dhiren.za.net

So the deployment in Dar es Salaam went off mostly well - there were a bunch of snags here and there, but around 6.30am on Friday morning, our stuff was declared working as well as it should, under the circumstances. Which meant I was clear to spend the weekend in Zanzibar as planned.

I took the ferry from Dar to Zanzibar. It took about 3 hours (the porters lied and said it was the 90 minute one) so I half-napped while trying to keep a grip on my bag to prevent the various dodgy looking people around me from taking a closer look. Eventually I arrived at Zanzibar, and the dude at the passport control very kindly found me a decent ride to my hotel.

Mr Chimbeni, musician, master of ceremonies, television actor, tour guide and taxi driver, took me to my hotel for the princely sum of 10,000 shillings. The exchange rate by the way is around 1150 shillings to 1 US dollar, so around 145 shillings to 1 rand. Mr Chimbeni gave me his card, and said he would be glad to take me on a tour around whichever tourist spots I wanted to visit the next day.

So I checked in to the hotel, went up to my room, and fell asleep for a while. Then I got up, called Mr Chimbeni and arranged for him to pick me up at 9am on Saturday for a tour of Stone Town in the morning, and somewhere else in the afternoon. After supper, I thought I'd go for a swim in the sea, but that turned out to be a bit of a failure. The tide goes out at night, which means that the beach is basically mushy sand for about 100-200m out. As I was walking further out, trying to find some water to swim in, I stood on a shell or something, and cut my foot. So I limped back to my room and went back to sleep.

I woke up at about 8.50 in a bit of a daze, and called Mr Chimbeni, hoping that he was late. He was already waiting for me at reception. That sucked. So I had a quick shower and skipped breakfast and went down for my tour of Stone Town.

Stone Town is a pretty interesting place - there's a lot of slave history, and some interesting buildings and stuff. And lots of tourist shops. I'll put up a bunch of photos after I finish this boring writeup.

After Stone Town, and purchasing some souvenirs (Mr Chimbeni also proved his competence at being an expert negotiator with the local salesmen), I had lunch at a hotel on the beach, and ran into a girl who grew up in Stanger. Small world. Lunch was pretty decent, if a tad expensive.

After lunch, we went to a spice farm for a tour. I saw a bunch of interesting trees, and got an awesome hat made out of leaves. I managed to bring it back in my bag, but it got a bit squashed :( I also ate some fruit, which is the likely source of the stomach bug I found myself with late on Saturday night. When I got back to the hotel after the spice tour, I finally got to swim in the sea for a while, which was pretty awesome.

The flight back to Dar es Salaam took about 20 minutes, and was kinda bumpy. I then spent quite a while sitting around doing nothing much at the airport waiting for checkin to open for my flight. A coke outside cost 1000 shillings... one inside (when I finally got inside) cost 1200 shillings. The annoying part about the airport is that almost all the shops are inside, past the checkin area. So there's absolutely nothing to do apart from sit on benches outside or buy cokes until an hour or two before your flight.

I had to show my passport about 5 or 6 different times from entering the airport to entering the plane. No idea why. The flight back took around 3.5 hours, and I watched 2 Weeks Notice to avoid falling asleep. Very important if you travel to Tanzania - make sure you get your travel shots beforehand, and a yellow card for your passport - there were a bunch of people who weren't allowed through passport control at Jhb because they didn't have the vaccinations or the paperwork. Yellow fever is compulsory apparently, and a bunch of others are recommended.

And that's my trip! I resized a bunch of photos, so I'll put those up with some descriptions shortly.
Zanzibar is a pretty awesome place - would have been nice if I had an extra day or two to see a bit more though, but I did manage the more important bits, and got to take a swim too, so it was pretty worthwhile.