Arriving in Dar, I met Jennifer outside, and we swapped to the old airport terminal which was now the main terminal for flights to and from Zanzibar. In truth, the runway connected both the terminals, and in fact on my way back to Mwanza from Dar, the plane taxied right past where the Zanzibar mini-plane had landed, and I could see it still there with all the doors open. So, we arrived at this cute little terminal, all wood-panelled and looking very old school, and were even more delighted to then be boarded onto a 12-seater plane! The flight to Zanzibar is a mere 20 minutes, so it wasn’t long before we were received by Ibrahim, the guy with whom I had arranged our transportation for the week.
Mbweni Ruins Hotel was the slightly upmarket hotel that we stayed in during our Stone Town part of the holiday, and it was definitely very fancy! It was a little distance from Stone Town itself, but ran a shuttle bus to and from every day. As a result of the distance, the hotel was peaceful, and even had its own beach and pier, with mangrove trees along the shore. On our first two mornings there we swam in the pool in the early morning, and it was a very pleasant way to wake up, despite the bugs that had died in the pool overnight. Breakfast was good too, so we were definitely spoilt!
We ventured into Stone Town on the first day, Sunday, and promptly took a very long route to reach the old slave market site, where we had our first tour. We took many a back route, and saw quite a bit of the old town (Zanzibar town is the new section and we didn’t go into that bit) and many of the fancy carved doors that Zanzibar is famous for.
During that first day, we also went to the House of Wonders, a museum which tells of the Swahili culture of the coast, about dhow-building (dhows are the traditional boats they still build around the region) and about Princess Salme, a lady famous for writing “Memoirs of a Princess” about life in the Sultan’s court. The tall building that housed the museum also gave a wonderful view of the town immediately surrounding the museum, the old fort, down to the waters edge and of the Forodhani gardens which were sadly closed for the low tourist season.
I found myself getting very irritated by the greetings of all the people who wanted to sell me items. “Jambo!” is what they would greet me with, and I never knew what the correct reply was, having learnt the “proper” Swahili greetings and not being used to this very touristy one! I found that people weren’t quite so friendly as they are in Musoma (maybe the residents of Stone Town are used to not greeting tourists), but also that there wasn’t so much staring at us white people – we are pretty common in Stone Town!
I ate a good selection of seafood while staying in Stone Town, though probably not as much as I could have tried. It was really great to be able to eat out and receive your order within half an hour, plus to choose from the wide variety available!
Monday saw us taking a trip a little way up North and into the area of the spice farms. Ibrahim took us to one, and we were quickly taken from there around the farm and shown all the wonderful spices that were being grown. Often we would be given a leaf, and would be asked if we could tell what the herb/spice was. I found my use of spices in cooking helpful here, but I still wasn’t able to name all of them. We were shown the vanilla plant too, and finally I realised just why vanilla pods are so expensive, the process of growing and harvesting them is very labour intensive! It is still cheaper than it is in England to buy the pods though, so I stocked up while there. During the tour, the boy who was helping by digging up roots like ginger etc kept making ‘jewelry’ from banana leaves, or cassava leaves. We ended up with a little basket on a string, a ring, a crown, a cassave leaf necklace and a frog necklace. At the end of the tour, a boy climbed a tall coconut tree and brought down 2 coconuts for us to drink and eat the meat of – very tasty and fresh! Then we went to a little shelter and he served us spice tea and various fruits – starfruit, grapefruit, mandarin, mango, a kind of custard fruit etc. A very tasty experience!
On Wednesday, we moved on from Stone Town to Kendwa Rocks, a beach hotel on the North of the island. It took a very short time to get up there, and we were very soon sitting on the beach trying to soak up some sun. Sadly, the weather was a bit cloudier up North, so we didn’t have too many sunbathing moments, but we still kept trying. On Thursday morning, we made a last minute decision to go snorkelling around the reef surrounding an island off the coast, and after about 10 minutes convincing the guy with my best Swahili, we paid 27,500Tsh (about $20) instead of the original asking price of $30. We set off in very grey clouds, and were slightly alarmed to see a tornado spout up in the clouds, but very grateful that it never decided to come to join the sea, since we were travelling straight for it! We saw dolphins from afar, and after some lashings of rain we arrived in the beautiful sunlight at the island where we snorkelled for about an hour. There were loads and loads of fish around, and so I was very happy with my first snorkelling experience! After everyone had finished, we went back to the mainland (we weren’t allowed to land on the island where we had been snorkelling since it was a conservation area) and were fed a very tasty rice and fish lunch. They had even cooked up a blowfish (we saw him on the boat as we travelled to the island, poor thing!) though I didn’t try any of that.
On our last full day on Zanzibar, we walked from Kendwa to Nungwi, a slightly bigger village to the North of the island which boasted a post office. Since the walk was along the beach and was dependent on the tides, we set off in good time to wade through the retreating tide and made sure we walked back before the tide came back in! I think we took a bit of a roundabout route to reach the village post office (a supermarket with a post box outside) but we made it, and were even able to go to the Mnarani natural aquarium for turtles before we trekked back. The turtles were very beautiful and gathered around as we fed them seaweed. The aquarium is doing great things to protect the turtles in the area, and we even got to meet some week-old hatchlings who were being kept safe until they were big enough to fend for themselves.
Then on Saturday morning, it was back in the taxi and back to the airport again as we travelled to Dar on the cute plane, and finally back to our separate destinations, Mwanza and England. I spent the night with a colleague in Mwanza, which was very pleasant and helped to break the journey up on the way back. This also gave me the opportunity to buy some more cheese in Mwanza before taking the bus to Musoma – opportunities for good New Zealand cheddar must never be passed up since it is difficult to get good cheese, if any, in Musoma!
So, it is back to work now, having had a refreshing break. I did enjoy my holiday, but it is good to be back!
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