Back On The Grid

Update from Zanzibar

We arrived in ZZ (as I call it) Tuesday afternoon and stayed at a hotel on the beach in Stone Town. Stone Town was the first city on the island of ZZ. Used by Arabs, Portuguese and then Brits as a trading post for slaves and spices. The next day we toured Stone Town to see the market and the old slave trading grounds - now filled up with a church built in the 1860s. My understanding of what our guide was saying was spotty; apparently slaving was bad and then there were some fights over how to stop it. Now it’s pretty much over. Except in the Middle East. According to our guide. Who didn’t seem very enthused about the whole guiding thing. It was about 90 degrees and very humid so we weren’t too enthused about the process either. Especially about the open air meat market where guys were taking big hatchets to heads of bulls. Ole!

Surprisingly quickly, we decided to jump into our air-conditioned car to drive about an hour to the north east side of ZZ where there are miles of beaches. And many resorts. Which are filled with tourists wanting to get good views of the ocean. Which, when you think about it, is likely to be spotted when you go to a beach.

Driving to our resort, reminded me of a story told by an ex-neighbor of ours. When his family drove to a fancy resort in the Dominican Republic, they went past miles of shacks. And their 13 year old daughter cried because she thought they’d be staying in a place similar to what she saw the people living in. Getting to our resort was kinda like that. Only I didn’t cry. (About that. Now, the pitifully slow connection to the internet at our resort was worth crying about. To me.)

The beaches here all have a fringing reef out about a mile from the shore. Where the ocean swells break. So the inner lagoon is quite peaceful. But the beaches have a lot of old coral rock so you have to step carefully on your way out to swim. And the water was about 80 degrees. But at least the sun was hot.

We went snorkeling out to a tiny coral atoll. And there were lots of colorful fish underwater. Which, when you think about it, is probably the best place for fish to be. And we got the backs of our legs very sunburned.

The next day, Friday, we took a spice tour on a farm near the airport. Saw clove bushes and iodine trees, kapok trees, nutmeg trees, durian trees (fruit that "smells like a toilet and tastes like paradise" according to our guide.) Cinnamon trees, ginger plants (Our guide told us ginger is used by the males to help with "horizontal refreshment." If I'm lying, I'm dying.) and stuff I can't remember. Jackfruit trees with the fruit growing right out of the trunk.

We left Zanzibar at 9AM MN time and got back home at 1PM Saturday. So a little more than 17 hours actual flying time and about 9 hours of waiting in airports. A lot of that time was spent straining to hear some sort of flight announcement. Which was either non-existent or sounded like:

Crackle, crackle, crackle. Clearing my throat now. Cough, cough. "Flight to Unintelligible City will be or not be boarding either over there or right here. Boarding might start soon or maybe you've already missed it."

Some of the first things I appreciate seeing back home:

Paved roads with stop signs and traffic signals that are obeyed

Water that's drinkable from the faucet

There's no way to say this in polite company but... toilets that actually flush without having to throw a bucket of water in to, ahem, clean them fully

Being able to get into the passenger side of a car on the right side. Usually, in Tanzania, when I climbed into the front seat passenger side, there was a driver already sitting there. Holding onto a steering wheel. The nerve!