championship which excited us coming from the coffee freak cafes of Edinburgh. We had a nice evening meal, sharing a pizza at a huge open bar overlooking the ocean – til the mosquitoes came out in force and we sped back to the hotel.

The following day we took a daladala out to the Jozani Forest where we took bicycles and rode a kilometre or so to a mangrove walk. We saw some amazing Red Colobus Monkeys, unique to Zanzibar, and got within a couple of metres of them! After the thrilling mangroves (not so much), we walked ourselves through the rainforest and were petrified by some other monkeys and Paul was eaten by a few ants. We stood on the road under the shade of the Jozani Forest sign after we were done and waited for a daladala to drive past and hopefully take us to Jambiani beach. We ended up hitching a lift in a 4WD (funny how I would never get into a car full of strangers at home, but in Africa I would..) which was great and found the white, never-ending beach. We chilled out in a beach hut bar run by a bunch of rastas, and then found a place for lunch which took a whopping hour to deliver our food.

We walked along the beach in the blistering sun for about 20 minutes and managed to burn like beetroots, then headed back to the little white-washed village to find a daladala back to Stone Town. Waiting in the village for about half an hour was really relaxing and interesting in the end – we sat under the shade of a rickety hut with a little old man and watched a group of guys riding their motorbikes, others walking around barefoot, while a little girl nearby dragged a squid around on the ground! The daladala back took about 3 hours and it was hilarious entertainment. Stuffed to the brim, including 8 tourists, one of which a Korean girl who was telling everyone on board that she was short-changed and it was bad for their economy because she writes in newspapers in 4 languages and she’s going to spread the word about how bad Tanzania is; an old man telling us he has 2 wives and is looking for a third, who cracked up laughing when I asked (knowing the answer already) whether women could have more than 1 husband; a young guy next to us talking excitedly about football; and more people being stuffed in every minute! At one point we reversed up to a house and the driver got up on the roof and started throwing planks of wood into the yard that we’d apparently been transporting for someone. I love Africa.

Posted from Adelaide