Immediately after we arrived in Zanzibar, we all hopped into a bus with our tour guides for the weekend, a few really cool Tanzanian Rastafarians that a guy in our group had met a couple months ago. We drove to a Spice Farm and took a Spice Tour in order to see all of the different spices and fr
uits that Zanzibar is known for growing. They showed us the leaves, roots and seeds for each tree and had us guess which spice it made. We saw ginger, cardamom, lemongrass, cinnamon, pepper, turmeric (turned my hands yellow for awhile), and many more. They were also growing starfruit on the farm, which really excited me because Ryan and I LOVED when Mom would bring some home from the grocery store. I was very glad that they passed some out for everyone to try. During the entire tour, there was a group of boys who were making necklaces, bracelets, hats, and baskets out of banana leaves and palm fronds. They would rip the leaves into strips and then weave it into really cool patterns. You can see the bracelet and ring that I am wearing in the picture to the left, along with my banana leaf collection basket and a piece of starfruit that was stuck on my forehead for some reason. At the end of the tour, we all sat down and tasted several different teas and lots of different tropical fruits. It was a very appreciated snack since there was no time for lunch in our cramped schedule for the day.After the spice tour, we took a quick tour of Stone Town, the historic part of Zanzibar where Arabic traders built stone buildings hundreds of years ago. This also used to be a major hub of the East African slave trade, with many thousands of slaves passing through every year. We went into the basement of the buildings where slaves had been held while in Zanzibar. It was a cramped dark space where they would stuff 70-75 women and children. It was not a very happy tour. There was a statue outside that had been built in the memory of the slaves, though it was a depressing statue. There were were four large figures with chains around their neck standing in an opening in the ground. It really disturbed me to see people taking pictures with it.
After our abbreviated Stone Town tour, we got a quick dinner from street vendors at the night market. They had skewers of meat to choose from that they would roast right there for you. I got a skewer of Kingfish, chapati, and a vegetable Zanzibar pizza. To make Zanzibar pizza, they take a small piece of dough, fill it with vegetables/meat, egg and mayonnaise and then fold up the edges. This is cooked on a frying pan until it becomes crispy and golden-brown. It was very delicious and I was disappointed that I did not have time to try the chocolate and banana pizza.
After watching the sunset from a nearby bar right on the water, we drove about an hour north to Nungwi Village, where we were staying at "Romantic Bungalows." After a quick luggage dropoff and shower, we went to a well-known bar named Kendwa Rocks. It was a large place right on the beach with lots of cool seating areas. A few of us even discovered a dilapidated boat on the beach that of course we hopped onto in order to explore and take pictures. The mix of different people that were at the bar was extremely interesting. There were plenty of tourists, from the US, Europe, Mexico, etc. but there were also plenty of locals, including several Maasai wearing their traditional dress. It was very strange to see a European female wearing a short jean skirt and tank top (hugely inappropriate for this conservative area) hanging out with a Maasai warrior. It was definitely the most diverse crowd that I have ever experienced. There was a group of 4 acrobats who did an extensive performance of all different kinds of tricks. I will have to get pictures up of some of their moves because it is too difficult to describe (and I don't have time).
On Sunday morning, I woke up early in order to go scuba diving with 2 others, Justin and Merete. Merete had made the reservations with a dive shop in Nungwi Village, so we walked over at 9:30, met the Tanzanian dive master, Mr. Fine, who would accompany us and got all of our equipment prepared. Our first dive went to about 17 m and was about 50 minutes long. Visibility was ok, but a little reduced since the sea was choppy and it started raining while we were diving. But we still saw lots of beautiful fish. The current was pretty strong and I could feel it pushing me around even at that depth, which I had not experienced before. It was a drift dive, so the dive master held a rope attached to a float that the boat would follow around. After the first dive was over, we were not looking forward to getting back on the boat since it was still rocking a good amount. But we had to take a 40-minute break before the next dive and it is very necessary to switch to a new air tank, so we did not have much of a choice. It did not take long once we sat on the boat for all three of us to start feeling very seasick. Luckily, the diveshop staff did all of our airtank switches for us while we sat there looking miserable and trying to avoid feeding the fish our breakfast. Once we had moved to the next divesite and it was time to get back in the water, Mr. Fine helped me put my BCD back on as I was reaching the height of my nausea. At this point, I was well aware that I was not going for our next dive with the food in my stomach, so I struggled to lean over the edge with my heavy steel air tank on my back while Justin held on to me so that I would not go overboard. Sorry if that has completely grossed you out, but I felt a thousand times better post-puke. We then hopped in the water and had a wonderful 55-minute second dive!!! We saw a total of 4 sea turtles while we were down which was definitely the most exciting thing for me. Some other highlights were seeing a few octopi, lots of moray eels, some bright green lobsters, tons of lion fish, a huge puffer fish, and lots of other cool fish that I don't know the names of. Needless to see, we were all very glad that we hadn't wimped out of the second dive because we were feeling so miserable in between. As we were heading back to the beach, we sighted a pod of dolphins about 30 meters away. They then dove down into the water because they were able to smell the nearby fishing net, as told by Mr. Fine. We waited around for a few minutes looking for them and then about 10 of them surfaced right next to our boat!! I had never seen so many dolphins up-close in the wild before, so I quickly let out a squeal of delight. It was a perfect ending to a very memorable morning.
We ate lunch and got back right in time for the Dhow sunset cruise that we had planned for the whole group. A Dhow is a type of sailboat used by Arabic traders. I would recommend wikipedia'ing it in order to see a picture. They are really cool looking. The one we rode on was quite large since it ended up having about 30 passengers. It also had an "upper deck" on the back half of the boat that you climbed up a ladder to get to. It gave a wonderful view of the ocean, was a perfect spot for jumping into the water, and was romantically decorated with flowers. And of course we brought a cooler filled with beer, soda, and water along with a bag of cookies and Pringles! After a short trip, the boat anchored so that we could go swimming, snorkeling and ride the two kayaks that the Dhow was tethered to. I just threw on my goggles (which were later lost in the ocean when my kayak was capsized) and swam around, hanging onto the kayaks whenever I got tired.
Once the sun began to set, we all piled back into the boat and they put the sail up. Imagine this: a packed cooler, a group of really fun people including our Tanzanian Rasta friends, a guitar, the sun setting in the African sky, the freedom to spontaneously jump off the top deck of the boat whenever it felt like the right thing to do. It was perfect and totally worth a trip to Zanzibar.
After a quick shower and a change of clothes, we headed to a nearby bar where we had paid the "Spice Boys" to prepare a buffet dinner for us. While waiting I played some 3v3 Flip Cup (with very mini cups) with the people sitting across from us. I am ashamed that both of my partners were Dookies, but we were still awesome and we definitely won. There was a LOT of food, all of which was delicious. They had chapati, salad, octopus, squid, prawns, some kind of chicken thing that I didn't have, and heavily spiced rice. I think that my last bite of rice had an entire peppercorn in it which numbed half of my mouth and made me run back to the food to get some chapati to calm it down. It was easy to see where they got the name Spice Boys from. After dinner, we hung out at a nearby bar on the beach and then went to bed relatively early since we were all exhausted by this point.
Monday was a day of small problems building up on each other that culminated in us almost missing our flight back to Arusha. The best part was when we were already running very late and our bus broke down 1 mile away from the airport. We all immediately hopped off, piled into a dala dala and made it to the airport a couple minutes later. We arrived at the airport at about 4:37 (our flight is scheduled for 5). They tried to tell us the flight closed 20 minutes ago but we had called a few minutes beforehand and we garnered enough sympathy for them to let us through. They printed all 23 boarding passes, we paid the random 5,000 shilling airport tax and made it through security by 4:45. We sat down on the plane and it left the tarmac before 5pm. We did not even delay the flight. I was highly impressed. The plane stopped over in Dar es Salaam, which was a 15-minute flight tarmac-to-tarmac. It was the shortest flight of my life. We had to get off the plane, get new boarding passes, go through security again and then get back onto the exact same plane. It did not make much sense, but we just went along with it.
Zanzibar was a wonderful vacation that left us all closer together as a group. We are going on safari this coming weekend!!
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