...I'm not gonna cook it but I'll order it from ZANZIBAR!!!!

After our organized 12-day safari had come to an end, it was time to enter the second part of our fam-jam.  With the parentals and Maggie set to leave Tanzania for Canada in four days’ time, we planned a trip to the island of Zanzibar. This completed our stereotypical three-week trip around Tanzania but hey, stereotypes exist for a reason. We elected to fly from Arusha to Zanzibar Island, and our plane was a small, fifteen person aircraft.  As we were boarding the plane, I was offered the front seat (which would mean I’d be sitting beside the solitary pilot with all the controls in front of me) but, being the incredible person that I am, I gave it to my dad, who has a bit of an obsession with airplanes.

Upon landing in the airport, the first thing that I noticed was how rude the people of Zanzibar seemed to be compared to those in the Northern areas of the country.  This could potentially be due to the fact that, while on safari, we were dealing almost exclusively with people in the tourism industry and were used to putting on a happy face, but nonetheless, the difference was disturbing.  The drivers that we had arranged to pick us up from the airport and drop us off at the hotel did not respond to our attempts to speak their language or thank them.  This was a more or less consistent theme throughout our visit to the island: rude locals.  Our hotel was quite nice.  It was on the beach but also had a decent swimming pool and the rooms were comfortable.  The management was nice as well and helped us arrange our activities on the island.  Zanzibar is world-famous for being one of the most consistently good dive spots in the world and while I would have liked to have put my PADI certificate to good use, I elected to not shell out $100+ for a dive, and more for the necessary refresher course (I haven’t done scuba for over a year).  Instead, we organized a snorkelling trip and that sufficed (for me anyway) just fine.  A small motorized boat picked us up from the beach in front of our hotel and the lot of us piled on, sunscreen applied thoroughly.  Our first stop was Changuu Island (commonly referred to as Prison Island).  It was, as the name suggests, at one time somewhat of a makeshift prison for soon-to-be slaves.  The island of Zanzibar has a long, disgusting slave trade history, due to its strategic location in the Indian Ocean.  Long after slavery had been abolished in Africa (including the export of slaves to the West), Zanzibar was still sneaking them all around the world.  We saw the former prison (which is now the restaurant of the super high-end resort on the island), but the main purpose for visiting was to see their tortoise sanctuary. Listed as an endangered species, the Aldabra Giant Tortoise has been the focus of a lot of efforts to conserve their population.  The centre of the island is a large fenced off area where tourists can come and see the approximately 100 tortoises.  The adults were absolutely massive, and the oldest one in the sanctuary was 175 years old (did you know you can tell their age by counting rings in the scales on their shells?). They are immense, bewildering creatures, and watching them walk is painful.  They just don’t look right when they move, lugging their massive shells around with them.  We spent maybe thirty minutes there, watching them poop and eat.  It was great fun.  (Oh one more tidbit before we leave the tortoises: you can tell whether a tortoise is male or female by the shape of the tail section of their shells. Females have a concave indent for mounting.  Awwww yeah.)

Next up was the purpose of our trip, the snorkelling.  Having been snorkelling in a number of exotic places (Mexico, Hawaii, etc) I can say that I generally don’t enjoy it very much. I don’t know why, but it just always fails to excite me.  This time however, I had a whale of a time.  It was probably due to the fact that I had Hillary’s Go-Pro and waterproof case to play with, but whatever the reason, I enjoyed it.  The scenery was not particularly spectacular, but it’s still more interesting than the stuff that we have in our ocean back home by a wide margin.  The failure of our guides to mention the numerous, and largely invisible, stinging jellyfish was a bit of a bother, but only a bit. As our trip ended and we jetted off back towards the mainland, the clouds opened up and Tanzania’s legendary rainy season unleashed itself in full force.  The timing was perfect, and we only got mildly soaked.

The gloriously warm Indian Ocean

With the ocean life viewing checked off the list, next up on our trip to Zanzibar was to take a tour of a spice farm.  Zanzibar’s history is intricately linked in with the history of the spice trade in the Indian Ocean, and a tour of a spice farm was a must. Our personal driver, who we had come to love, Mr. Simba (real name), took us to a nearby village and a local guide walked us around for over an hour, showing us the various different crops.  For me it was quite interesting seeing how, for example, peppercorn, or cinnamon grows.  These are the sorts of things that you usually take for granted when you buy/consume them, but learning about how they grow and are harvested was very interesting.  The tour itself was a little bit awkward as it was located in a village and the locals didn’t seem too keen on a big tacky group of mzungus wandering around their stomping grounds.  But they benefitted from our visit as we a. paid for the tour b. got bullied into buying products we didn’t particularly want/need and c. gave them something marvellous to look at for a couple of hours: my lovely face.  Our guide was at least very friendly and informative, but his “helper”, a young boy who followed us around, making rings, ties, and weird hats out of banana leaves, kind of creeped us out.  The tour ended with a feast of various local fruits and, as had become the norm on our trip by this point, an explosion of rain and thunder.  We bought some spices to appease their appetite for squeezing money out of white people, tipped the right people, and left.

The rest of our time on the island consisted of walking around Stone Town, which is a fascinating combination of African, Arab, and Indian culture.  We did some shopping for the usual tat, ate some Indian food, and marvelled at the glorious architecture which was mainly influenced by the large Arab population.  One night, we ate dinner at a restaurant on the top of a 5-floor hotel and it offered magnificent views of the city below, not to mention delicious food and a relaxed atmosphere.  Another night, we ate at Mercury’s, named for the greatest vocalist of all time (no arguing O_O) who was born and spent a significant chunk of his childhood on the island.  The cocktail list included such classics as the Bohemian Rhapsody (which was disgusting, shame), the Fat-Bottomed Girl (which was basically iced Kahlua aka delicious), and the Monica Lewinsky, obviously.

The culture of the island is really something to marvel at and seems to be its main tourist attraction (discounting the famed full-moon parties, of which we did not bother with; somehow I don’t think the parentals would have enjoyed it much, and this was fam-jam time, end of story. There have been plenty of opportunities for Hillary and I to get outrageously messed-up on this trip, and I have a hunch there will be many more).  There are many places along the Swahili coast in which you can relax on white-sand beaches and enjoy the warm waters of the Indian Ocean, but there is only one where you can visit the birthplace of the Swahili language and culture, and that’s Zanzibar.  The island was a fascinating collision of three seemingly unrelated cultures, brought together by its strategic location off the east coast of mainland Africa, on the way to Arabia and India.

We took the ferry back to Dar es Salaam at the end of our visit.  At the entrance to the terminal, we were hassled by disgustingly rude officials and made to show our passports, even though we weren’t crossing any border.  We even had to fill out immigration cards. I’d been told that the people of Zanzibar feel that they are separate from the rest of Tanzania, and act as such, but I was still not expecting this. Afterwards, we had to wait in the unrelenting sun for over an hour to queue for the ferry.  There were several different ships, and no form of order or organization was even attempted, but that’s Africa for you.  When our boat finally arrived, Hillary and I got our concert elbows up and shoved our way through the crowd of tourists and locals and managed to snag some decent seats for the family for the two-hour trip. It was a hot, humid, sweaty kind of day, and I had responded to my dad’s inquiry of “what are the chances this thing has AC?” with what I thought was a generous estimation of “5%” but, lo and behold, it was air-conditioned.  The journey went as ferry rides usually do and at the end, after putting up with the clusterfuck of bag reclaiming (seriously these guys have no desire to even attempt to make these sorts of things easy, or at least smooth), we dealt with a variety of touts and money-grubbing amateur porters at the exit of our terminal. We all politely declined help, electing to carry our own luggage, and while most stubbornly persisted, they eventually left us alone.  One guy though actually followed us across the street, carrying absolutely nothing, and ignoring or polite requests for him to fuck off please, and then still asked for a tip!  I was absolutely sick of people like this by that point in the day, and I basically shouted at him to fuck off, and I’m sorry but rightly so.  He did nothing, and was expecting us to start leaking money or something.  We are white after all.  In the end, my Dad caved, but didn’t have any small cash on him, so gave him a 100/= coin.  At first I was pissed off that this guy actually managed to get money from us, but the more I think about it, the more I realize that it was better than giving him nothing at all.  100/= is about 7 cents, and it was somewhat of an insult to him to have gotten that as a tip when he would have been after, at the very least, 2000/=.  As I thought about it in the car later, I was pleased with the end result. “Thanks for nothing asshole, here’s a dime.”  Maybe I’m being over-the-top here, but god damn these people were starting to really get on my nerves.

Hillary and I said our teary goodbyes to our family once more shortly after arriving on the mainland, as they were flying that night.  And so another chapter of the Hertzberg/M’Gonigle family’s vacations came to an end.  We’re a family that has always enjoyed going away, but this was definitely the most ambitious trip yet.  When I left Africa nearly 8 months ago, my mum said she would come meet me for a few weeks at some point in my trip, but it soon evolved into a meeting of epic proportions.  We’ve had our ups and downs when it comes to family vacations, but for whatever reason, this was easily the best one yet.  If you guys are reading this: thank you so much for a. coming to meet me during my year abroad and b. resisting the (I’m sure overwhelming) urge to tear each other’s heads off.  I love you guys and I enjoyed our time together in Tanzania more than I am able to effectively communicate.  Thanks for paying for everything (and I do mean everything) and making me temporarily forget what it’s like to live life as a dirty, cheap motherfucker. 

Hillary and I then wrapped our heads around the prospect of travelling like cheap bastards once more, a concept that had been disregarded during our rather lush fam-jam. Our next stop was to be Rwanda, and we had visas and transportation to sort out. Canadian USED to be allowed free entry to Rwanda, but this was before Stephen Harper ruined everything ever.  Long story short (I’m not really in the mood to rant anymore), most of the world used to like Canada, but they now mostly hate us, thanks to the fucking abhorrent international policies of Harper’s brilliant government. Rather than be able to show up at the border with no prior arrangement, Canadians now have to apply for visas at least 3-days ahead of time, and pay $30 to gain entry.  What’s more is that they require you to be very specific about your time and place of entry, which we were not completely sure of.  We were at first considering flying from Dar to Kigali, but when that turned out to be over $900 (what the actual fuck), we elected to take the gruelling bus journey across the country at $32. On paper, it was meant to be 26 hours, but it ended up being 36 of the most uncomfortable hours of our lives, but that’s a story for my next post.  When we finally had visas and transportation arranged we had a few days to wait in the glorious city of Dar es Salaam.  As I said earlier, the city is not welcoming in the slightest, and is dirty, loud, and frankly not worth your time.  Unless you have a specific reason to be there, avoid Dar es Salaam at all costs.  Seriously, the place sucks mad ass. But there we are, alone again natura-diddly. The manager of the New Bondeni Hotel (Abdul, I mentioned him in the last post) told us he would take us out and show us the “real Dar” one night and we accepted his offer.  We met him in the lobby at 11:30 PM one fateful night, and climbed into a car having no idea what was coming.  It started off innocently enough as he showed us his favourite place to come and relax or think, which was on the peninsula, and was a quiet little place by the beach.  We spent twenty minutes basically just standing there, with Hillary and me awkwardly trying to make conversation.  After that had finished, he told us it was time to “shake our bodies”.  Now I’ve got nothing against nightlife or getting crunk, but this was a different scenario.  Abdul is a nice guy, but he makes us both feel awkward and we were not in the mood to go clubbing.  We didn’t say this of course, and got dragged to an, admittedly popping, local haunt.  I had been drinking in preparation, and so was slightly buzzed and therefore slightly more willing to deal with the heaps of awkwardness that were flung our way, but it was still weird.  Here we were, two white people standing on the spot in a place that had probably never seen a tourist ever, at 1:00 AM, with Abdul, a skinny Indian man who would occasionally, at seemingly random intervals, perform some variation of the sprinkler in the direction of the bewildered dance floor. So for over two hours, we stood, rooted to the spot, sipping on beer and watching the locals “shake their bodies”. Sure we could have gotten more involved, but we were not up for it, sick of pretending to enjoy Dar es Salaam, and it was an insanely awkward scenario.  The dance floor was weird enough without the added presence of my earth-shattering moves.  Some of the people there must have been on drugs, because most of them just stood in front of the mirrors, staring at themselves, and moving their arms and legs in a manner that resembled…I don’t know how to finish this sentence.  It was like nothing I’ve ever seen, and I’ve partied with some reallllllly drugged out people before.

At about 3:00, we were finally escorted back to the hotel, only to have Abdul tell us that he was heading back.  Why? Why was he doing this? He looked just as awkward as us, and for the over two hours that we stood in that club, he did literally nothing.  It wasn’t like he was on the prowl or loved dancing, or maybe he just didn’t show us in front of us.  Either way, what was going on in that club was not fun for anyone involved, and I have no idea why he wanted more. It was a really nice gesture of him to try and show us the night life of the city he apparently adores so much, and we were polite throughout the whole ordeal, but it was not an enjoyable night at all.

And that was the most exciting thing that happened on our last few days in Dar es Salaam as we counted down the minutes until we would be leaving that horrid city.  Our next stop was Kigali, but not before the longest and arguably least pleasant bus journey of my backpacking career.  We woke at 4:30AM one fateful morning and packed our lives away once more.  But the good times that followed is a story for another day.  I hope you enjoyed this post. The next one will detail our looooong bus ride across the length of Tanzania, good times at the Rwandan border, and the unique city of Kigali including the 18^th anniversary of the horrible genocide of 1994 in which at least 1 million people brutally lost their lives to the ethnic confrontation between the Hutu and Tutsi while the rest of the world disgustingly ignored what was happening. Are you pumped?  You’re pumped, I can tell.  Keep it classy dear readers, until next time.