Globetrotting

After having completed our climb up Kilimanjaro, we flew on to Zanzibar to have a few relaxing days on a tropical island after all that exercising. The first two nights we spent in Stone Town, which is the old town of Zanzibar city, main town of the island of Zanzibar and also the capital of the semi-autonomous region of the Zanzibar Archipelago (which also includes Pemba island and multiple smaller islets).

Stone Town is a pretty little old town, with lots of very narrow alleyways with architecture that combines African, Arabic, and Indian elements. Zanzibar’s heydays were as part of the Sultanate of Oman – Zanzibar became part of the Sultanate in 1698 and became such an important trading hub in the Indian Ocean that by ~1840, the sultan moved his capital to Zanzibar, and the traces of that period can be seen throughout the city. A very interesting feature are the beautiful carved wooden doors that can be found on many of the houses, combining Indian elements (decorative spikes originally used against elephants) and Arabic ornaments.

We spent most of the time walking around town and admiring the houses as well as visiting some museums – most notably the palace museum, which showcases some of the rooms of the Sultans along with some explanation about the history. In addition, we indulged in the great food – which again draws from origins all around the Indian Ocean. The special highlight, however, was Zanzibar Pizza, which we had almost every evening in Forodhani Gardens. In this seaside park, around sunrise every evening, a large number of food vendors set up their stalls, selling mainly seafood, Zanzibar Pizzas, and sugarcane juice. Calling them “pizzas” doesn’t really give you the right idea – it is more a Roti dough which is filled with either meat, vegetables and egg, or sweet things like Nutella and fruits, then folded and fried on a large plate – so you could call it a filled pancake maybe. It was cheap and delicious, so we kept coming back for more.

On 26 December, we went across the island to spend some time on the beach as well, in Jambiani on the east coast of Zanzibar. The water there was really blue and pretty, but I must admit that we weren’t that overwhelmed by the beach – I guess we have just been spoiled, since we have been to nicer tropical island beaches (Koh Lipe for example, or more recently Isla Mujeres). The beach in Jambiani just had too much seaweed for our liking. Due to that, a power outage that lasted almost a day, and the fact that we missed the good food in Stone Town, we cut our stay short and left after just one day to return to Stone Town for two more nights.

The day before we left, we went on a so called spice tour. Zanzibar is a major producer of spices, most notably cloves, nutmeg, cinnamon, and pepper. The spice tour took us to a demonstration farm on which these and a wide variety of other spices and fruits are grown, so you can see how the plants look like. In addition to the aforementioned spices, we also were shown vanilla, cardamom, curry leaves, jack fruit, bread fruit, bananas, cocoa, coconuts, and others.

On 29 December, we took the ferry across to Dar es Salaam and flew back to Johannesburg from there.

Some pictures follow.