Zanzibar

On our way to a conference in Dar es Salaam, we spent two days in Zanzibar's Stone Town.  Zanzibar is a collection of islands just off the mainland of Tanzania.  It was united with the rest of the country (then called Tanganyika) in the early 1960s, but it still feels like a very different place.  The population is predominately Muslim, and the ethnic groups seem to include more people of Arab descent than on the mainland.

Stonetown feels ancient, with its twisty streets, many only wide enough for 1 car.  No sidewalks in the interior, so we had to flatten ourselves against a wall when one drove through.  The town is in fact very old.  It has a long history as a trading center of slaves and spices.  We visited the old slave market where the victims of the trade were held in horrifyingly small, filthy and dark underground rooms.  The property is now owned by the Anglican Church, and visitors are guided through for a small fee.

We also went to a pleasanter site, a spice farm.  Along with about a dozen other, mostly European, tourists, our guide led us through a demonstration farm of mixed plantings.  He identified varieties and gave us each some to sniff.  The plants included lemongrass, ginger, turmeric (which looks similar to ginger, but is a pale orange), cardamom, annatto, pepper, cinnamon, and many others.  Which, of course, we were given the opportunity to buy at the end of the tour, when we ate a delicious lunch flavored with some of the spices we had seen.

On return to Stonetown, we rested in our hotel room on the Zanzibari bed--elaborately carved with inset painted tiles.  The beds are built high, and our mattress top must have been 3 feet off the ground.  In the morning, with birds chirping in the trees and vines outside our window and surrounded by the mosquito net suspended from a wooden frame, I felt like I was in a tree house.

One aspect of visiting Zanzibar I especially enjoyed was the availability of seafood.  We don't get much of it in our small town in the interior of the country, only occasional frozen fish from Lake Victoria.  So, I ate prawns for the first time in more than a year and a half.  There are good restaurants in Stonetown, which caters to tourists.  Our favorite is "Lazuli", where Zanzabari food meets California (by my definition).  Smoothies and seafood, expertly prepared with fresh, local ingredients, and delicately flavored with herbs and spices.

The second evening, we climbed to the rooftop bar (6th floor, no elevator) of the Maru Maru Hotel, for the best view of the sunset in Stonetown.  We ordered drinks and listened to a small band play.  While we were there they did a very odd rendition of "Guantanamera", sung with a Swahili accent.                

When we left the following morning, we took the fast ferry to Dar es Salaam.  We paid the extra couple of dollars to sit in the VIP section, which has the most luxurious seating I have seen in any transportation anywhere.  We were entertained with game shows and a Charlie Chaplin film on a large screen for the duration of the 2 hour ride, after the opening announcement of passenger regulations--no smoking, spitting, fighting, bad language, or stealing!  An amusing end to our weekend in Zanzibar.    

From Inside a Zanzibari bed