Dreaming of Zanzibar

All of us had been dreaming of Zanzibar for such a long time – the white sand, the crystal blue water, the seafood and the hotel beds!

Getting there was part of the fun as we used local transport instead of our trusty Truckosaurus. We started off from Makadi Beach on the outskirts of Dar in matatus (similar to tuk-tuks) bouncing over the dirt roads, then had a quick trip in a crowded foot ferry, and then took ‘Kilimanjaro’, a more luxurious ferry, to the spice island of Zanzibar.

We had two full days in Nungwi and two full days in Stone Town.

In Nungwi, we were happy to have Katie rejoin the trip but sad that Guber didn’t as he had a job offer he couldn’t refuse.

Shaun, Karen and I finished off our dive course here with Spanish Dancer Divers – we now have our ‘Open Water’ qualification. The water temperature was much warmer than in Lake Malawi and the water was crystal blue.

Marianne was our dive instructor and she was brilliant. She’s from the outskirts of Paris and reminds me of Audrey Tatou in Amélie with her short brown hair in loose curls and lovely French accent. We went firstly in a ‘pole pole’ (slow slow) boat to Mnemba Island, 1 ½ hours away.

There, we finished off all of our confined dives and skills tests and were then able to enjoy the reef and its incredible array of underwater life – a garden eel sticking out from the sand, trigger fish, puffer fish, peppered moray, scorpion fish, humpback snapper, basslets, angel fish, grouper and unicorn fish. I was a little overwhelmed by all the different types of fish as I wasn’t familiar with them. Marianne was making the symbols for them as we saw them, and then explained them to us afterwards. See general pics here.

Later that afternoon we went to dive at Magic Reef, where we saw scorpion fish, angel fish, banner fish, cube boxfish, octopus, goldbar wrasse, clown fish, skunk anemone fish, spot fin lionfish, clearfin lion fish, pipe fish (in the seahorse family) and trumpet fish. I was amazed by the lionfish in particular which had little feathery like fins all around them. When coming up from our last open water dive, Marianne reached for her clipboard and I thought we had one more skills test to do, but when she turned the board around, it said ‘CONGRATULATIONS!’ We had just received our Open Water qualification J

We also had a day to spare in Nungwi and my biggest decision of the day was which type of bread to have my eggs on. As Marianne said, if that’s the biggest problem I have for the day, “That’s happiness right there!” I filled the rest of my day with a deep tissue massage, pedicure, village walk, swimming in the clear blue water, eating calamari coconut curry and drinking 6,000Tsh (about $4) cocktails.

Half of our group went on a spice tour which included a Spice Farm and Stone Town. We walked around the spice farm, where a huge variety of plants were growing wild, such as lemongrass, breadfruit, nutmeg – apparently women’s viagra,

Dong Dong (the golden mango – a stronger tasting mango), durian, cinnamon, cloves (reminding me of mulled wine at the Christmas markets in Strasbourg), jackfruit, lipstick fruit, soursop apple, tamarind, cassava, big lemon (about twice the size of a normal lemon), Arabica coffee, pepper tree, curry leaves, rambutan, cardamom, Ylang Ylang, ginger, vanilla, cocoa, turmeric, tiny mandarins, and mangosteen. The mangosteen wasn’t in season sadly and when it is, the owner has to sit by it with a stick to deter all of the kids from eating it!

We drank and ate young coconut, starfruit, passionfruit, orange, golden mango, pawpaw, cucumber, custard apple, jackfruit, durian, and bananas. The most controversial was the durian as you’d expect – I personally like the creamy oniony taste but it wasn’t to everyone’s liking and the smell nearly made some gag.

In Stone Town, we visited the Anglican Church and the old Slave Market where we were told 50,000 slaves passed through each year over half of whom died. Theold Fort, erected by Omani Arabs, was made from coral, mud and stone as per many of the older buildings, hence giving it the name Stone Town. The winding alleyways were fun to wander around on our own although we ended up getting lost several times. A highlight for me was definitely the seafood, particularly the lobster Zanzibar pizza (5,000 Tsh – about $3) at the night market, served to me by a local who spoke a wide array of languages including Hungarian! The sweet sugar cane juice was also not to be missed.

Five of us went on a trip the next day in search of dolphins and monkeys. This dolphin swim in Kizimkazi

was a less personal experience than the one I did in Ponta, Mozambique but fun nonetheless. Once we found them, we were told to quickly jump in the water and the first thing I noticed were the stingers – kiwavi as the locals call them. They looked like long individual tentacles and they hurt, but are apparently not the worst ones you can get there. That didn’t stop me from snorkelling around and trying to keep up with the pod of dolphins swimming gracefully just above the seabed beneath us.

It also didn’t stop me from getting back in the water another three times to swim with them. But it did mean that I was covered with little red marks from the stingers that lingered for the next few days.

Our next stop was the Jozani Chwaka forest to see the rare Zanzibar Red Colobus Monkeys. The current population is at 2,350 and they are found only on Zanzibar, half of which reside in and around Jozani Forest. Red colobus monkeys live in groups of between 30 to 50 and are called ‘poison monkey’ in Swahili as they are very destructive. The locals believe when the monkeys have fed in an area the trees and crops die and dogs are thought to lose their fur if they eat them. Red colobus monkeys also have a strong smell, apparently accounting for why they are not kept as pets so the visitor centre informed us. Our guide found a troop of them almost immediately and they were completely at ease with us and continued with their normal behaviour – eating, sleeping and swinging around on branches.

As I was getting shots of them, I felt a stinging sensation on my feet – stinging nettles! Stung twice in one day – once in the water and once on land… ouch! Although we could’ve spent all day with the monkeys, we also visited the mangrove forest and saw many crabs as well as an elephant shrew (which I hadn’t seen before) on the way out.

Later that afternoon four of us took a pole pole boat out to Prison Island (Changuu) but were surprised to find out that it had never been used as a prison, instead only as a quarantine station.

There really wasn’t much to do there aside from scratching the neck of one of the endangered Aldabra Giant tortoises, a gift from the Seychelles.

So all in all, Zanzibar exceeded our expectations and I’m sure many of us will continue dreaming about the island for a long time to come.