Trip Report: Last Day in Zanzibar July 11, 2007

Our flight leaves at 12:30, so we left the hotel around 9:30 so that we could head to the airport. Breakfast was good as usual, and we let other staff members at the hotel to catch a ride with us to town.

One thing that was interesting is that a lot of the public transportation buses are old Japanese school buses. I wonder if Japan had donated them to Tanzania?

Also, Zanzibar also had a ton of roadblocks set up by the police. Not so sure why…

We were very sad to leave Zanzibar, but it was time to go back to our work in town. Our flight took us from Zanzibar to Dar, and Dar to KIA. The flight from Zanzibar to Dar was so hot! The plane couldn’t cool itself off, so we were sweating and baking inside!

We met Eric, who is just graduated from business school at UMich and chatted with us while we waited for the next plane in Dar.

On the flight from Dar to KIA, the person next to me, Cheli, was a flight attendant for Precision Air. He told me many things about Tanzania (where I should go for a safari, and where they mine the Tanzanite), and how he would like to become an entrepreneur in the entertainment business in Tanzania. I hope he gets to do what he dreams of doing!

Ahhh I had so much work to catch up on with my fellowship. I came home, had some food, and did more work.

Turns out that my host family leases a shop for a local to sell curio (souvenirs) in town, and showed me a bunch of maasai wood carvings for souvenirs for a really good price. I am going to get so much stuff to take home!

It was time for some rest again… Gotta wake up early to go to KCMC in the morning.

Trip Report: Day 3 in Zanzibar-Nungwi

I woke up at 7am to get ready to have a big breakfast so that I could go snorkeling at 9am! Breakfast is served at 7:30, and the server would give us a glass of freshly squeezed orange juice (oh yeah, their oranges aren’t orange like ours… they are kinda snot like color, but I promise, it’s really sweet). Breakfast also includes eggs and toast. I don’t know what it is.. but I love the bread here! It’s really tasty!

We got ready for snorkeling and got the fins and mask. The guy pointed to a wooden boat out on the beach, and said “that’s your boat! go!”. Two locals drove us out to the Kwenda Beach about 3 kilometers south of Nungwi. I was getting really nervous since I haven’t gone swimming in a long time, and I have never went snorkeling before, and I was in the ocean! I was getting really freaked out.

A few minutes later, we got to our spot, and one of the locals got off the boat and waved us to get off and join him. Not knowing how to use the mask, I got off the boat and went swimming towards the guy. I guess I forgot that I could float on water too, so I really exhausted myself keeping myself above water and trying to learn to use the mask. I had to go back to the boat to calm down and learn to use my mask! A couple of tries of using the mask under water, I was comfortable to swim around and check out what’s underneath me!

I finally fulfilled my dream of swimming with fish!!! There were a ton of fish under the boat, and schools of fish out in the reef. There were these zebra fish, and other fish with bright colors! Well I have really bad eyes, so I couldn’t see too far, and not knowing how to dive down with the mask, I didn’t get to see much underneath either. But! I was very very happy to be swimming with schools of fishies!!!

Next time, I need to go to the Z center to practice snorkeling and get contacts so that next time I go snorkeling, I can dive down and see the reef!

We returned to Nungwi Beach for lunch, and had fried calamari, last night’s calamari was too good. Mario had this huge pile of crab for 9000 Tshillings. What a great deal!

After lunch, we went to town to check out the shops. I headed back to the beach to relax. I spent about 1/2 an hour on the hammock under the rain, it was great to feel the rain w/o having to worry about getting wet. The sun finally came out, and I went back to the sand to get some sun.

Tish finally came back from her double dive! She told me she saw seahorses! I need to get my scuba license too… I want to see seahorses! We had pizza at the restaurant, and we went back to the beach to lounge around.

I went for a short walk down on either side of the beach, and saw this crab that looked like a rock when it tugs its claws in front of the eyes!!! That was really cool to see.

Next time when I come back to Zanzibar, I should go kayaking down the coast.

We relaxed on the beach til sunset, and enjoyed a few more fruit shakes from the bar. The restaurant advertised for a BBQ for 8000 T shillings (tuna, calamari, potatoes, rice, sauce, bread).

The BBQ was really yummy, and we spent some time meeting other people by the bonfire. We met a wonderful lady from Belgium who is having her 4th mission in Uganda. We couldn’t finish our Konyagi, and we gave it to her

Tish and Mario got dessert and we went back to the room to get some more rest.

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Ooh I almost forgot to mention, Tish and I bought these hand carved wooden keychains as souvenirs! They are so cool! Mr. King was the guy who sold it to us, and talked about what kind of wood it came from, and how that wood is naturally black! We had to pick the style we want, and write down what we want on the keychain. He would then come back later in the day give us the keychains. Tish and I are both really happy how they turned out!

Trip Report: Day 2 in Zanzibar-Nungwi

I woke up at 6:30 and watched CNN on TV for a little bit. The hotel included breakfast, so we headed to the rooftop for some toast and tea. The server was super nice (this is pretty usual, everyone is always so nice here). We met an Aussie at breakfast, and told us that Nungwi is very nice. He also had a very nice tan, so that was pretty promising that we would get a nice tan when we are there!

Mr. Pando came to pick us up at 8am sharp! We were off to a 1.5 hr ride to Nungwi from Stone Town. On the way, he stopped and showed us mango, jackfruit, cloves, bananas, papaya, tamarind, coconut trees. He also described how easy it is to climb to get coconuts!

That was the cool part, the not so cool part was to see how poor the country is, and how everyone is just hanging around because they don’t have jobs. People survive mostly on the fruit trees around them, and some raise chickens for their eggs and meat. Little kids would come up to you to say, “Hi! Give me your money!” For such a poor country though, the government actually fills the potholes in the roads! It was hard to imagine what it is like to live the way they do. It just seems so unfair how some people can be born into such wealthy families, while others would be born into places like these. We have so much crap in America, things like paper and pens that are just given away, thrown away, where people here would die to have a piece of paper, and a small pencil to play with. I should’ve taken all the freebies from career fair and given it away to children.

We stopped in a village for Nungwi, and found our hotel: Paradise Beach Hotel. We got there kind of early, so we had to wait for the room to be cleaned. At the reception, we could see the white sandy beach with clear blue water. The place was literally–paradise.

There was the occasional tropical shower, and we waited with our bags to get to our room. We finally got the room, and got settled in. The room was very basic, 3 beds with mosquito nets, a bathroom, shower, a hanger, and.. no key. Turns out the people before us took the key with them, so we had to wait for an hour for a guy to come and change the lock. We took turns watching over our stuff, and roamed around to check out the area.

The hotel had a nice restaurant over the beach. Prices for a drink was around 2000 T shillings, and a meal is around 5000-10000 T shillings. Tish and I had a fresh fruit shake, and it was so good because everything in it was made with fresh fruits!

Finally the lock was fixed, and we all had lunch at the restaurant. I helped myself to a burger and fries Fries are so good here, made with real potatoes and all! Their burger patties are actually beef patties mixed with vegetables. It was goooooood!

We chilled on the beach, and found deals for snorkeling (snorkeling for a day 9am-4 for $20 dollars, short snorkeling for $15 dollars) and diving (double dive for $90). Since I don’t have a diving license, I went for snorkeling at Kwenda Beach ($15,000 Tshillings), and set up a time to go on Day 3.

We wandered around for a bit, and spent most of our day on the beach, and at the bar. The water was very warm, and the water was never very deep. The Indian Ocean is so beautiful!

There were a ton of locals who would come to see if u wanted any services or to buy stuff from them (spa services, or braiding your hair, souvenirs). Around 1pm, it was low tide, and the beach was even better! There were a ton of shells and crabs! The most entertaining were these little white crabs (thanks Rubs, for correcting that typo) that walk around the beach and hide in the sand when they are seen!

Mario went to town and bought Avocados to make guacamole. We didn’t have too many utensils though, so it didn’t turn out too well. But the avocado was certainly delicious! Mario also brought over this Konyagi that Tish and Mario has been talking about so much. I tried it, and it was a pretty good hard alcohol, though, we can’t see to figure out what kind of alcohol it is.

Konyagi is sold in East Africa, and the ingredients read: fine spirits, Konyagi Flavoring, water. So I am not so sure what it is. But I think Andrew would really like it, so I should make sure I buy some to share with Andrew.

Tish and Mario spent the whole afternoon playing with the sand. We made the MIT Main campus on the sand! Some other tourists were really confused and asked us what it was… I think they thought we were crazy

The sun sets right in front of us on the beach, and it was just so beautiful. I couldn’t ask for more of this paradise, besides wishing that Andrew and my family was here to share this place.

We took a shower, and headed over to Jambo restaurant. I had tuna and rice, and yummmmmy it was so good! There were a few cats running around asking for food Ahhh I miss my cats! We weren’t really full from the food we had, so we went to the Paradise Beach Hotel restaurant to eat some more food. This time I had fried calamari with fries (5000 tshillings).

When it finally got really dark, we saw so many stars in the sky. We were all really tired from a day of doing nothing, and went to bed early around 11pm.

Trip Report: First Day in Zanzibar–Stone Town

Cost of going to Zanzibar for 4 days and 3 nights with my 2 buddies: ~$315 U.S. (per person)

Transportation to and from various places in Zanzibar + hotel for 3 nights (1 night in Zanzibar, 2 nights in Nungwi) was $100 U.S.

Flight, roundtrip from Kilimanjaro Int’l Airport was $215.

Because we are flying on Precision Air, they provide shuttles from their local ticketing offices to Kilimanjaro International Airport (KIA). I left Moshi town on the shuttle, Tish and Mario departed from Arusha. The first van left without them, but Tish was able to get a second shuttle to the airport.

At the airport, Tish and Mario got a beer for me to try, while Tish enjoyed a large bar of Snickers. It was “Tusker”, a nice refreshing beer, kind of like a Heineken. Beers here are sold by 1/2-litres, the bottles are pretty big. Soon, we boarded the plane, and we headed straight to Zanzibar. The flight actually has its final destination in Dar es Salaam, and Precision Air runs a route from KIA->Zanzibar->Dar–>KIA.

The view from the plane got all of us so excited to go to Zanzibar, all we saw were long stretches of beaches and nice blue water. We arrived at the airport in the afternnon, and exchanged some U.S. dollars to Tshillings (1 dollar to 1240 Tshillings was the rate). We met our guide, Mr. Pando, who drove us from the airport to our hotel, Safari Lodge, in Stone Town for the night.

Safari Lodge was a cute place. The lodge was a nice hotel. The room had a TV, a safe, a good bathroom, and A/C. We dropped our stuff and met our guide again downstairs. He showed us how we can get to the Darajani Market, and said we should also go to the seaside night market / seafood bbq by the House of Wonders later tonight. He left us to explore town, and agreed to meet us at 8am to go to Nungwi tomorrow.

We walked about 15-20 minutes to go to the Darajani Market. On the way there, we bought young coconuts for a couple hundred tshillings. The Darajani Market was a crazy place. We saw a bunch of vans packed with people, street vendors of all sorts. All we could smell was exhaust and every now and then, we’d smell fish. Vendors were selling all kinds of stuff: mangos, avocados, fish, spices, wifebeaters with G-Unit on it, bongo flavour cd’s, kitchenware, mattresses, mosquito nets, shoes, clothing, meat, jackfruits, veggies and more fruits…

The Darajani Market is one of the tourist attractions in Zanzibar, so bargaining wasn’t easy. Everywhere u go, people would try to rip u off. Tish, Mario, and I ended up buying a bunch of spices–Marsala, curry [333 tshillings for a packet of spices] and Vanilla Beans [~$2.5 for 10 vanilla beans]. Tish knows a bit of Swahili and charmed a few vendors and bought a ton of oranges for a very little money (don’t remember how much, but she got like 6-7 oranges for a buck). We also bought mangos (they were 400 Tshillings I think, super large and sweet). Mr. Mango was very nice too! Mario wanted to try Jackfruit and bought a huuuuge piece of jackfruit for 500 tshillings (I think that’s how much it was).

With our hands full of stuff from the market, we walked back towards the Safari Lodge, and sat down on the beach/pier to eat our fruits! Not too far from us was the House of Wonders, and around 6 or so, we started seeing smoke coming out from that area. We knew the BBQ was starting. We returned to the hotel room to freshen up, and we went to the BBQ for dinner!

That night market was one of the main highlights of the trip. Everything is about 1000-2000 Tshillings. There was a ton of seafood: squid, octopus, fish, shrimp, fish cakes, plantains/bananas, fried dough, doughnuts, bread, and best of all the food was the Zanzibar Pizza.

There was a few vendors that sold the Zanzibar Pizza. The guy would start off with a piece of dough smaller than a golf ball, and start kneading it to the limits. It would become a very thin piece of dough about 6-7 inches in diameter. Then they would pan fry another piece of dough until it’s crispy, and put it on top of that thin piece of dough for strength.

The vendor would then scoop in some chopped onions, some sort of meat, tomatoes, and beat it with an egg (eggs here in East Africa has yolks that are off-white, and not yellow!). Then using the outer edges, the pizza is then pan fried on top of a stove. Yummmm.. and the guy adds a ton of oil to make it crispy too. We also discovered that the Zanzibar Pizza also comes in dessert form: bananas and chocolate syrup!

Tish and I were a HUUUUGE FAN of the Zanzibar Pizza, we just wanted more and more. After we stuffed ourselves with tons of seafood, we stopped by an Indian restaurant on the way back to the hotel. We had lassi, which is a kind of flavoured milk! It was very delicious The owner came to talk to us and chatted with us for some time about the history of Zanzibar, and how he had a horrifying trip to New York back in the 80s…

We were so full and tired, food coma got us, we returned to the hotel, showered and slept like babies. I watched a little of the movie where 50 cent was in.. not sure what movie that was, but I need to remember to finish the movie when I get back to Boston.

Report: 4 days and 3 nights in Zanzibar July 10, 2007

Trip report coming up soon!

I miss my man, Andrew, and my family. The whole time I was there, all I could think was how I could have another vacation in Tanzania, cept next time, I want them to be there!

I gotta catch up on some emails and work tonight. Blog entry will come soon. Tons of details!!!