Advertisement
Published: December 11th 2016
Edit Blog Post
Our quite interesting boat ride to Zanzibar took us to Nungwi at the northern tip of the island. It apparently is the second most visited city in Zanzibar, after Stone Town. Nungwi is popular because of its postcard white-sand beaches and sparkling azure water. It was pretty odd to see some Maasai and their cows hanging out with the tourists on the perfect sand beach, which we walked on for miles. The snorkelling right off the beach was ok, but we had to watch for the spiny urchins, which were denser than we've ever seen them. Of course we sampled tasty Zanzibar food, with the pancake/crepe style chapatis being one of our favourites. Chapati, it's what's for breakfast, lunch and dinner!
In Nungwi we stayed in a small guest house outside of the resort area, within the village. So we were able to enjoy both the local ambience and the vacationing highlife. After our restful time there we took a dalla-dalla south to Stone Town, near the centre of the island of Zanzibar. It is an ancient city filled with history and culture. The amazingly narrow streets - more like alleyways - were jammed with shops of all kinds that
were staffed with spirited salespeople very eager to recruit business. We deliberated over some of the awesome wildlife oil paintings and other mementos but sadly we couldn't pull the trigger as it would have meant carrying them half way around the planet in our backpacks. We decided consumable items were the best way to spend our dollar. Zanzibar is well known for spice farming, including cinnamon, ginger, turmeric, cardomon, nutmeg....etc.
A visit would not be complete without a spice tour and the consumption of many delicious spiced delicacies. Another must-do was a visit to the night food market, which was a barbecuer's heaven. You could choose almost any form of seafood, chicken, or beef on a skewer, and any kind of carb - roasted banana, cassava, sweet potatoes, chapati, roti, coconut bread. And that was only one of the stalls! There was also a special kind of pizza, sugarcane juice, Zanzibar mix soup, and spiced tea or coffee. Of course, we tried them all!
Our last day on the island was a busy one, we took a half-day trip to Prison Island, which although we were somewhat deserted by our tour company, was still worth it because of
all the ancient massive tortoises we got to see. We also got in some high quality snorkelling off the island as part of the "tour" but an encounter with about a jillion jellyfish may have scared Nancy off ocean snorkelling for quite some time. Then we squeezed in a visit to the slave museum. It was haunting and depressing, but well worth the price of admission. After that full day of adventure, we hopped onto another dalla-dalla and headed to the airport for a very late flight (3:00am!). Even with the occasional bump in the road (both literally - there aren't many paved roads here, and figuratively - daily rowdy rooster wake-up calls, and giant ants that invaded our hotel room one night) we had some mixed emotions about leaving Tanzania. But with one word our attitude changed: Lemurs!
Advertisement
Tot: 0.149s; Tpl: 0.013s; cc: 13; qc: 69; dbt: 0.0714s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.2mb