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Published: September 4th 2014
Total Distance Travelled Today: 147 km (including ferry, transfer to the hotel on Zanzibar)
Elapsed Travel Time: 7 hours 3 mins (total)
Lodging for the Night: Amaan Bungalows (hotel!)
This morning was a sleep-in day, well relatively speaking. We were supposed to leave at 7 (much later than the past few days), so we had planned to get up at 5:45 (we're usually the first awake but the last ready. It takes us a long time to get ready, pack our stuff up and take down the tent, and Elysia is pretty slow in the morning especially since she likes to shower). Unfortunately we were woken up numerous times prior to 5:45- there were at least two call to prayers from the mosque that seems to be right behind our campsite (we heard them chanting and our guide, Masivu, later told us that they were chanting "it's 4am, time to wake up!.."), and we were also woken up by other campers at our resort that had to leave early but weren't considerate enough to whisper (we woke up in a fright because we thought everyone else in our group was cleaning up and that we had slept in!).
After breakfast, we all hopped into tuk tuks in twos (there was about 6 or so of them) and we rode through the town to the ferry terminal. The tuk-tuks dropped us at the terminal- apparently they were once allowed to take us across the water, but now they aren't. With our huge backpacks on, we had to squeeze our way through the locals to get onto the ferry. The ferry seemed to be a popular mode of transportation for the locals to get to work in downtown Dar Es Salaam, and this would have been rush hour. All the locals were very pushy and there was no queuing; just one big mass of people trying to get on. Even an inch of space left would soon be occupied by a local. This first ferry was only 5 minutes long, and took us across the harbour into Dar es Salaam. One could only imagine how long it would have taken us to drive through the city to the main ferry terminal (which was right downtown); it would probably take hours to get around the harbour with all that traffic! This was a much better/faster alternative.
On the other
side, we had about a 1km walk to the Zanzibar ferry, which seemed like forever with our heavy backpacks on. We could have left some stuff behind in our truck, but Elysia likes to be prepared for everything! We didn't have to wait too long for the Zanzibar ferry. We had tourist class tickets, which meant we got to stand in what feels like a private corral in front of the public corral. We also got to board first, which is fortunate because there was a real rush for seats once the locals started getting on. Luckily the cabin was air conditioned, and we had seats. The locals without seats all piled out onto the deck while we were saving seats for our friends that had been ushered onto the top deck. I'm not sure they do savesies in Africa, but we saved those seats western-style! The ferry was a nice catamaran.
The ferry was 2 hours long and we landed in Stone Town. From there, we were met by a bus with a local guide that we called Ali-G, but his name was just Ali. We drove for an hour or so to a town at the North-Western
part of the island, called Nungwi. The village itself is not a whole lot, but there's a lot of beach resorts around. We stayed a cute little Muslim resort (that served alcohol!), called Amaan Bungalows. Mike was ecstatic that they had an infinity pool (he's always wanted to swim in one). The resort was right on the water (in a long line of ocean front beach resorts), but it was high up on stilts above the water, and there wasn't much beach. The beach could only be seen when it's low tide.
The first thing we did when we arrived at the resort was to do laundry. This was very needed after spending the past week camping. We bought a laundry washing bag from MEC called scrubba. It was a very good purchase for travelling and has really come in handy! It took us two hours of team work to get our laundry done! In the end, we strung a laundry line (climbing rope) all around the room and we had clothes hanging from everywhere. We wanted to take advantage of the fact that we had 2 nights in the same place.
After we finished, we went out
to the bar and met our travelling companions there. We had early dinner because we hadn't had any lunch and we were starved! Today was the start of Ramadan (seems like we always travel to Muslim countries during Ramadan - last year we were in Brunei and Malaysia during that time). In this resort, this only really meant that at sunset, the kitchen was closed for an hour so that the cooks could eat. There was a beautiful sunset from the bar. We had a few tropical drinks, one called Hakuna Matata. Unfortunately, since we were up so early we were exhausted and went to bed at 8:30.
Never in our lives (so far, until Elysia starts clerkship next year) have we had such a crazy (early) sleep schedule! It was a nice change to be in a hotel after sleeping in a tent for the past 5 nights. Civilization! It actually hasn't been so bad though, because we haven't had any rain and the temperatures are fairly moderate (25 during the day and maybe 20 at night- except in the Serengeti when it got colder). It's just nice to be clean and have warm clean showers for once.
Gives you a chance to recooperate before getting back on the road. We're looking forward to some relaxation the next few days before we have a long stretch of camping.
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cabochick
Andrea
Zanzibar Heaven!
After Dar, Zanzibar was a welcomed relief for me too. I enjoyed reading your experiences and hopefully will get around to blogging mine. Nice picture!