Entry 4: Zanzibar (The Spice Island)

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With the fresh sea breeze keeping us cool, we slept well on our last night in the tent. However, no matter how good our sleep, it was to be short lived. In order to catch our first of two ferries that would hopefully see us safely to Zanzibar, we had to be up at 4am in the morning. It was during Sam’s first visit to the bathroom that she discovered that somewhat earlier than hoped (inevitable during a year away) she’d succumbed to an upset stomach.
The first ferry was just a 10 minute affair for which we didn’t even have to leave the confines of the truck. Whilst waiting for the ferry we were treated to the stomach turning aroma of the massive fish market here in Dar Es Salaam. If Sam needed a second good reason for not having breakfast in the morning, this was it!
Once on the other side we drove for a short while, then parked up in the city. We were given an hour or so to have a look around and pass the time before boarding the next boat. Dar Es Salaam is not the prettiest or cleanest of cities, and with morning temperatures rising wandering around wasn’t met with a great deal of enthusiasm by anyone.
We all returned in time to be corralled onto the ferry to Zanzibar, and soon we were beginning the two hour crossing.
We managed to get a couple of seats together below deck, an area that holds around 150 passengers and where if you’re lucky a film is shown during the journey. With all those non-deodorized bodies in one confined area, it wasn’t much better than the fish market in all honesty. However, the crossing was fairly smooth and offered a chance to get some more sleep.
We dock and disembark at the port (and World Heritage site) of Stone Town. Zanzibar is part of Tanzania, but with an identity crisis, and for that reason we have to go through immigration. During this time we say our goodbyes to the rest of the group, before then meeting up with our pre-arranged taxi that will take us to our resort, located in the north of the island.
Our first impressions of Zanzibar is not of a beautifully mysterious, paradise island as both the name and brochures would have you imagine. Instead we discover (at least at the outset) a disgusting mess that would serve as the perfect advertisement for companies and individuals to cease in the production and use of the dreaded plastic bag. They are everywhere!!
The taxi journey takes an hour and a quarter and thankfully as we travel further away from the port the sea of blue plastic bags is replaced by forests of palm trees with clearings for the odd hut or small settlement.
Nearing the end of our transfer our driver asks for directions and we seem to take a wrong turn as we begin to enter what seems to be a very basic village. The taxi barely manages the potholes in the dirt track and we both feel a little uneasy as to where we’ll end up; Being part of a group albeit disorganized did have its securities!
We reach a point where we can go no further, and once again our driver seeks confirmation from another local. Sure enough, although we cannot see it from the window of the car, our hotel is just a walk round the corner and sits right on the beach amidst a resort that you’d never know was there. We breath a sigh of relief and head for the reception.
Our reception at reception is somewhat frosty due to some confusion about our room. As far as we were concerned we’d booked direct with the hotel and were expecting one of their sea view rooms. The guy behind the desk however has our reservation, but informs us that we are booked in for one of their cheaper garden rooms. We then enter a frustrating and slightly heated debate about our booking; enter manager.
To cut a long story short our email to the hotel had been intercepted by an agent who confirmed our booking on behalf of the hotel and had taken payment for the sea view room, reserved a garden room and pocketed the difference. We actually managed to get the agent on the phone but he denied everything and I figured we wouldn’t get anywhere when Sam finally broke and delivered the conversation-killing line, “basically mate, you’re talking bollocks” and with that the call came to an abrupt end.
The young manager of the hotel sympathized with our misfortune and upgraded our garden room to a pool room, and said he would have gave us a sea view if he had one available. His generosity didn’t stop there and dinner in the hotel restaurant tonight would be on the house!……..That would see the premature end to Sam’s 24 hour fast!
The pool room was very nice but leaves us wondering how good the sea view rooms are….oh well. We open the doors onto our balcony and within minutes are greeted by torrential rain, so we make time to do some much needed washing.
After two hand washes, the clothes we wore in the Ngorongoro Crater are still turning the water dark brown.
The rain passed and left a pleasant end to the day so we took a walk along the beach to get our bearings. Whilst out we popped into a one of the many diving centres and booked ourselves on a days diving for the following morning off the world famous Mnemba Atoll. We’re hoping the boat has a toilet, but forgot to ask..
So we returned to the hotel for our free meal and once we’d placed our order from the menu the manager himself was quick to bring us our plates of food to the table and offer another apology for the booking fiasco. Nice touch, but there’s a problem! They might have been prompt, but they weren’t the dinners we’d ordered? It put us in an embarrassing position when having enthusiastically thanked the manager, we now sat looking at the dishes we‘re presented with. Sam had already decided to treat her upset stomach the only way a training paramedic would, with spicy food and alcohol. I was quite looking forward to my tuna steak, and now I was faced with a curry. I don’t actually mind curry or the octopus for that matter, so it wasn’t like I couldn’t eat it, and as unlucky luck would have it Sam also received a dish she didn’t mind, so as not to embarrass anyone we tucked in. We joked quietly as we ate our surprise choices, and as we sat with a drink afterwards we heard a couple of German women complain that they’d been waiting almost two hours for their order. All apologies, the waiter walks off to the kitchen and soon comes out with two plates, sure enough they match what we’d previously ordered. We placed a tip on the table and promptly left. I guess we may have to get use to Africa’s good intentions not always delivering. We head off to a local bar to watch England take on South Africa in the rugby world cup final.
We report as requested to the dive centre at 09:45 hrs the following morning. The English guy we spoke to the day before who implied we’d be diving with him was nowhere to be seen, and neither was our food for the day. We actually saw him watching the rugby in the bar the previous night and I’m guessing his absence along with our lunch are probably related.
So we’re introduced to our new dive master who is Tanzanian, oops! I mean Zanzibarian, they’re very touchy about that. He gives us a dive brief, discussing where we’ll be diving and what we can expect to see, before sorting out our wetsuits, flippers etc. Knowing we would be diving and snorkeling in several locations we chose to bring our own personal face masks and snorkels. We then make our way down to the boat, you remember the one that we were hoping would have a toilet onboard. Well in hindsight we had as much chance of a lavatory as we had of having a casino and entertainment on the small local fishing boat. However, the ’captain’ said if we needed to relieve ourselves he’d be happy to stop the vessel and for us to enter the sea until we were done. Well that’s ok for me but Sam didn’t even want to consider it in her condition. We did stop once before reaching our dive site, but both Sam and I didn’t enter the water. Our dive master did, and proceeded to swim to shore along with a large cool box in order to go and retrieve everyone’s lunch for the day. We waited for at least half an hour for him to return, before finally getting on our way.
Our first dive lasted approximately 35 minutes in water as clear as glass and a nice temperature. This was in stark contrast to a few weeks previous when I was completing my PADI open water qualification in the cold murky waters of the navy divers facility on Horsea Island near Portsmouth.
The Mnemba Atoll is a world renowned dive and snorkeling site. I’ve heard that Mnemba is an Arabic word for octopus head, and an atoll is defined as: A ring shaped coral reef or a string of closely spaced small coral islands, enclosing or nearly enclosing a shallow lagoon. The whole area is dotted with stereotypical paradise islands with immaculate sandy beaches that slope gently into azure water. However, there are drift dives and sheer drop offs here, such as the ’Big Wall’ for more experienced divers. We dove twice that day at two different sites, the first was Kitchwani, a dive that ranges from 20 to 40 metres deep, followed by Wattabomy encompassing a depth of 12 to 25m. We enter the water by sitting on the side of the boat and falling in backwards whilst holding our masks on our faces. I watched divers on television doing this as a child and always wanted to do that. A very small tick in the grand scheme of things, but a tick never-the-less. Our open water certification only allows us to dive at depth of up to eighteen metres but it was deep enough for us to be treated to sightings of blue spotted rays, moray eels, lion fish, turtles, angel fish, travally, octopus, trigger fish and many more. Some of the marine life have bizarrely amusing names such as the Indian Ocean Walkman which if I hadn‘t seen it I may have guessed was an outdated underwater personal stereo. Moorish Idols are another, and Nudibranchs which sounds like a section of the police that solely deals with streakers or flashers. They are of course soft-bodied, shell-less creatures that are often referred to as sea slugs. There was also plenty of coral including mushroom, honeycomb, brain and staghorn to name four. Sam has done several dives previously, but for my first as a qualified diver it was a magical start and left me excited about future diving opportunities that would present themselves in other locations, none perhaps more famous than the Great Barrier Reef that would form part of our itinerary in Australia. In the boat on the way back we scanned the surface of the sea and were lucky enough to joined for a short time by a pod of dolphin. Meanwhile our dive master (after a hard days work) lay stretched out in the boat fast asleep. I have to admit, after the initial thrill of a dive is over and you’ve discussed certain highlights with your partner (or ’buddy’ if I’m going to use the correct diving lingo) there’s something about diving that makes you instantly tired once you’ve exited the water. Sleep in these surroundings however, feels like a crime, and so we remained awake until we arrived back an hour or so later.
That night we watched another beautiful African sunset over the Indian ocean whilst sat in one of the outdoor restaurants. Dining continued to inflict an urgent requirement for the nearest bathroom for Sam and with only a couple of days to go before we fly down to Cape Town she decided to attempt that 24 hour fast once again.
So we spent some time by the pool of our hotel, while the manager (still keen to impress after our unfortunate start) brings us a free glass of fruit juice each, followed by fresh papaya that we’ve just watched him pick straight from the tree. Our treatment after the initial complications has been genuinely generous, and we are informed that in the hotel restaurant that night they’re cooking traditional Zanzibar dishes in case we’re interested. Sam’s 24 hour fast finishes at 8pm and although this period ideally should be followed with very plain food such as rice, bread or dried crackers, this time it will be traditional fare of the spice island, the exact opposite.
The meal turns out to be very nice indeed and when I attempt to pay, yet again we’re informed it’s on the manager who has brought us our food all evening, other guests must have thought we were celebrities. The managers efforts are rewarded as we decide to reschedule our ferry crossing back to the mainland in order to stay another night at the resort instead of a night in Dar Es Salaam.
That night came and went and we were soon leaving the Langi Langi resort (which we can highly recommend) by private car, (yes you guessed it) arranged by the hotel manager.
Our driver seemed a bit of a shady character and although the hotel manager had negotiated a fair price the locals are quick to spot an opportunity. So on leaving the hotel he drove into the village where he calls on a friend. He then subsequently sits in the front passenger seat whilst his friend drives. We can only assume that by doing this we have to pay a tip to both of them. Not that we really minded having had several free meals over the past few days, but a clever scam all the same.
Following the return ferry journey and a short taxi journey our time in Tanzania was almost at an end. We would now board a plane that would take us (via Johannesburg) down to Cape Town in South Africa.
Once again we were both excited about our next destination for many reasons, but there was one in particular. Cape Town would hopefully provide us with the opportunity to achieve what many consider the ultimate thrill seekers experience; cage diving with great white sharks……………..

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Photos

Zanzibar coastline.
From the back of a dolphin.

Our Hotel in Zanzibar.
Sam's eye view.

Sunset on The Spice Island.
Cheers.........

Mnemba Atoll
Renowned diving site.........and rightly so.

Tropical rain.
And we thought it was gonna be sun, sun, sun all the way!!!!!