Zanzibar, Tanzania
Trip Start
Oct 06, 2008
1
10
19
Trip End
Dec 22, 2008
Zanzibar Archipelago,
Tanzania
Wednesday, October 29, 2008
Oct 30 - We arranged a taxi the night before to take us the North of the island to Nungwi beach. Also, in our taxi was an Irish fellow named Gerrod. He'd also been travelling independently in Africa and was heading to the same beach to look for some cheap accommodation just like us. We found the perfect little place at Union Beach Bungalows. Our room is right on the beach and a few steps away from the Indian ocean. Brock bargained with the owner $35/day for 7days. This was really good deal considering the other places on the beach wanted $45-50/night. So we settled in for the week. The water is amazing ....its crystal clear and is so blue and warm....it's absolutely beautiful and not a bad way to spend the week. Most of our time here we spent lounging on the beach reading books and napping. Enjoying a couple of beers at the local pub called the Funky Shamba. Meals on the beach are really expensive ($10 and up) for our budget so we venture into the village and find a local restaurant to eat at for a ¼ of the price. We've been eating fried fish and chips, and baked bananas. They eat bananas here like we eat potatoes at home....its really interesting the bananas taste like potatoes with a hint of banana. Mini loaves of bread are made fresh almost every day, so we've been buying bread, tomatoes, cucumber and process cheese known as Happy Cow to make veggie sandwiches for lunch.
Nov 6- We woke up and decided that it was a good day for snorkeling. Usually most tourists arrange the day before but, because we've felt slightly ill (beer induced), and possible rainy weather we thought arranging the same day worked better for us. So this morning while eating our breakfast we saw that there was a boat getting ready for a day trip. We asked the fellow if he was doing a snorkeling trip that day...which he was and asked if he had room for us...which he did. He wanted us to pay $25/person but we knew that usual cost for a snorkeling trip with lunch and gear was only $20, so we didn't have much trouble to get it to $20/person. ...although when we were getting on the boat the guy tried to stick us with $5 charge for snorkeling gear...but, it didn't work. After 1 ½ hours we got to our snorkeling destination. When we got in the water there were thousands of small jelly fish all on the surface of the water. After 10 minutes, we were back in the boat. Lisa got a bunch of little jelly fish stings on her arms but, nothing serious. The weather was kind of crappy and then it started to rain. It rained for 10min and then the skies cleared and the jelly fish were gone. Good thing as we thought that this was going to be a shitty day. The snorkeling was amazing so many fish, all different colours....it made the movie Finding Nemo come alive. We were on the boat with 3 other couples that were from an all inclusive resort on another part of Zanzibar. Basically, they had chartered the boat for the whole day. This was lucky for us as we were just tagging along. We knew that other snorkeling tours leave at 9am and are back by 3pm. No wonder the guy was trying to get more money out of us. After snorkeling we stopped and had lunch at a beach nearby. BBQ fish, rice, and grilled veggies were on the menu. We spent an hour stopped for lunch and then were off again sailing back to our port. On they way back the boat crew had some trouble with the sail on the Dhow(an African sail boat)...which delayed us a bit but we didn't mind as we ended up watching the sunset sailing on the boat. What a great day!
