Zanzibar Continued

Once we arrived in Dar es Salaam, we took a taxi to our hotel.  Since we were a day late for our reservation, I was a little worried they might not have our room, or would make us pay for the previous night, but the owner was super nice!  I definitely recommend staying at Jambo Inn on Libya Street.

The hotel has a restaurant downstairs where we ate that first night.  It was delicious!  Such variety on the menu.  I had Indian food - don't remember which dish though.  But I do remember the watermelon juice.  I could not get enough!  We had dinner with our friend Muhammed whom we met on the train and his friend who lives in Dar.  After dinner they took us to a restaurant/bar and we had some drinks there.  It was empty except us, but it was a nice low-key night after so much traveling!

The next day we woke up and started exploring the city.  We had a limited time because we were scheduled to catch the 3:30pm ferry to Zanzibar.  The city is full of people.  It's mostly a Muslim country and many of the women wear the head scarves.  The different materials are so beautiful.  We looked at some shops and I bought a pair of earrings.  I also enjoyed a lot of different street food, such as kabobs, fried bananas, sugar cane juice, pastries/donuts.  They were all very tasty and inexpensive.

The lady that makes jewelry including the earrings I bought.

Sugar Cane Juice - YUM!

 That afternoon we took the ferry over to Zanzibar.  It's about a two hour ferry ride, and was a very nice ride.  The wind blowing, the sound of the water...reminded me how much I really love being around water!  We stood outside the whole time and enjoyed the fresh air.  We arrived in Stone Town and had to go through immigration again.  And we had to show that we had a yellow fever vaccination.  Glad PC keeps us updated on all our vaccines!

We arrived in Stone Town late, so we stayed at the hotel that night.  Our hotel had a great roof top terrace where we relaxed.  The next day we went on a Spice Tour and a tour of the Jozani Natural Forest Reserve. We had a driver and tour guide just to ourselves, and it really made the day special.  

The tree above is located in the area of the Red Colobus Monkey (pictured below).  It is dead now because the monkeys eat all the leaves which eventually kills the tree.  But it really looks beautiful to me.

These monkeys are not scared of humans - but I was a little scared of them.  They are relatively small creatures, and seem to be harmless.  They are not afraid of humans at all and jumped in front of us multiple times to get to new leaves to eat.  The thing that scared me a little was seeing their teeth - they looked very sharp and when they screeched and bared their teeth - I was ready to keep my distance!  But it was great to see animals up so close.  We also took a tour of the Mangrove Swamp.  Such an interesting place!  When the tide comes and goes, this area's water rises as well.  The tree roots are all over the place!  This area helps with flooding of the main land, keeping the water from flowing too fast to do damage.

Below is a seed of the trees.  We were able to plant it just by dropping this seed into the mud below.  It sticks into the mud and then starts growing in the trees.  I wonder how many survive to adulthood since there area a lot of little saplings.

After our tour of the forest and swamp, we enjoyed a delicious meal before starting our Spice Tour.  The Spice Farm we visited is just for tours and has many different plants to show the variety of spices that are produced on the island.  Our tour guide was very knowledgeable and a very good guide.  His assistant would go ahead of us to gather leaves and such.  He would climb up the trees with such ease.

Our tour guide with a piece of star fruit on his forehead.

They gave us leaves made into cones where we were able to place the leaves and roots of the different spices.  We saw turmeric, lemon grass, cinnamon, nutmeg, among others.

This plant is called Touch-Me-Not.  The leaves close up when you touch them.  It was very entertaining - I don't think we left until we had touched all the leaves!

They made us many things from leaves including these glasses, a frog necklace, a ring and bracelet.  We also were given crowns and a hand-basket.  They made us feel like Queens!

This is nutmeg.

There is also a plant that is used as a natural lipstick.  

This guy climbs all the way to the top of the trees to get the coconuts.  He was very entertaining singing and playing as he climbed up.  He used a special "rope" around his feet to help him climb.

And afterwards, we got to enjoy some coconut juice/water.

The Spice Queen in front of the Indian Ocean.

Before the tour was over, we made a stop at an old Persian Bath.

Then we went to the open market back in Stone Town to enjoy street food for our dinner.  They had such variety including all types of seafood.  You picked what you wanted and they heated it up before serving it to you.  We had more sugar cane juice as well.  

Wanting to eat with us were many, many cats.  They were all over the city!

They also had pizza - I had this one with banana, chocolate, and nutella.  It was delicious!  And the guy that worked at the stall happened to be at the spice farm we went to earlier in the day - small world.

The next day we went out exploring Stone Town.  There are many old buildings with beautiful doors.

And small alley ways that you walk through.  It's so easy to get lost.  But then you turn a corner and there are tons of shops!  I bought some art work and some clothes.  I wanted more time to spend in the city.  But we had to leave to go to the East side of the island to spend a few days on the beach.

Dressing up for dinner our first night on the East side in my new dress.

BEACH!

I went snorkeling for the first time.  It was so great.  We were met on the beach by our captain and we walked over to the boat.  It was a homemade boat that was very narrow and was weighted on both sides to keep it from tipping over.  The ocean in this area is very shallow for a long ways - you can see the waves breaking far away - maybe a km or so.  The captain moved the boat by using a long stick that he stuck into the sand and pushed the boat along.  It looked very tiring to us, but he said it was not hard at all; he's been doing it all his life.  Once we were in the spot we jumped overboard to begin snorkeling.  I was trying to go too far below the surface at first and choked on the salty water.  But once I just floated on the surface I really enjoyed the experience.  I saw a lot of different coral and fish.  My favorite was this starfish I kept seeing.  It was grey with red and orange along the tips.  It was so beautiful.  I wish I had an underwater camera - but I found an image of the starfish online:

The next day was spent on the beach in the morning and then just in the lobby area in the afternoon - it rained every day we were at the beach which wasn't ideal, but I guess that happens when you go during rainy season.  But it was still a great relaxing way to end the trip.  Then the next day I had to go all the way back to Dar es Salaam because I was flying back the following day.  It was a relaxing morning and then we left to back to Stone Town.  I really could have used more time in all three places - Dar, Stone Town, and the beach.  

The ferry ride back to Dar was not fun - it was raining again and it was a VERY bumpy ride.  They started handing out sick bags to everyone which made me get very worried.  I'm thankful I have a strong stomach and I was sitting by the window to stare out at the horizon.  I made it back to Dar safely and went to bed early since I had an early flight the next day.  But I did have another watermelon juice!

I had a long layover in the Johannesburg airport.  As I was waiting, a couple sat down next to me and asked where I was traveling.  I told them Namibia and the man was born in Namibia (or South West Africa as it was before independence).  I explained that I'm a volunteer teacher in the South.  He asked where and I said Tses - which he knew where it was!  His family had/has a farm very close to where I'm living.  Small, small world!

I really enjoyed my time in Tanzania and wish I could have stayed longer.  It might be a stop on my way back to the States after I'm finished with my service. 

Zanzibar

I have to say - it's really nice being a teacher - having a whole month off to travel!  My holiday began by helping facilitate Southern Girls Conference.  I plan to do another post regarding the conference because it was really wonderful and I had a great time attending.  Also, five of my learners attended and seemed to really enjoy themselves.  More on that later.

 After the conference I started my journey to Tanzania.  It took a total of 7 days to go from Windhoek to Dar es Salaam!  But as one of my fellow travelers Allie said, "the journey is the destination".  We stopped in Rundu at another volunteers place where we were treated to a delicious meal and a nice place to rest.  But we did not rest for very long; we woke up early the next day because we wanted to travel all the way to Livingstone.  It was unclear if the train we were to take was going to leave Thursday or Friday.  Luckily it was Friday it left, so we had a day to enjoy Victoria Falls.

This was my second time to see Victoria Falls and it was worth it again!  The park is so beautiful and the falls are so much fun to get soaking wet under!  There are many baboons in the park, and we were warned to keep food away from them.  So we put all our food into a backpack and went on our way.  However, one of the baboons decided to mug Julie!  I was behind her, so I saw the baboon come up, reach up on its hind legs, and take the backpack!  Luckily there were some guys around who knew what to do.  We let the baboons take out the bread and apples and then they dropped the rest of the stuff.  These creatures are so smart - they were able to take the camera out of a plastic bag, and unzip the case and remove the camera!  That is why they scare me some.

After the baboon attack, we walked across the bridge where you get completely wet because of the spray from the falls.  It seemed like there was less water this year than last, but I still was completely soaked!  At one point, there was a group of guys singing in the "rain" from the falls and we joined in their group.  They were singing "shake your bum, bum"; it was very entertaining.

After the falls, we boarded our bus that would take us to the train station.  The bus ride was long and overnight.  One interesting/frightening thing was that on the road, a lorry (semi) truck stopped in the middle of the road blocking both sides.  It was told to us he did this because someone had messed with his trailer hitch and he was afraid he was going to be robbed.  It caused quite a disturbance on the road.  I was glad when we were finally able to pass.  Other than that, our bus ride was non-eventful.

We arrived at the train station early in the day and had to wait a few hours before we could board.  During this time, a few of us went exploring around the town.  We ended up talking with some locals and learned a lot about Zambia, including the different tribes and languages.  We were told there are 72 different tribes/languages in Zambia...hard to believe!  We also played with the children and sang songs with them.  It was a great way to pass the time!

We boarded the train at 2pm on Friday and spent the next four days on the train.  It sounds like a really long time, but the time really passed quickly.  It was enjoyable.  The train is old and makes a thousand stops, but I'm really glad I took it.  I was able to see so much of Zambia and Tanzania which are both really beautiful.  And watching all the locals come up to the train to sell things like nuts, bananas, avocados, meat, etc. was a lot of fun.  The kids all ran up to the train too.  It was interesting that they kept asking for pens.  Unfortunately I didn't have any extra pens to give them, but if anyone else goes - bring pens!

The train had a lounge car and a dinning car.  They served breakfast, lunch and dinner.  Which were all good - but after day 2 having the same thing for lunch and dinner started getting a little old.  They served rice or porridge with fish, beef or chicken all served with a tomato "soup"/sauce.  It was tasty and cheap.  They also served cool drinks and beer.  I tried two new kinds of beer and a new flavor of Fanta.  It was passion fruit flavored and was delicious!  I only had it twice on the train and then couldn't find it once we were off.  Very disappointing.  

Our train ride was only supposed to take 3 days, but because there was an accident further up the tracks, we were stuck in one spot for 14 hours!  It wasn't terrible...except for the bathrooms.  The toilets (or holes really) just went straight out of the train.  Which is fine when it's moving, but a problem when you are standing still for so long.  Not pleasant!

Finally we arrived on Monday at 2pm in Dar es Salaam.  More of the trip to come in the following posts!