Stonetown - Zanzibar and spice tours

  Stonetown Zanzibar, Tanzania
Sunday, March 12, 2006

Boats in Dar Es Salem

Dhow early morning in Dar

Large Dhow

A bit claustrophobic last night with all the heat and I'd had to get out of bed a few times to escape the suffocating feeling. Down on the boat and in the harbour we could see plenty of huge container ships with the small dhows passing close by. Pretty cool to see them next to each other - old verses new.

There was a bit of a fracas on the boat as an Aussie guy, quite rightly, told a loud obnoxious Arab looking gentlemen who was using the F and C word profusely and looked like he had one to many pops that morning to quiet down. This just made him louder and his poor, embarrassed looking, mother had to come to save the day. He sulked and complained to anyone who would listen to him for the rest of the trip.

I love the sea and was more than happy to sit on the upper deck for the whole trip watching Dar disappear and Zanzibar getting closer.

There were loads of containers on the docks in Stonetown and I wondered what they all had inside. Safety obviously wasn't a top concern as one of them was suddenly hoisted by a crane and left the ground about 5 feet from where I was walking. Luckily it swung in the opposite direction to me.

View from room in Flamingo Hotel

Not too many touts around as I had expected to see lots given the warning given in my book. I jumped in a cab to the Flamingo Hotel. My room had some nice views across the rooftops from its 4th floor location. I spent the next hour just getting lost in the narrow maize of streets. Plenty of old colonial buildings, many of them falling into disrepair. Lots of interesting woodwork on the doors themselves.

Eventually I ended up by the sea in an area full of beach front cafes where I enjoyed a latte, a mango, pineapple and orange juice while looking out to sea over the white sand beach.

I met Bill from my safari a while later just wandering around Stonetown so it was back to another cafes for another juice and an opportunity to swap stories about the Kili hike. It sounds like Bill had experienced a real blizzard on his hike and white out conditions on the summit!

I have to say the people I've met on Zanzibar have been super friendly and not too aggressive like my guidebook mentioned. Sure people ask you to buy things but it's all in a good natured way and a quick no will usually send them packing.

Sunset from Stonetown

Sunset in Stonetown 6

Sunset in Stonetown 8

Sunset in Stonetown 9

After a sunset beer on the beachfront I headed to Forodhani Gardens a place locals are meant to go and hang out on the evening times. There were rows of seafood BBQ stores that seemed to be mostly frequented by tourists. But for $5 I managed to get 4 kebabs containing Red Snapper, Kingfish, shrimp, some sort of shell fish , some Nan bread and a glass of sugar cane juice.

I met a Slovakian girl who lived in Boston and 2 nice ladies who worked for one of Bush's faith based initiatives. There were over in east Africa working on reducing the number of AIDS cases and naturally the conversation centered around some of the huge problems this continent still faces.

We all went for Gelato later, apparently this island is hugely popular with the Italians who can take charter flights here. You'd thing they had enough beaches in Italy! One of my scoops was an interesting licorice flavour.

I have a lot of respect for the German guy I met at breakfast the next day. Unlike most NGO and charity workers who were in Africa driving $30,000 Land Cruisers and staying in $200 a night hotels that comes directly from your tax dollars or charity contributions, this guy was staying in a $10 a night hotel that included breakfast. The reason why? So he spent as little as possible of his VW foundation money on travel so more would be available for the scholarships he was handing out. The guy was a professor at a German university and did this work on top of that.

Local spices

Nutmeg

I booked onto a spice tour and it was fantastic. After stopping at some historical baths we made about 5 different stops each time seeing different things. Some of what we saw included

Fruits - Sour sop, almonds, bananas, jackfruit, coconut, papaya, orange, grapefruit, pineapple, bread fruit, durians and coffee.

Spices from trees - Cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, all-spice

Spice plants - Turmeric, ginger, vanilla, lemon grass, pepper and cardamon

Some facts I found interesting were that most of the spices on the 'spice island' come from Asia. Coconuts fruit 3 times a year, all other spices twice apart from vanilla that produces just once a year, making it one of the most expensive products.

There were also Aloe Vera plants and 11 types of citrus plants all together.

Black and white and red peppers are from the same plant. Red is riper and white is just the inside of the black pepper corns. We saw cassava, the root vegetable I saw in Uganda, this is apparently the same as tapioca! The nutmeg stone is enclosed in a fruit that is used for jam, there is also a red jacket around the nut that is used for soup.

As well most of the spices are used for some sort of traditional medicine and cures for ailments including diahoria, toothache and malaria.

After a feast of a lunch that included most of the spices we'd seen we headed to the beach. It was absolutely bucketing down but 3 South Africans went swimming anyhow. I wasn't going to be outdone or let the British be outdone so I followed right behind. It was excellent, the beach was beautiful, the water was like a bath and we saw some fishermen cleaning some barracuda type fish they had caught.

Our guide invested $4 of his hard earned money on what looked like about 15 small sized fish.

Crabs claws

Seafood BBQ at Forodhani Gardens

The Mozambique embassy was the destination late afternoon, I soon realized that my Portuguese wasn't too hot and communication could be an issue in Mozambique! Later I headed down to the beach to watch the sunset with Wikas and his wife who I'd meet on the spice tour. We also met a Belgium couple, Rolland and Myriam who were traveling for 14 months in their own 4WD. They'd been all the way down the west coast and were now traveling back up the east coast. They saved my live as they had a guide book for southern Africa. All the shops in Dar and Zanzibar had sold out, I'd have been screwed without a guide book! It was the Forodham Gardens again for dinner. My choices tonight where lobster, squid, octopus, blue marlin, chips and sugar cane juice!

March 14th and all the eggs in Tanzania seem to be missing yokes. It's funny my first experience was on the safari and I thought they were saving them to make the mayonnaise at lunch - but now based on the hard boiled eggs I've had I think they are just really pale to the state of being almost white.

Another Stonetown vendor

Local lady in Stonetown

Local paintings

Old colonial building in Stonetown

Out for a fishing trip

Stonetown building

Stonetown vendor

I decided to finally take the camera out and take some snaps of the fancy doors and crumbling old buildings around Stonetown. It wasn't all plain sailing though. I managed to get a soldier and government building in one shot - the soldier who came up to reprimand me wasn't very happy. Tried to take some pictures of a boat on the beach before a man came running up screaming 'one photo on dollar'. Finally a woman came up to me while I was wandering down some alley and told me in a very stern voice to put the camera away as this was a dangerous area of town and I would surely get robbed. All in all though is was a pleasant little stroll.

After all that I needed a beer. Funny in Tanzania they feel compelled to put the drink right in front of you. If you have a book on the table they will put the glass right next to it and push the glass towards the book until you move the book. That's ok though because as soon as they have gone you are free to re-arrange your stuff as it was!

Went back to the Mozambique embassy to pick up my passport with my nice new visa attached. I always get a happy high feeling when I know I'm going to a new country so this put me in a good mood.

The usual routine that evening. A beer while watching the sunset followed by fish BBQ. This time it was barracuda and a shell fish similar to mussels. I also had chips falafel and sugar cane juice to wash it down with.

Tonight I met 2 Jehovah's Witnesses who didn't once try to sell me on converting! The guy was a builder and working in Malawi for 3 months for charity, but for some reason it didn't seem right for a Jehovah's Witness to start talking in his British slang about what a great group of lads he worked with and how they all had a great laugh at work!