Zanzibar!

Last Thursday I left for Zanzibar. The name for Zanzibar means land of of the blacks, and it was part of the slave trading route. Now, the island is beautiful and warm, basically everything I had expected Arusha to be. When we got off the plane, the sun was shining, even though the forecast had been for rain. We have perfect weather all weekend, except for a slight drizzle during lunch one day.



On Thursday and Friday we explored Stone Town. Zanzibar is predominantly Muslim, and the architecture in Stone Town reflects that. The area was famous for the spice trade, and the stone buildings and narrow alley ways make it seem like its part of a different time period. There are very ornate doors, which reminded me of the doors of some palaces in Beijing, with the studs on them. We went to see the old slave market, which is now a cathedral. They have a pit where people were chained by their necks, and tiny rooms, about 10 by 10 feet, in which they would shove 75 people. As we were walking to this market, we passed a series of winding shopping streets, with a lot more variety than the stores in Arusha. I really liked all the colors, especially the kangas, other clothes, beaded purshes, and paintings. I ended up buying a lot of fabric to make dresses with. The sunset over the water was gorgeous, since the water there is an aquamarine color near the shore, then turns to a tourquoise, and then a rich, dark blue. Someone commented that the dark red of the sunset indicates that there is a lot of pollution here. Other buildings that we saw included the distillery, the House of Wonders, the Old Fort, Princess Salme's House, and the big tree (which literally is a very big tree). Princess Salme apparently eloped with a German Merchant, and is still famous in Zanzibar. We stayed at a hostel called Princess Salme Inn, which was really nice and had a rooftop cafe. At night, we went to Forodhoni Gardens, kind of like a nightmarket. There are stands with tons of seafood. I tried shark, baracuda, rock lobster, crab, red snapper, snail, octopus, and squid. Most of the seafood is very cheap, about a dollar per stick, but my favorite was the crab claw (half kilo) which was about 4 US dollars. They also made a Zanzibari pizza, which was mango and chocolate in a crepe. One restaurant, called Monsoon, supposedly has the best coffee in Tanzania. Their coffee is spiced with either masala, clove, cinnamon, and some other spices. I liked it a lot, and wanted to return for dinner (supposedly their food is very good too), but did not have enough time.

Afterwards, we took a shuttle to Kendwa, the northern part of the island. The beaches there are really nice, with white sand, clear water, and not that many people. There were some annoying people on the beach who would try to sell you stuff, but other than that I have no complaints. On the first night, we took a sunset dhow cruise. The water is very warm, but also saltier than the Atlantic (at least I think so). The next day, Sunday, we went on a "dolphin adventure" to Mnemba Atoll. Mnemba Atoll is the best snorkeling I have ever done. In the water, there are many schools of fish that overlap. It is such a high concentration of fish; their scales reflect the light, so it just looks like the water is shimmery and silver. Every now and then, something would freak them out, and the entire school of about 200 fish would dart one way, in unison. I saw some baracuda, and a really psychadelic neon purple, blue, green, yellow and pink fish. Blue starfish and giant sea urchins were sprawled across the ocean floor, and our guide found us a sea cucumber. About half of our group got stung by jellyfish though, including me. The guide had a bottle of vinegar, which he poured on (so at least I didn't have to have someone pee on me). For most of the day, we just lounged on the roof of our Dhow, and enjoyed the perfect weather. The resort itself is very inefficient, and the staff is incompetent, but the beach is so nice that it is easy to forget about all that. The best dish I had in all of Tanzania is a lobster curry that I had from white sands hotel. I will try to make that at home.