After leaving Sean at Kilimanjaro airport for a connecting flight to Nairobi, I stepped on the plane to Zanzibar for 2 extra nights of beach. It would take the others nearly three days to reach the largest of the spice islands off the coast of Tanzania but the flight took only one hour.
Stonetown is the capital of Zanzibar and has the unfortunate record of being the last place to prohibit slavery. In the 1800s it was a hub for the slave-trade, bringing people from south and eastern Africa and exporting them to the middle east.
Today in the place of the last slave market stands a beautiful cathedral built in memory of those who suffered under this awful act. There are also the remains of caves and cells where people were held in chains before the market.
I had two full days here on my own and spent one doing a tour of a spice farm and the other relaxing on a small patch of beach trying to ignore the attention-seeking local ‘beach boys’.
The town itself has narrow, cobbled streets and many hotels and restaurants of western standards, which was pretty exciting for us.
Despite the stunning surroundings of Stonetown – aqua blue seas and white sand – it definitely has a seedy feeling. I missed the warnings about not walking around on our own and the night the rest of the group arrived one of the men was mugged at knife-point. Thankfully the next day we were all leaving to go to the northern beaches.
Kendwa beach, 90 minutes north of Stonetown, faces directly west and gave us one of the best sunsets we’ve seen. Our hut was right on the beach and the next three days were spent sunbaking, eating in the restaurant and swimming. This marked the halfway point of the tour and gave us some much-needed time to recharge our batteries.
From Zanzibar we spent one night at a beachside campsite in Dar es Salam, unfortunately there wasn’t time to see more than just the campsite, and then continued south. We camped one night in a forest full of baobab trees which was stunning but also a bit eerie before driving on to Ruaha national park. We stayed two nights here and spent the day in between doing a game drive through the park. We saw several herds of elephants, many giraffe and zebra, impala and gazelle as well as some kudus.
The following night would be our last in Tanzania before we crossed into Malawi.
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| Ancient doors at Zanzibar had pointy brass knobs to keep elephants out |
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| Nutmeg before its dried and ground. The red ring around the seeds makes mace |
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| Vanilla beans |
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| Pepper corns |
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| the white at the bottom of this baobab tree is from elephants scratching at it |
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| the sausage tree of Africa ... and a bloody big nest |
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