Since childhood when I first heard the name Zanzibar, I have always imagined the most exotic faraway land, somewhere unattainable. Now I am in Dar es Salaam, it’s only a couple of hours on the fast ferry and distinctly attainable.
The 9:30am was full and I sat up front, in the open, plastered in factor 50 and surrounded by people of all nations, creeds and colours. I looked to my right and saw a familiar sight, a Chinese woman, feeling sick, with sick bag in hand and every inch of her face shielded from the sun. Yes, people were looking and laughing. The Chinese are scared shitless of getting brown and looking like a farmer, while the rest of us sit back and enjoy the sun’s rays on our faces.
On arrival, I made the mistake of being truthful about where I had been before entering Tanzania and was taken to the Ebola Centre for questioning about my health and to have my temperature taken. I then had to give my address on the island and phone number and was told to expect a daily call and to give myself up for a temperature test each day. Rather disappointingly, as it turned out, nobody called me during my stay.
After I was released from the Ebola Centre the queue of foreigners at the two immigration counters was very long and slow moving. I decided to try my luck and walked into the office through a side door. I explained that I had been to the Ebola Centre and that I didn’t really fancy joining the back of the queue. He suggested that, if I put 10,000/= in my passport, he would stamp it for me. My first experience of bribery in Africa.
It took quite a while to find my AirBnb (I’m giving it a one-star review btw) because the mobile signal in the lanes of Stone Town is patchy and Apple Maps often showed me in the wrong place.
The hawkers in Stone Town are remorseless; if it’s not calling you into their tat shops, it’s trying to sell you bags of spices and enticing you into their taxi to whisk you to another tourist attraction full of hawkers and touts. Even the woman who received me in my AirBnb tried to sell me a spice tour before I’d taken the bag off my back.
Stone Town itself is charming and you can spend a whole day getting lost there, going down blind alleys, around corners you swear you’ve walked around a dozen times. The architecture is beautiful, wonderful carved doors and colourful shutters but it all has a feel of dilapidation.
It bears more than a passing resemblance to Kashgar old town in Xinjiang, China although I’m sure the Tanzania government don’t persecute the population like the Chinese persecute the Uyghurs.
In the evening the heat is less intense and people tend to gather at the waterfront. Boys dare each other to leap off the harbour wall into the water. Zanzibar is a great place for a weekend getaway although I’m not sure there’s enough to keep you occupied for more than a couple of days.