ZANZIBAR, Tanzania
We're here on Zanzibar Island - we can hardly believe it. We are in love with this place! Off the 2-hr ferry from Dar es Salaam to here - rich in history and culture, beautiful place, blue-green water, and fast moving taxis. We spent our first couple nights in Stone Town - very very cool place. Tall/skinny alleyways that you could - and wanted to - get totally lost in. Ramadan now, so barely any restaurants open during the day. BUT the city park after sunset is filled with food vendors selling DELIcious food.
We went on an all-day Spice tour – one of the best tours I’ve ever been on. We walked around communal agricultural plots, learned about dozens of plants and spices, sampled a variety of spices, flowers, and vegetables, sat down to taste several spices in local cuisine (communal lunch), tasted 10 varieties of fruits, swam in the sea, and visited ruins (baths and a slave cave). At night, there was a huge food/fish bazaar – buy a stick of BBQ lobster, squid, octopus, snapper, whatever you want and naan, samosas, ‘zanzibar pizza’ (favorite is banana nutella with chocolate –OMG) and wash it down with fresh cane juice with ginger and lime. Holy bajole.
We hired a car for a few days and took off south and east to check out Jozani forest (and monkeys) and find a sailboat to take us snorkeling and relax on the beach. The east side was pretty cool – although during low tide you’d have to walk 5-minutes+ out to get into knee-high water. Tide pools were awesome and local fisherfolk were working hard. We found a fishing village and hired a dhow sailboat to take us all-day snorkeling, BBQ lobster lunch on a secluded beach. Sick, really. How can a place be this incredible?
Back to Stone Town to work – we found our ‘office’ (a bar with free internet) and camped out there for hours while working on classes. (It seems criminal though to look out on such blue water and be working…uughh). We went north for a couple days to this really nice beach in Kendwa. Kendwa is by far the best swimming beach with consistent level of water to swim. Incredible colors, sand like flour - we were in heaven. If you ever come to Zanzibar, do exactly what we did (minus the work, of course) - this is a place you must see. We loved it.
Useful phrases:
Mambo (Mambo is Zanzibar, Jambo is Swahili): Hello
Poa: Good, cool
Caribou: Welcome/come in
Asante (sana): Thank you (very much)
Harari: How are you
Snorkel = snorkel
Kristi: “Mamboooo”
Street vendor: “Mambo. Poa… Caribou”
Kristi: “poa, poa…Asante sana”
Vendor: “Harari”
Kristi: “Fine, asante, you?” (then usually it’d downshift totally to English or nonverbal gestures)
:) Spending a few extra days here and then on to Arusha in northern TZ border with Kenya. But Zanzibar...it's so nice...hmmm, maybe a few MORE days of beach time is a good idea... Yes....lovely lovely Zanzibbbbaaaaar.
We're here on Zanzibar Island - we can hardly believe it. We are in love with this place! Off the 2-hr ferry from Dar es Salaam to here - rich in history and culture, beautiful place, blue-green water, and fast moving taxis. We spent our first couple nights in Stone Town - very very cool place. Tall/skinny alleyways that you could - and wanted to - get totally lost in. Ramadan now, so barely any restaurants open during the day. BUT the city park after sunset is filled with food vendors selling DELIcious food.
We went on an all-day Spice tour – one of the best tours I’ve ever been on. We walked around communal agricultural plots, learned about dozens of plants and spices, sampled a variety of spices, flowers, and vegetables, sat down to taste several spices in local cuisine (communal lunch), tasted 10 varieties of fruits, swam in the sea, and visited ruins (baths and a slave cave). At night, there was a huge food/fish bazaar – buy a stick of BBQ lobster, squid, octopus, snapper, whatever you want and naan, samosas, ‘zanzibar pizza’ (favorite is banana nutella with chocolate –OMG) and wash it down with fresh cane juice with ginger and lime. Holy bajole.
We hired a car for a few days and took off south and east to check out Jozani forest (and monkeys) and find a sailboat to take us snorkeling and relax on the beach. The east side was pretty cool – although during low tide you’d have to walk 5-minutes+ out to get into knee-high water. Tide pools were awesome and local fisherfolk were working hard. We found a fishing village and hired a dhow sailboat to take us all-day snorkeling, BBQ lobster lunch on a secluded beach. Sick, really. How can a place be this incredible?
Back to Stone Town to work – we found our ‘office’ (a bar with free internet) and camped out there for hours while working on classes. (It seems criminal though to look out on such blue water and be working…uughh). We went north for a couple days to this really nice beach in Kendwa. Kendwa is by far the best swimming beach with consistent level of water to swim. Incredible colors, sand like flour - we were in heaven. If you ever come to Zanzibar, do exactly what we did (minus the work, of course) - this is a place you must see. We loved it.
Useful phrases:
Mambo (Mambo is Zanzibar, Jambo is Swahili): Hello
Poa: Good, cool
Caribou: Welcome/come in
Asante (sana): Thank you (very much)
Harari: How are you
Snorkel = snorkel
Kristi: “Mamboooo”
Street vendor: “Mambo. Poa… Caribou”
Kristi: “poa, poa…Asante sana”
Vendor: “Harari”
Kristi: “Fine, asante, you?” (then usually it’d downshift totally to English or nonverbal gestures)
:) Spending a few extra days here and then on to Arusha in northern TZ border with Kenya. But Zanzibar...it's so nice...hmmm, maybe a few MORE days of beach time is a good idea... Yes....lovely lovely Zanzibbbbaaaaar.
