After just less than a month doing lots of driving and safari tours, Blake and I decided that we were due for some island downtime. From Uganda we flew across to Dar Es Salaam in Tanzania and spent a couple of days looking around before catching the ferry across to Zanzibar Island. There was not a lot to do in Dar Es Salaam but we did stumble across an amazing vegetarian Indian restaurant called Chowpatty. We gorged on naan and curry including a delicious paneer butter masala. We also spent a lazy afternoon at Karambezi Cafe overlooking the water.
Not knowing much about Zanzibar before arriving, I was shocked to realise how big it was. At 2,461km2 and with a population of around 1.7 million, it dwarfed anything I had expected. This made travelling from one region of the island to another quite a long trip so we based ourselves around Pwani Mchangani on the north-eastern side of the island in a massive beachfront airbnb. Because the island services such a large amount of European tourists, the prices reflect this. Food, accommodation, transport are all much more expensive than we had experienced throughout the rest of our trip so far. We hired a scooter and did some exploring but mostly we spent the next 6 days swimming in the ocean out the front of our apartment, reading, watching movies and hunting for the best foods. Chapatis, dozens of curries and a bit of seafood later and we’d hit a couple of absolute winners. A lobster red curry for lunch one day and a seafood platter for dinner another had set the bar pretty high. Our time in this area included a boat trip across to the small reef around Mnemba Isand for some freediving.
From Pwani Mchangani we moved to one of the more touristy areas in the northern tip called Nungwi. This area is west facing so we hired another beachfront airbnb and set about swimming and enjoying the sunsets for a few more days before heading to Stone Town for 2 days. Stone Town is the main hub of Zanzibar, all tourists arrive through here either by the airport or via the ferry. Lukmaan restaurant featured heavily in our last few days as the food was cheap and absolutely delicious and again, we ate many curries and chapatis washed down with fresh cold tropical fruit smoothies. We also took a boat trip across to Prison Island to view the giant tortoises and to Nakupenda Sand Bank.
Our initial impressions of Tanzania weren’t exactly amazing. The people on Zanzibar are a lot more pushy and in your face trying to sell things or just get money from you than anywhere we have experienced in Africa so far. This was alternatively frustrating when happening to me and amusing when happening to Blake. On top of this, Zanzibar has some serious sustainability issues that they need to address. Sustainable use of the natural resources, especially the ocean is one (we tried to be conscious of this and eat seafood only occasionally) and waste management another. Everywhere across the island we were shocked by the amount of rubbish both on the land and in the water. Plastic washed up on the beaches everywhere and hotels burying their rubbish under the sand on the beach. There are some very large hotel construction projects underway on the island. Hopefully this helps create opportunities for education and sustainable tourism rather than compounding the current situation.
Now that we’ve relaxed and spent some time swimming, we are ready to go and test ourselves against Kilimanjaro for the full moon on the 16th of February. Off to Moshi we go!
