arriving in Dar es salaam and Zanzibar

---

The view from the train was pretty amazing, rolling hills, forests, villages and farmland. We seemed to stop very often, it was the ordinary train not the express. There were lots of little villages, but since we were at the back of the train all the people selling things on the side of the tracks would run down the train to sell things to passengers. Wehad bought most of our food in Kapiri Mposhi so didn’t need to buy much. We did however occasionally buy a meal from the train restaurant. Because we were in first class, a man would come along for each meal and take orders, then bring them to the room for us. The bar was a few carriages up the train between first and second classes. It was just a few lounges with a wooden bench to serve drinks over with what looked like a disused deepfreeze in the back full of ice with the drinks in it to keep them cool, it worked! So we had some cold drinks with our chicken and rice. There was a little table under the window where we would eat. The beds were pretty comfy in the end, but the room itself was very dirty! There was one shower on our carriage with cold water, but the water ran out very quickly. The toilet emptied onto the tracks (eww) and the sink where you washed your hands emptied onto the floor which then emptied down onto the tracks. All in all we had fun though.
When we crossed the border, first the Zambian officials came along very efficiently, stamped and left, then half an hour later the Tanzanians checked our visas and stamped us in. We were hastled to change money at the border by lots of guys but the rate they used was herendous! We would have lost 25% of the money! So we decided we would just pay for a taxi in Dar with our remaining US dollars and expected (since no one told us otherwise) that we could use either Kwatcha or Tanzanian shillings on the train for the rest of the way… we were of course wrong. So we had to negotiate to pay for things we needed, like water and a last meal (we didn’t want to eat anymore stale bread with cheap peanut butter) paying with a mix of us dollars and kwatcha. The last dinner we had was unexpected because the train was 6 hours late so we arrived at 1am on the 1st august, the maintenance lady came along earlier in the evening too and collected all the sheets and pillows so we had nothing to nap on, so just slept fully clothed until we arrived.
The taxi to our hotel cost 10,000 Tsh, but all the cabbies were trying to get everyone to pay 30,000 to begin with! Most people agreed on 15,000 but we didn’t and paid less  10,000 is supposed to be the normal rate. We had booked a night at the Jambo Inn so went straight there and checked in and went to bed. The room was soooo hot and muggy!! And so many mosquitoes in comparison to Zambia, but we opened all the windows, turned the fan on and put over the mozzie net that was provided and slept really well. Breakfast was included so we had that in the morning down in their restaurant, fried egg and toast. The tour office for the hotel is not in the hotel, so the manager drove us to his office a few streets away to show us what packages we could do to see the northern parks i.e. Serengeti etc, and his options were very economical, but the office wasn’t well run, in a bad building and they had no pamphlets, website and were not listed on TATO Tanzania, a website where tour companies can be registered and get reviewed, so we decided against going with them. We walked to the ferry terminal, about 10mins from the hotel and bought tickets on the slow ferry called the Flying Horse. We talked at length with the ticket booth owner, an elderly Indian man who invited us in to buy the tickets, apparently a man named Nash and his wife and a few crew sailed the boat all the way from Australia to Tanzania to be used as this ferry service. This man and his brother employed them for 6 months to bring the boat.
We wandered back to the hotel and hungout for a while and used their wifi in the room, cost about $1.50 for 12 hours! Dinner we had at the Jambo Inn restaurant which is famous in the hostelling crowd in Dar for excellent and cheap cuisine. It was true to its reputation!! We had 2 different chicken curries… Indian style with rice and naan bread… soooo good! And cost us about $20 for everything including drinks and ice cream for dessert.
Next morning we had our free brekky then took the boat to Zanzibar. We had to be at the terminal before 11 for boarding and it was supposed to leave at 12. It is called the slow ferry as it takes 3-4 hours, but costs $20, the fast ferry takes an hour and a half but costs $35. We arrived and walked all the way onto the boat, past a huge crowd that wasn’t moving or doing much, and were told that this was the time just for loading cargo, but since we were there and had paid a larger fare (mzungus, as we are called here get higher prices than residents) then we could go on and find a seat anyway, so we were the first to board. We got seats on the top floor at the back, looking out over the harbor and waited an hour before we left and the place was packed with people! The ride over was nice, took 3.5 hours. We arrived and the boat was in utter chaos, everyone wanted to get off first, eventually we made it off with all our bags feeling a bit squished. We walked up the jetty and were halted at immigration…? Its still part of Tanzania but they like to feel independent on Zanzibar, which is cool, so we filled in the forms they gave us and got our stamp and showed our yellow fever vaccination certificate. Finally we made it through the throng and found a taxi (it’s a small place, but we had no idea where to go) and went to our hotel, The Haven. We arrived at a weird little parking area off a side street and the driver got out and said ´now we walk´ so we got a bit suspicious, but around one corner nearby and there it was, The Haven.
The Haven is a nice little place in a backstreet not too near the hubbub of the rest of stonetown, but close enough to walk to it all within 5 minutes. We got checked in to our room, (double with shared bathroom) and went for a wander. We had read that there is a great little family run restaurant of all local food called Two Tables (they literally only have 2 tables, but can seat 15) so we walked there and booked for that evening. The streets in Stonetown are amazing, winding backstreets and allyways with so many amazing front doors to houses and shops, wooden, huge and carved beautifully. On the way back we stopped at a cyber café since we were trying to find a reputable, affordable and decent itinerary safari operator for our trip to the Serengeti etc. The internet was slow, so by the time we were finished, we had to rush to make dinner on time. We arrived 5 mins early though and got some free before dinner entertainment in the lounge room, the 2 daughters of the owner, about 7 to 9 years old were having loads of fun dancing and singing will jumping down the stairs, very funny. The lounge/waiting area was a downstairs room with loads of very cool ornaments, old polaroids, old radios, lots and lots of old types of padlocks, a really awesome collection of just cool things. We were seated at a big table with 2 Italian women who had arrived just after us. Turned out they were both teachers and were in Tanzania for the school holidays. One was an English teacher, but the other spoke little English but both spoke Spanish so that was the chosen language in which to converse.
The food started arriving, it was $15 a head for a set menu (they don’t serve a la carte) and there were many courses. First a vegetable soup with chipati, then a bean kind of soup with yummy fried sweet cinnamon, bananay bread (don’t know the names of things unfortunately). We ate a very spicy kind of falafel, yummy spicy coconut sauce, then the main course was coconut rice with deliciously spiced fish. They served water bottles for us all to drink, but nothing else. It was really nice food though. About half way through our meal 5 spanish people sat at the other end of the table to eat as well, so we all conversed in Spanish.
We went back to the hotel to find that the ally intersection in front of our hotel is a nightly food, tea and coffee stall. All the local young men were sitting around drinking coffee and talking. Dario joined in and I went upstairs. The attitude towards women is different here and they all just wanted the boys to be there, they didn’t talk much to me. It was Ramadan so everyone had just finished eating their first meal of the evening and were very happy to be able to eat and drink together.
Next morning we ate our included breakfast, which didn’t include bread, so the owner took Dario down some allyway to buy fresh rolls of the baker. After that, we wanted to see the town, so we took all the backstreets in the direction of the old fort and turned up on the main street right next to it. We went inside, got a speel from the reception about tours they run, signed the guestbook and walked inside (its free). Inside we got bombarded with ´come into my shop´ and talked to a tour operator at length about various things including his tours. We walked on through a doorway into an open grassy area that is a designated souvenir market place within the fort, so again got many people asking us to shop. Dario disappeared up some stairs to go to the top tower, I waited by looking at things in the shops, eventually agreeing to buy a scarf and get some henna done on my ankle, only problem was that Dario had the wallet, so we had to wait for him to come down, he eventually did, and he bought a Mzungu t-shrt. The henna took about 10 minutes to apply, a beautiful pattern done by a woman named Mona Lisa, who then insisted I go and look at her shop where she mostly sells paintings with her brother and another artist. We got into a bidding war by accident, we didn’t have enough cash and we promised to come back the following day, they almost didn’t let us leave the shop! We headed to a restaurant on the beach that was open for 2 drinks, as it was all we could afford then wandered back to the hotel to dump our shopping.
Dario had made friends the night before and they took him off to play football nearby and I went back to the market to buy a painting from Mona Lisa. She couldn’t believe that I had come back to buy from her, I suspect that lots of tourists who just don’t want to keep arguing say the same thing and never return, but we did actually want to buy one. I ended up picking a different one, smaller and purchased it, but silly me, I ended up buying two and not having enough cash, so Mona Lisa´s brother accompanied me back to the hotel to get the extra money and we had a nice chat on the way. I went and used internet nearby until Dario came back from football, we had showers and went out for dinner. We had a look for an Italian place that had a good reputation and had some great pasta. Unfortunately they were out of icecream but we wandered to another Italian place on the water for gelato later. That evening we organized the next day to go on a spice tour at 9am.
Next morning we were picked up at 9 after brekky by a guy and the rest of the tour group, then we had to walk a few blocks to the tourist office to get the van. We all piled in and drove off to the spice farm for the day with our guide. The spice farm was really interesting and our guide very knowledgeable, but it doesn’t just grow spices, we saw and tried tiny tastes from the tree, many fruits as well and saw wood plantations such as Mahogany and Teak. A short list of the spices I remember: peppercorns (the fact that every type of peppercorn comes from the same vine is pretty cool, just harvested at different times and processed differently); Cinnamon; Cardomen; the red stuff that goes in Tandoori and stained my hands (cant remember spices name); vanilla; coffee; cocoa; green and yellow curry leaves; VERY hot and tiny chillis, lemon grass; ginger and cloves. I think there were more though. Then we got back in the van and we were driven to a place where we tried every type of fruit grown in the area including: orange; bitter orange; tangerine; jack fruit; pineapple; some kind of giant custard apple and a few others. Then we went to a hut and sat on a giant mat to eat a traditional lunch together, rice, yummy coconut sauce with lots of veggies and spinach on the side.
We then drove to a ruin of a bath house from a 17th century sultan who lived on the island before driving back to stone town by 2pm. Dario once again went and played football while I hung around and used the internet nearby. Then we went to dinner at the other Italian place, the one we had had gelato at. It was mediocre, but the dessert was once again awesome! We wandered back to the hotel and Dario hung out with the guys and had a few coffees before going to bed.
Next morning we had organized to go on a dolphin tour. We were picked up at 8 and drove the hour and a bit with our other tour members to the beach on the south tip of Zanzibar to get our boat. It was a wooden boat with an outboard. It started to rain but we went anyway, leaving those things behind in the van that couldn’t get wet. We were one of about 4 boats out on the water, I suspect because of the weather some people had cancelled because we had heard lots of people are there with about 10 boats usually. We found the dolphins without too much trouble, suited up with our fins and mask/snorkel and when they said jump we jumped into the water next to the dolphins. It was cool to see them so close, but generally, depending which pod we were next to, they would dive or swim away fast, some pods didn’t mind us though and would stay pretty close and come and take a look. It felt a bit like hunting, chasing down a pod then jumping in to see them, not sure I would do it again, didn’t realize that was what was going to happen. After an hour or more of this, and getting some great underwater photos, we headed back towards the shore and stopped briefly for snorkeling on a small reef then headed back to the beach. We had lunch in a small restaurant on the beach then took the van back towards stone town. We stopped half way back at Jinazoni Forest, it’s a national park with the only known population of Red Colobus Monkeys. I paid the extra few dollars to go on a short tour with a few others to see the monkeys and the forest, as well as the mangroves nearby, very cool. The monkeys really don’t care about us, they are legally protected on Zanzibar and we got very close! They even came close to us!
Finally we made it back into Stone Town, and we wanted to walk a but around the town and have dinner at the markets. Dario wanted to go and say goodbye to his football mates, but took so long, that I went to find him and we said bye and went to the foreshore where the markets were starting up. We watched the sunset, had a beer and a local restaurant on the beach then went to buy dinner at the market… theres lots of stalls all selling the same things, one of 3, either lots of seafood of all sorts, pizza (not in the traditional sense) and sugar cane juice, with a hand operated press. We ended up buying our seafood dinner from 3 different stands, its all grilled on a bbq. Then had some cane juice, very good, with a hint of ginger, then had some nutella and mango or banana pizzas . We felt very piggish, but it was all so good! We eventually wandered back to the hotel and stopped to have a cup of Very strongly flavoured ginger tea with the boys before going to bed. Next morning we had organized with our host that he would go and buy our ferry tickets for the afternoon while we went on an early tour to Prison Island. It is an island with a resort on it, but it was originally built as a prison at the beginning of the last century, but was only ever used as a quarantine station, and a place for the owner of Zanzibar to safe keep his Seychelles tortoises that people kept stealing. Now there are a lot of these tortoises and they are BIG! So they give every visitor some greenery and you can go and feed them all and rub their heads which they seem to love! We arrived in time to have about 20 minutes to ourselves (with the 3 others from our boat) before a huge amount of Italian tourists arrived, literally blocking the footpaths there were so many! We saw the rest of the island then headed back to the boat and went snorkeling for a while on the beautiful reef around the island, (sad thing is that all the boats just drop an anchor wherever and you can see the damage).
We arrived back at the beach and headed to the restaurant next door for lunch, though we had no money, so Dario ran back after we ordered to grab some money. Then we went back to the hotel and he got a call from his football mate and went to meet his family quickly while I finished getting ready to go. He took so long!! We were supposed to be at the ferry terminal at 2.30pm and arrived back at the hotel after that, so I was freaking out! But apparently the friends family lived a lot further away than he had expected. We took a cab to the terminal and were here in ok time since the boat had arrived a bit late from Dar. We went through immigration and waited in the shade. Finally we boarded (we were on the fast ferry this time) and had to sit on the floor of the boat on our bags, but it was comfy enough. We arrived in Dar and took a cab to our hotel, the Jambo Inn had been full so we I had booked at Econolodge around the corner, lucky thing since they were also booked out that night. We had a big triple bed room sinec all the doubles were finished, it had sooo many mozzies in it that we went on a rampage but still didn’t get them all. So after dinner (we went to Jambo inn again for dinner) I set up a rope from the fan to a light fixture then hung our mosquito nets up over our beds… thank goodness, there were still so many! We also had aircon which was a great thing! Dar is so hot!

---