Zanzibar

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After flying out of Mozambique, we made a fairly uneventful arrival in Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania. Dar is about halfway up the east coast of Tanzania and is quite a large city. Swahili and English are spoken here (yay for English!). We spent a couple nights here, enjoying being in a city. We were able to buy a couple guidebooks for this part of Africa, use the internet, and do a little shopping. However, the best was yet to come.

I have always wanted to go to Zanzibar ever since I first heard about it a number of years ago. Not only does it have an awesome name that sounds like it should be an island on Mars, but it is known for its beaches and scenery. Oh yeah, and its cool history as well.

We took a ferry out to Zanzibar. It took about 2 hours and was rather nice as ferries go. We arrived in a bustling town in the rain to discover that there was a large music festival going on that week and all the hotels were booked. Bummer. After having our taxi driver drive us around in the rain for a while, we found a hotel with a room, where we stayed for 3 nights.

Zanzibar town is famous for its Stone Town. Right in the port area, is a town made mostly of a bunch of old, stone buildings. Its composed of tiny, winding roads with little side alleys. Its really enchanting. The population of the town is primarily Muslim, and you look down any little alley and you see women in their long, flowing black robes and black head scarves (and sometimes face covers so all you see is their eyes) and men in their long white robes and white, circular hats. It all feels very foreign and mysterious. Every once in a while you hear the Muslim call to prayer wafting from a mosque and see the men walking in, leaving a pile of sandals outside the mosque.

The interesting part of Zanzibar's history is that for centuries, it was ruled by Oman. With sultans and palaces and everything. It is independent now and a part of Tanzania. However, you can tour the museums and palaces and ruins of the bath houses, and gaze at the architecture, and really get a feel for the history of the place.

Anyways, on to what we actually did in Zanzibar...

We walked around the little winding roads. We went to the music festival where we saw groups from reggae artists from Ethiopia to classical artists to pop artists from Kenya. We ate tasty food. We toured the old palaces and museums. We rented a moped and cruised around outside of town to sites of old ruins. That leads me to our first story.

Stone Town is a busy place. Lots of cars, mopeds, pedestrians, bicycles, daladalas (the Zanzibar version of the death cab). Oh, and they drive on the left. After realizing how hectic it was, we decided that Andrej would do all the driving, as he has a little motorcycle experience and I have none. Anyways, we did pretty well and made it out of town. We were driving along on a beautiful, palm tree lined dirt road going to some caves. We hit a rock with our muffler and tipped over into a puddle (luckily we were already going very slow and we more or less stepped off the moped). Soon, some other people came by on mopeds or bikes or cars or even just strolling along. Within minutes we had about 10 people helping us. Everyone who stopped to help us helped us like we were their best friends, not complete strangers who can't speak Swahili. They helped us without even asking if we needed help. They stopped what they were doing and put off where they were going to help. The got out tools, removed the tire, hammered the exhaust pipe. As it turned out, the rock had jammed the pipe into our back tire. Anyways, with the help of all those nice men, we were back on the road in half an hour. After it was fixed, everyone dispersed as quickly as they came and all we could do was shout our thanks.

Another story to display the friendliness of the people of Zanzibar happened just a couple hours later. We were on another rural road and it started to rain pretty hard, so we pulled over under a large tree for some shelter. A girl in the house across the road saw us and insisted we come in her house to wait out the rain. So we did. We sat on their floor (they didn't have furniture) quietely (we need to learn more Swahili) and everyone smiled at each other as we waited a few minutes for the rain to let up. When it did, the kids walked us out to our moped and waved as we drove off.

This place is very refreshing. There are a lot of tourists around here, but everyone still smiles and makes a point to say jambo! (hello!) to you whenever they see you.

The day after we rented our moped, we took a daladala out to Bwejuu, a small village on the east coast of Zanzibar. The destination was the beach, and the beach we got. We stayed at a fabulous little place called The Twisted Palms. It was right on the beach, and run by an Italian couple. It had a restaurant, and as Italians are very picky about their food, we ate VERY well the whole time we were there. The breakfasts were large and free with fresh fruit and juice. We had a nice little basic bungalow up on the hill above the beach. We had a fabulous time out there. We rented bikes and road up and down the beach. We rented a car and drove out to the Jozani Forest, where we saw the apparently rare red colobus monkeys. We drove out to a butterfly garden, and we drove all along the coast. All that was great, but my absolute favorite thing was the catamaran. We rented the catamaran one sunny morning. I had never been on one before, and Andrej had only been on one once or twice. However, we quickly got the hang of it and had 3 very enjoyable hours sailing around in the ocean around Zanzibar. A catamaran is made of two small pontoons with a tarp between them, a mainsail, a foresail, and a couple rudders. It was quite simple, and it could really cruise. The water of the Indian Ocean is really warm and it made for a very pleasant ride. We also spent one more day just being lazy beach bums before coming back to Stone Town. I think I will always remember my time on Zanzibar as one of my favorites of this whole trip. Bwejuu was my favorite place we have been so far.

We are back in Stone Town now, and real life calls. We caved and bought a cell phone today. I have spent hours here at this internet cafe attempting to file my taxes. And tomorrow we head back to the mainland for more adventures in Tanzania. Until then....

Here are some photos from Zanzibar:
The catamaran we sailed around in.
Andrej in the Jozani Forest with some large cactus.
Andrej and me during a walk on the beach.
Andrej on his bike during our bike ride down the beach to the next town, Paje.
A boat we saw pass by from our breakfast table one morning.
Andrej and me riding our moped. Still alive and happy even after falling off!
Andrej on the moped on one of the rural roads in Zanzibar.
Andrej exploring the ruins outside of town.
The reggae group from Ethiopia at the music festival. The festival was held in an old fort.
Me on the terrace overlooking the ocean at one of the palace museums.