A beach holiday

It's Saturday the 3rd of March and my week long zanzibarian beach holiday is over. I've had a fantastic week, however not without the odd hiccup and strange experience. I think I idealised Zanzibar a lot and although it is beautiful and Stone Town is enchanting there are other things that are kind of annoying. Zanzibar is a big tourist destination on Tanzania and it was strange to arrive and see Wazungu everywhere!! Living in Iringa for 2 months has made us very territorial and we enjoyed being the token wazungus so we all felt a bit challenged with so many tourists but we get extra brownie points from the locals when we speak swahili so we did manage to avoid getting ripped off too badly. We were also disgusted to see exposed shoulders and thighs, we have turned in to quite the prudes after only 2 months in Iringa.

We spend the first night in Stone Town and ate at the Foradhani Gardens which is a freshly cooked seafood/streetfood market right in stone town on the water. I never liked sea food before this trip (i've realised because I'd never really tried REAL seafood) and now i LOOOOOVVVEEE it! The Gardens are very charismatic at night as there are just stalls and stalls of seafood skewers, lobster claws, octopus and you pick what you want and they barbecue it right there infront of you. The difference between the gardens at night and during the day is huge and during the day the gardens are not much of anything. The next morning we had breakfast on the rooftop (with a beautiful view of stonetown) and then headed out to explore stone town. Zanzibar is muslim island and there is a huge arabic influence, especially in Stone Town so the streets are like a maze, skinny and winding and full of "enchanted ruins" as Elizabeth calls them. I don't think ive been so captured by a town as I was on that first day by Stone Town. In the afternoon myself, Elizabeth, Julia, Marie, Elysia and Mike (her bf who came over from the US for this hol), Nathan and Aaron rented a daladala and headed up to the most northern beach of the Island (and apparently the most touristy) and stayed in little bungalow/cottages on the beach. The beach was beautiful, white coraly sand and turquoise waters. It isn't high season so there aren't too many tourists but there are a bunch of resorts around Nungwi but we had a great time anyway. I got extremely sunburnt on the first day though because Nathan, Aaron and I had bought this Tanzanian sunscreen which was supposed to be 40+ and water resistant but we all ended up looking like lobsters and spent 3 or 4 days in excruciating pain and then blistered and now we're all peeling! I can safely say you're better off bringing your own sunscreen!!! We spent 2 nights at Nungwi and each night ended up at this awesome bar called Cholo's which is right on the beach and the bar is made out of a Dhow (traditional swahili fishing boat) and the seats and tables are canoes and there are just hammocks hanging from the trees and swinging chairs and it is just generally a cool place that serves banging cocktails and plays bad western 90's pop music!

We contemplated going to Kendwa but decided to head straight down to the East Coast which is supposed to be beautiful and has great snorkelling. We hired out another daladala and headed to Bwejuu (with only a few issues and hours of haggling and arguing in Stone Town on the way). Now Bwejuu is very beautiful but in a different way to Nungwi, there are miles of white sand in both directions and it is much less developed than Nungwi, the water is much shallower and when the tide is out you have to walk for atleast 1km to be able to swim and the ground is covered in seaweed which the local women farm (very cool!). It has almost an eerie feeling because a lot of the bungalows were empty and it is so quiet at night. The first night was pretty good and we just chilled out and the owner of the bungalows we were staying in cooked us an awesome Red Snapper and vegetable curry and besides being attacked by some sort of bug in the bed sleeping was fine! The next day we decided to try snorkelling so we hired out some bicycles and snorkelling gear and headed to a lagoon about 10mins ride away which was supposed to be great for snorkelling. 23mins later, sweaty and dehydrated, butts hurting from riding bicycles on the sand we arrive at the "lagoon" got straight into the water and could find NOTHING but rock and sea urchins. It was not a pretty or welcome sight. After about 30mins of frustrating searching for any kind of pretty sea life we asked at a restaurant only to find we'd been swimming in the wrong area. Now we were wet, hungry and hot so we headed up to an expensive resort restaurant for lunch because we were desperate. The weather turned a bit sour but after lunch a few of us were determined to see some coral and fish so we walked along the cement pathway (yeh we kind of missed that!) in the ocean to the lagoon in choppy, windy weather and found some coooooolll stuff! It wasn't as purdy as it would have been in nice weather but it was still worth it. Then we rode home and veged out for a while and found out that the guy who owned the bungalows we were staying in had been taken to the police station and put into jail!! We were sad because this guy was pretty cool and loved his mama and cooked good food but we didnt know much about it or anything. It was only a couple of hours later that I realised I couldn't find my camera anywhere, I searched everywhere but to no avail! It had been sitting on my bed but we had all been around and inside the bungalow and so no one could really understand where it had gone. There was no staff around at this time so there was nothing i could do except go to dinner and chill out. During dinner a huge storm swept in from the sea with massive lightening and thunder (it got pretty close too) and the electricity went out so we all headed back to the bungalows to take cover. At this time the water main had already broken so we had no water and now no electricity and it was pitch black. We found one staff memeber wandering around and asked him for some lanterns and he said "I'll ask" and then never returned. So here we were, stranded on an eerie beach, completely deserted with no electricity or running water, there is no transportation to anywhere, the staff members have all weirdly disappeared, my camera has been stolen and the owner of the place is in jail. Oh and we also had no sheets because they hadn't brought us any! The next morning the owner is back and so Nathan thinks up a good conspiracy theory that my camera was stolen by his workers to bail him out of jail. I'm sticking to that story because its a good one!
We finally realised it was time to get out and headed back to Stone Town!

We spent the last 3 days hanging out in stone town, relaxing, eating and shopping! On the last friday night we returned to livingstones and danced tanzanian-style and then headed out to the only nightclub in Stone Town where we danced to American Pie, living on a prayer, absolutely everybody and waited for Thriller to come on (it never did!).
It was an awesome ending to the week!

By the end of the week I was glad to be heading back home, Iringa has become our home, and was excited to meet all the Tanzanian volunteers and really get into training!!

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