Blogs from Zanzibar City, Zanzibar, Tanzania, Africa - page 3

Pour cette dernière étape tanzanienne, nous avons prévu 2 jours à Stone Town, quartier historique inscrit au patrimoine de l’Unesco, et 6 jours au calme sur l’une des plages de l’île. Nous rejoignons notre premier logement assez facilement, à 10 minutes de route de l’aéroport de Zanzibar. Le petit hôtel ne paie pas de mine, mais a une décoration pour le moins atypique : luminaires à partir de bouteilles ou de cassettes audio, chaise à partir de pioches, etc. Et le hall d’entrée est un véritable musée avec plein de photos d’archives sur Zanzibar et plusieurs leaders noirs (Malcom X, Nelson Mandela, Martin Luther King, Haïlé Selassié 1er, ...). Nous testons le restaurant de l’hôtel pour notre 1er soir, la bouffe n’est pas vraiment raccord avec ce que le menu affiché en chambre laissait suggérer. Mais ... read more

Like many towns and cities in the world, Stonetown is an odd mix - even clash - between two things. London has been uncomfortably juxtaposing rich and poor since Tudor times; New York forces together millions of over-excited tourists with people attempting to go about their daily business; Paris simultaneously presents sophistication and seediness. These are of course huge generalisations, and arguably applicable to any town or city in the world. The overwhelming disparity that I felt in Stonetown, however, was between the fact that despite its historical significance, places of interest, and sheer uniqueness, it is a thoroughly neglected place. I don’t mean that is empty of tourists, or people; in fact it is swarming with locals and foreigners alike. You can barely move down some of the narrow streets for groups of bewildered tourists ... read more

Tortoises, a tidal island and Freddy Mercury We have recently come back from a two week long vacation in Tanzania. Here below you see the first blog entry from that trip and it is all about Zanzibar Island. The largest city on Zanzibar Island is, to confuse things, named Zanzibar Town. But in this blog entry Zanzibar Town will be called Stone Town a name that actually refers to the old town only and not the rest of Zanzibar Town. But it simplifies things a little bit to use the name Stone Town so that is what we will do. We arrived in Tanzania at Dar Es Salaam's international airport. From there we took a taxi to the ferry terminal and took the first available ferry to Zanzibar. We arrived in Stone Town a few hours ... read more

09 juin 2014 : Lever à 06h00. petit déjeuner à 06h45 et à 07h00 la navette de l'hôtel nous emmène à l'aéroport. Le décollage a lieu à 09h30 comme prévu. Après trois heures de vol nous atterrissons à Dar-Es-Salaam à 13h30 (il y a une heure de décalage horaire entre Johannesburg et la Tanzanie) avec 20 minutes d'avance sur l'horaire prévu. Il y a un monde fou à l'immigration et on nous donne seulement à ce moment-là les documents d'entrée en Tanzanie à remplir. Et nous avons une correspondance pour Zanzibar !!!! Socorro demande à une policière de l'aéroport comment faire pour le transit. Elle prend alors nos passeports et nous fait passer devant tout le monde. Nous arrivons finalement en salle d'embarquement à 14h30. Notre vol est prévu à 15h45. Nous sommes en salle pour ... read more

Part two of my first trip to Zanzibar! We were very busy the few days we were there meeting with Zanzibar Airport officials and consultants from France and South Africa to work on the various projects we have on the go there. As I mentioned before, Zanzibar's main industry is tourism and as part of the development of the country they wish to improve their Airport facilities to be pleasant for tourists. Currently, the airport is very basic so we are consulting on the items necessary to get it to standards western tourists would be happy with. In Zanzibar, time is very fluid and meetings seem to start late and run late and I found meeting with people well after 8 and having dinner at 10 PM. This left very little time for the usual tourist ... read more