This past weekend four of us flew off to Tanzania to visit Zanzibar, a total tropical paradise. We stayed at a mix of hostels and hotels, taking the ferry from Dar Es Salaam to Zanzibar. After missing the ferry we wanted to take in the morning (it was sold out by the time we went to buy tickets), we had to wait for 3 hours in the ferry terminal. Tanzania was SO much hotter and more humid than Malawi has typically been, but thankfully the terminal was covered. A nice terminal worker helped us get from the ticket counter, through security, and to the waiting area, where he got his friend to give us the VIP WiFi password 🙂 After taking the ferry, we arrived in Zanzibar mid afternoon, had drinks and food at a Freddie Mercury themed restaurant (he was born in Zanzibar!) and headed to our hotel. We were met at the hotel with fresh watermelon juice (what?!) and were taken to our country named rooms, ours was called Rotterdam! We then immediately headed to Kendwa beach, one of the most popular beaches on the island. Bath water temperature ocean, gorgeous sunset, what more could you ask for?! The following day we left for a snorkel tour that took us around Mnemba Island, which is Bill Gate’s private resort island ($5000 fine if you touch the beach). Super clear water revealed beautiful reefs and we had a blast swimming around until it threatened to storm. We boated to another beach where lunch was provided, then headed back to Kendwa. That night we went to the Full Moon beach party, with several DJs (some good, some not so good) and ended up with a whopping 2 hours of sleep before taxi-ing to Stonetown, about an hourish away from Kendwa. We then met up with our guide who took us on a bike tour to a spice plantation. Bikes ended up being just a mode of transportation versus a true “tour” but I got a feel for the intensity of mountain biking…3 bruises later. A storm prevented us from taking a tour through the forest (true mountain biking), darn, and we biked back through the busy, crowded city as the storm dumped rain. Enjoyed another gorgeous sunset on the water, and honored Freddie Mercury at his restaurant once again. The following morning we did a walking tour around Stonetown, looking at all the shops and historical locations around the city. We packed up our bags and souvenirs and ferried back to Dar es Salaam to wait for our 4 a.m. flight to Blantyre (stopping in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia and Lilongwe, Malawi first). We ate at a traditional African style BBQ place, ordering one dish at a time, often not knowing what it was we were actually ordering. If anyone ever offers you Lemon Nundu, it’s straight up chunks of BBQ’d fat, marinaded in lemon juice. I had to pass…After stretching out our dinner as long as we could we taxi-ed to the airport and waited until the end of eternity for the counter to open so we could check in. Then more eternity, and finally we were off to Blantyre. I sat next to an American/Irish fellow who was solo biking through Malawi and Tanzania. Millennials are doing cool things, man! Great to know that there’s time to travel even after entering the workforce.
Lessons learned:
-Tanzania apparently does not like Americans, hence the visa to enter is $100, regardless of how long you are staying. That is double what everyone else pays.
-If you are going to volunteer in Malawi, automatically get a multi entry visa when you arrive if you have any intention to visit another country during your stay. Otherwise, you waste an insane amount of money getting an original single entry visa 😦
-Screenshot your return flight home so that when the grumpy airport man demands to see it you won’t panic because there’s no internet to download it at the time and you’ve only slept for a few hours. For most countries/visas you have to prove you are going home at some point, which I technically knew but wasn’t prepared to prove. So be prepared.
-Tanzanian mosquitoes do not like me, hence I have two swollen legs.
There’s too many pictures to post, so I will probably do a couple separate picture posts 🙂
Project Postgrad 