Zanzibar 2

Alright, finally a minute or two to catch up on some posts (currently in Interlaken by the way).

Following our Safari we spent about 2 days in the tour bus transitting from Arusha to Dar es Salaam. This was pretty uneventful except for one of our lunch stops by the side of the road which was invaded by a herd of goats who proceeded to drink the dishwashing water... anyway, upon reaching Dar we found we were staying in a fairly nice establishment on the beach (warmest water I've ever swam in). We also bumped into another couple of groups on Safari (this spot is a bit of a meeting spot for groups coming to or from Zanzibar). This made for quite a large evening (we'll never drink again, etc). This, in turn, made for quite a long boat ride out to Zanzibar the next morning.



We immediately liked Stonetown a lot more than Dar. The buildings were quaint and beautifully run-down rather than just being run-down, there were lots of narrow streets which wound their way around (and sometimes through) cafes and bars and there were boats with "Lovely Jubbly" written on them. Our hotel in Stonetown that night was even better with a rabbit-warren style interior and interesting rooms (our room opened into a hallway with our bedroom chained and padlocked on one side and the bathroom on the other).

After we got off the boat we had quite a busy first day, first looking around Stonetown and then heading off on a spice tour - which we weren't all that excited about to begin with. How wrong we were. Our local guide for this tour was bloody hilarious!! He'd been taught english by an englishman, and so while most of his words were spoken in the local Zanzibarbarian sing-song accent, every now and then he'd insert words in a (exaggerated) pommy accent. We first thought he was having a dig at James (the pom on our tour) but soon realised this was just how he spoke. It was so hard to listen without cracking up. But he was worth listening to. He first informed us that his name was "Ali-T in da bus" as opposed to "Ali-G in da house" - as we were being shown around in a minibus. He was also fairly well versed in Australian slang (tucker, sheila, dead horse, etc) to the confusion of the Americans.



Anyway, I digress, the spice tour was excellent - I hadn't even realised where most standard spices came from or what they looked like un-processed. We got to taste all of them (ginger, cardimon, pepper, cinnamon, lemongrass, cummin, plus a whole lot of others which I've forgotten about) and even saw one of the locals scamper up a palm tree to cut us some fresh coconuts. The following morning we headed out to a small island just outside the harbour which was used as a quarantine port in the colonial days. Here we did our first snorkelling (which was fantastic, except Sarah's mask leaked) and had a bit of a look around the island.



The main attraction on the island was the Giant Tortoise sanctuary. The main attraction of this was seeing one of the big males try (unsuccessfully) to mount one of the smaller females. This took sometime but provided for some good photo ops. We also got to hand feed them and hold some of the smaller ones which was good fun.

After returning from the island we went on a "swim with the dolphins" type tour. Which looked good on paper but actually involved a 90min drive to the other side of Zanzibar to what looked like someone's backyard, followed by a 90min goose(dolphin) chase in a small boat in fairly rough seas. To be fair we did see one dolphin flip out of the water and we saw plenty of fins but we only actually did any swimming once and the water was too stirred up to see anything (you could hear them tho). We were given dinner and had a beer to celebrate James' birthday then sat the 90min back to stonetown. The next morning we headed to the northern beaches.



I must say that the (mercifully) short trip from the 'highway' to our hotel was slightly interesting (read: travelled past some sort of unofficial refuse dump and murder ground). Our hotel was reasonably nice however and the beaches were stunning. We spent the majority of the next 5 days swimming, drinking, eating, relaxing, drinking, swimming, drinking and getting a stomach bug (not related to drinking, however. promise). The highlight would have to be the day-trip we took out to an island off the coast. The island was actually a private (!!) island and we couldn't step on the beach but we anchored off shore and did some pretty spectacular snorkelling (heaps of coral and beautiful fish of all sizes, starfish, seasnakes, anenomes and rays - and sarah maintains she saw a seahorse {unconfirmed}).



The accidental highlight tho was the pod of dolphins we passed through on the way out. They came right up to the boat and we all jumped in in our snorkelling gear and swam with them. The water was brilliantly clear and they must have only been 3-4m away - it was awesome, flogged the hell out of the "dolphin tour" a couple of days before. Please note the above photo is real and has _not_ been doctored in any way :) it jumped out of the water right next to us! Soon after we continued some of the locals on the boat caught a sizeable fish which they bbq'd for us (on the boat!!). It was delicious and probably the freshest fish we're likely to eat (~20min from alive and kicking to mmmmmm tasty...).



We spent the remainder of the week slogging it out at the restaurants and bars on the beach being forced to observe sunsets like this one. I reckon we took this identical photo about half a dozen times each night, every night. It was idyllic.

We actually left our tour on the beaches as the boys were heading back a day early to do the kili climb and we were staying on a day later to fly directly out of Dar instead of taking the tour bus back to Arusha. Our return trip through Stonetown and Dar wasn't all that exciting although we did get to try a chocolate and banana pizza at the Stonetown night market.

Rome ahoy!