I Love Zanzibar!

Over the Easter week, we decided to do a bit of tourism/travelling and have a break from the volunteering. To be honest, Malindi has been getting us down a bit. There is nothing more depressing than an empty tourist village. It is like a ghost town. With not many tourists around the locals are more miserable with the reduction in opportunity to make some money. Malindi is not extreme enough to be exciting, but not comfortable enough to be like home.........how can I be content in a place that sells bars of Galaxy chocolate, but at 70p each and a pack of 500g butter at £5?

We loved Zanzibar! From a tourism point of view, it had everything we look for in a place to go. When we arrived immediately the people were friendly, and although we got the odd hawker shouting "my friend, my friend" the hassle was not to the extreme that you get in Malindi.

On the first evening when enjoying a cold drink in the "Mercury bar" on the harbour all the local children gathered at the harbour wall.For 2 hours, one after the other the children frantically threw themselves in to the water as if they had never been swimming. It was such a joyous sight of pure fun. They reminded me of lemmings, flinging themselves in to the turquoise water and with no hesitation between they would get straight out and perform the very same immediately after. Never tiring.

We stayed in a backpackers hotel (Princess Salme) with very friendly staff and a lot of charm. This was another advantage of Zanzibar in that there were very luxurious places to suit big budgets and charming places like our hotel to suit a smaller budget (approx £16 per night for 2 incl. breakfast). On the first morning after our lovely breakfast on the roof terrace we joined a spice tour. The spice tour was arranged by the hotel and we joined a young couple of trainee doctors from our hotel. After a bit  of conversation we  discovered that they were from Leamington Spa as well. How funny - we had not spoken to another English person for nearly our entire time in Africa and then we met two from our home town. The spice tour was excellent fun and great value.

 

There is a gorgeous night food market around the square near "Africa Hotel" where the barbequed food is laid out traditionally but with a slight tourist edge (in that it is all in one place and a large selection).Unfortunately it was low season and we noticed along with the fact that no locals were eating there but that a lot of food was being packed away for the next night after being cooked. Edd had eaten some prawns which he immediately thought were bad and stopped eating.......but he still got the inevitable food poisoning. Poor Edd. He was in bed for the next day with a high temperature, the shivers and aches and pains. It does seem that it is always the same anywhere that is set up for 'passers through' rather than locals. There were however selections of yummy chocolate pancakes and other delights that were cooked fresh and totally safe.

After a couple of days we headed north.We didn't manage to find out about a public bus in time, so we took the tourist's minibus paying approx £6 each. For the journey back we found the locals bus which was only £2 each and was much more fun! In Nungwi on the north tip there are perfect white sandy beaches and pale turquoise seas. Lying on the beach all day isn't really for Edd and I so we went on a snorkelling trip instead. The trip went in one of the traditional Dhow sailing boats. It was beautiful. The fish and coral we saw on Mwembe island were better than the diving we did in Watamu. It was just beautiful, and so much less palava than diving :-)

On our sailing boat we met 3 great people. 2 Europeans and a girl from Burundi. Both the Europeans were working for NGOs in Burundi and all had come to Zanzibar for the week to chill out. We had a great laugh with them and the single guy was particularly enjoying being on the boat with 9 very attractive young nurses from Denmark sunning themselves as we sailed. 

Considering we had all been in Africa for a while and how important it is for us to make our finite supply of cash stretch....none of us fancied paying tourist prices for our evening meal twice in a row (approx £13, when we had had a scrummy lunch of local dishes for £1.20 the day before). So we persuaded one of the Dhow's crew to source us some squid and octopus and cook us the food himself. We was very happy to earn a healthy surprise bonus like this. We sat there by candle light on the beach waiting until 9:15pm for our food to arrive, beginning to believe that as usual we had made the mistake of paying up front and he had 'done a runner'. But what a lovely surprise it was when he turned up after all with a sumptuously spiced meal. Maybe there is some hope after all on this Continent!

Anybody considering a week in the sun should seriously consider Zanzibar. You can live nearly as cheaply as you want (if you're prepared for local's canteens and backpacking accommodation) or as luxuriously. There is beautiful beaches, culture, activities (sailing, fishing, diving, spice tours) and friendly people. Flying to Dar from London  should be straight forward also. Being in Africa, it provides the slightly more adventurous edge than the Med which also means a complete lack of chavs! And there are wild monkeys - need I say more?

See the Monkey whisperer above. Don't get too comfortable David Attenborough!