Africa Part 7/7: Zanzibar, Tanzania

After the safari portion of our African vacation, we went to the Tanzanian island of Zanzibar for three nights.  Our guide drove us from Ngorongoro to the city of Arusha and the Arusha airport and got us checked in for our flight to Zanzibar.  I was irritated with the porters who insisted on grabbing our luggage, boxed lunches, etc. to walk it the 50 yards through the airport and security so we would be obligated to give them a tip.  I guess they need to earn a living, but I hated the feeling of people looking at me like I was a walking ATM which was a regular occurrence during our trip.

I have flown out of small airports before, but this was a different experience.  The Arusha airport had an open-air waiting area, then when it was time to board, shuttles would come to pick you up and drive you to your plane (though your plane was only a short walk away).

 

The kids in front of our plane before boarding.  The flight to Zanzibar was short - only an hour and 20 minutes.  I think this was our kids' first time on a turbo prop airplane rather than a jet; they all commented about how small the plane was.

When we landed in Zanzibar, we were met at the airport by our guide Victor and his driver who took us on the hour long drive to our resort The Sands Beach Resort.  On the ride, we learned a little about Zanzibar and arranged for some excursions for later in our stay.

Our first day, we just relaxed around the resort.  We had asked the kids what they wanted to do in Zanzibar and Karina wanted to spend time relaxing at the beach doing nothing and Lydia wanted to swim with dolphins and snorkel.  Our compromise was to relax at the resort one day and go on a dolphin and snorkeling excursion the next.  This swing set is at the edge of the beach overlooking the water. 

I don't spend too much time on beaches, but the sand at our resort beach in Zanzibar was probably the softest and finest-grained powder I have experienced.  Walking along the wet parts of the sand felt like it was watery flour, drywall dust, or powdered sugar.

 

The beach just stretched flat out into the Indian Ocean without ever getting very deep which meant we didn't have big waves to play in, but it was peaceful.  I thought the water was very warm and Tanja got excited only to go in the next morning (when it was admittedly a lot cooler since the sun hadn't been shining on it for hours) and complain it wasn't warm at all.  I guess she was anticipating bathtub temperatures.

 

There were lots of small boats anchored along the beach in the water; no harbor or marina was needed since the water was so calm.

 

 

The kids had fun playing and digging in the sand.

 

 

It was a nice beach to walk on.  I had been warned by someone at work that Zanzibar's beaches were crowded with people trying to sell you excursions, trinkets, and other things.  We had a few people approaching us on our beach, but it was hardly crowded and once we told them we already had everything arranged as far as excursions, they left us alone for the day.

 

While all our accommodations during the safari portion of our trip had been arranged and paid for with three meals per day, in Zanzibar we only had two meals per day at the resort.  A neighboring resort had a pizza menu that we thought the kids would eat, so we tried it for lunch our second day.  Service at the few restaurants we ate at on our trip was much slower than we are used to.  For instance, on the way to Masai Mara from Naivasha, we had to stop at a restaurant for lunch.  To fill the order of fries that came with our meal, we noticed the two cooks working in the kitchen started by peeling potatoes...at least we knew the food was fresh.  Karina loved all the soups we had in Africa, and we joked to her that it was so delicious because the cooks probably started with a live chicken in the morning, and had the bones boiling in water all day to make such delicious fresh broth.  

This Zanzibar restaurant also had slow service and Derek especially was getting restless waiting for food, but we tried to keep him and the girls entertained.  Of course, it didn't help that they forgot his bowl of pasta when they brought our meal and when we got it he complained that the pasta had sauce made from fresh tomatoes that he didn't like instead of being plain like he normally eats at home.  We did get a few smiles before the tears started.  The workers saw his tears and brought out new food for him.  Also in typical African fashion, the food that was promised to be ready in '2 minutes' came out in 20 minutes.  We discovered multiple times on our vacation that African time is different from American time.  Hakuna Matata (No worries). 

 

 

Looking out the restaurant window and finding interesting things at the beach while waiting for the food.  There was a butterfly trapped on our side of the windows.  Lydia caught it and released it through an open window.

 

At low tide, we had fun exploring in the tide pools and walking out to where the water normally covered along the beach.

 

This ocean sailing canoe looked cool; I also liked the boat name "I Am the Storm".

 

 

 

We found sea stars, crabs, shellfish, and other interesting things at low tide.

 

We noticed a few locals out grabbing various shells and imagine that rather than collecting shells, they were getting food for dinner.  Tanja did not go shelling because, amazingly, nearly all the shells were occupied, and the ones that weren't would probably become a home for a creature later on.

 

One of the excursions we booked was a combination trip to swim with wild dolphins and then go snorkeling.  We were taken out on a small motorboat and when we asked about life vests for the kids, the crew pulled out two adult vests (the only ones they had on board), neither one with all straps having proper buckles.  Nevermind that we had confirmed multiple times before the excursion that there would be life vests, and yet there were only two adult-sized ones.  The U.S. Coast Guard would not have certified the boat to take passengers out, but guess we weren't in the U.S.

I felt a little bad for the dolphins.  Lots of boats were out in the ocean with us and they would chase the dolphin pod around until someone got a sighting of them.  Then all the people on the boats who were there to swim with the dolphins would jump out and swim around while the dolphins were in the area just trying to hunt for some food or whatever else they were trying to do.  It was also a little dangerous with so many boats and swimmers in the water that the boat captains and swimmers all had to be very careful of each other.

 

It was fun and interesting to swim close to wild dolphins like this.  I went out with Karina and Lydia while Tanja stayed in the boat with Derek who was too scared to go into the water even with a life vest on.  We were never as close to the dolphins as this person with the snorkel got, but still had a blast.

 

Here we are bouncing in the waves and smiling for the camera.  Derek had to give up his life vest so both girls could have one while swimming in the ocean with all the wakes from the boats, and to make sure they would be easy to spot.   

When the dolphins moved on, we would have to find our boat, swim over to it and get on board.  We would then chase over to where the dolphins went and then swim back out again.  Here we are swimming toward the dolphins. 

 

Derek liked the boat ride for the most part though it got a little boring toward the end since he exhausted everything he could think to do without getting in the water.

After we finished with the dolphins, our captains took the boat over to a reef off the coast of a small island called Mnemba, apparently owned by Bill Gates, to snorkel.  The girls tried snorkeling with masks for a while before deciding to just use their goggles.  I don't blame them; I have a hard time with snorkeling masks and the snorkel too. 

 

Tanja's a much more accomplished snorkeler than I am, so she went out snorkeling for most of this portion of the excursion while I got to play with Derek on the boat.  We had a huge assortment of fresh fruit on the boat as a snack and lots of seeds missed the garbage bucket we had and ended up on the boat floor.  While the girls snorkeled, Derek looked for seeds.  He decided he was going to bring the seeds to Norway (we were going there the next day) so he could plant a garden of watermelon, oranges, and apples for Mormor.  

 

We were happy to be out on the beautiful turquoise water on such a nice day. 

 

Tanja and Karina out on the reef.  Tanja (or me when I took a turn) would swim out with the life ring towing behind us for the girls to grab on should they need it.  The water was deeper than I had snorkeled in previously, but there were a lot of fish close enough to the surface to see.  The girls liked trying to touch the fish as they swam by, though I don't think they ever succeeded. 

After several hours on the water, it was time to get back to shore and the hotel.  Bill Gates's Mnemba Island is in the background of these pictures.

 

Near our resort, we found more interesting seashells with animals inside them at low tide. 

 

Derek found insulation for some kind of cable that he decided would make a cool whip.  He always finds many kinds of treasures when we go places.

The hotel had a beach-side bar that advertised "famous" piña coladas.  The girls remembered getting piña coladas a few years ago in Mexico and I think anything with coconut is delicious, so we got a couple virgin piña coladas to share.  They hollowed out a coconut from a tree on the resort to be our glass and used the fresh coconut meat, milk, and fresh pineapple to make it.  Like most of the desserts and treats we had in Africa, it was not nearly as sweet as they make things in the U.S. which honestly was great.  Then the workers went and cut flowers and leaves fresh from the resort grounds to decorate our drinks.  It made for a very artistic presentation of a refreshing beverage.

 

The kids enjoyed the drink too. 

We stayed in a family villa at the Sands Beach Resort in Zanzibar.  It had a sitting room separated from the entry and living room with cool Middle Eastern influenced arches.

 

Here's the living room with a wall of windows overlooking our private pool.

 

A small dining table and kitchen area with sink, tea/coffee service.

 

Looking through the arches into the sitting area from the living room.

 

The kids' bedroom had two twin beds for the girls and they rolled in an extra bed for Derek to sleep on.

 

The master suite with a king bed and some chairs.  Both bedrooms opened up onto the pool deck through French patio doors with floor to ceiling windows that let in lots of light.

 

Our private pool got a lot of use from the girls.  There is a much larger resort pool that our villa was bordering, but with this right outside our doors, we spent more time relaxing here.

 

 

Our last day in Zanzibar, we took a tour of Stone Town (the oldest part of Zanzibar City).  Zanzibar is culturally different from the rest of Tanzania in that it is predominantly Muslim owing to its roots as part of the Omani Empire between 1698 and 1865 (and its own Sultanate from then until it became a British colony in 1890).  The architecture reflects these Middle Eastern roots.  It was (and still is) an important part of the spice trade and there are farms that we could have toured to learn more about the various spices grown on the island like cinnamon, cardamom, nutmeg, turmeric, and others.  One of the stopping points on our tour as we wound around through small shops in a maze of narrow alleys was a market selling all kinds of meat, produce, and spices.

I'm not sure how sanitary it was to have open air butchering stations with all the blood and flies and everything else, but it was definitely interesting (and a little smelly) to experience it.  Again, it makes me grateful for standards in the U.S. where health inspectors have to certify everything, workers are required to keep surfaces clean (and know/want to do it), etc.

 

Lydia loves eating bananas and gobbled up several fresh ones during our trip to Africa.  In the Zanzibar market, we found some tiny bananas that were red, which was something new.  They tasted basically the same, though some of the red bananas we got probably weren't ripe enough to eat yet.

 

We visited the Christ Church in Zanzibar and admired the beautifully intricate hand carved doors.  We also learned about Zanzibar's tragic history as part of the slave trade with several exhibits outside of this church.

 

 

We had a nice lunch on the beach at a restaurant named Mercury.  It was named after Freddie Mercury, lead singer of Queen, who was born on Zanzibar.  It was nice to eat and look over the harbor before it was time to fly back to Nairobi and from there end our African vacation.

 

 

Lydia along the Zanzibar waterfront.

 

We flew from Zanzibar to Nairobi, and from Nairobi to London where I said good bye to my family before flying home while Tanja and the kids went from London to Norway to visit Mimi and Mormor.  On the way to Nairobi, the pilot announced we were flying past Mount Kilimanjaro.  Since we missed seeing it from the ground when we were closest at Amboseli National Park, I was excited to see it from the air rising above the clouds.  Unfortunately, I only had my camera phone with me, but here it is.

Thus we ended our wonderful trip of a lifetime to Africa having seen many wild animals that we had only seen before in zoos and on TV.  We saw a new part of the world, learned about how other people live, and reinforced our gratitude for the blessings we have.