Zanzibar

Nov 17th : It had been arranged, the night before, that a taxi would collect us at 9am to go back to the ferry terminal, which would take us back over to Dar.

Bags packed abd car bboked in fro her 3 day holiday in the sun, we waited at reception. The the taxi arrived early, and we were off to Zanzibar!!

Getting a ferry back to Dar was alot easier than we thought it would be, and in no time at all we were back in the smelliest fish market in the world - AKA Dar!!!!!!

As 20 min walk in very hot humid temperature, brought us to the Zanziabr terminal, looking like we had had a bucket of water thrown over us!
This terminal was completly different from the south beach terminal - it was mainly white tourists using this one!!
This could mean only one thing - HASSLES!!!!
Everyone wanted us to use their ferry as "it is the best and the fastest" blah blah blah........
We were very lucky, Patrick made a bee line for the nearest "official" looking ticket office. To our relief and suprise, the Captain of the boat greated us, took us around the back into the airconditioned office and sorted out our tickets.
With tickets in our pockets, the Captain lead us through the heaving masses of hawkers, and straight onto the ferry!!! WOW what a relief!!!
The ferry was air-conditioned, so, Patrick sat for 2 hours in comfort, whilst I spent 2 hours trying not to vomit!!

Arriving in Zanzibar in one peice, having not vomitted once, we got off of the ferry - It was as is we had walked into a brick wall - the heat as you left the boat was unbelievable!! Acclimatizing as quickly as poss, it was every man for himself trying to get off of the jetty and into the terminal!!

Stepping out of the terminal was a huge mistake! We were mobbed by thousands of touts. They came from every direction, pushing each other out of the way, so that they could get us to go with them, rather than the others!!!
They were offering everything from taxi and vespa rides to spice tours and boat trips!!! When we said no, it was as if we had tried to cut an arm off!! They were horrified that we would come to the Island and NOT go on a spice tour / boat trip or what every else they were trying to get us to do!!!

By the time some one approached us and asked where we were staying, both if us had had enough! He was firmly told that we had arragned to stay at Pyramid Hotel. Much to our suprise, he said OK fine I will take you there, I help to run the hotel.
Not too sure whether to trust him or not, we followed hin for a bit until it was clear that he was taking us in the right direction!

Arriving at Pyramid, we checked in, dumped our baggage and I thought about going for a walk around the town.
Patrick arranged transport for the next 2 days - in the form of a Vespa scooter - then the many narrow winding streets of Stonetown called us.

The place is a maze!! Worse, actually because you have to get back to the middle to sleep for the night!!!
After walking around for 4 hours, both of us were disorientated and confussed - there were no landmarks to use to gets your bearings from!! Every narrow street had started to look like every other narrow street!!!

After some aimless wondering, we stumbled in the Pyramid recepetion and up to the room.

After a shower and change, Patricks stomach was ready to hit the town again in search of the food court. This is an area of the town which, at night, transfroms from a park, to a street food market, with every concievable type of sea food avaliable.

Well as our luck seems to be going, the food market area was closed off for a an overhaul!! All that could be found was 2 sea food stalls, 1 indian stall and 3 pizza stalls!!!
The price of the sea food was by no means street food prices, so we passed on that a tried a Zanziabrian Pizza.
They were amazing! It was a mixture of mince meat, chilli, soft cheese, tom, onion, mayo and an egg, all mixed together on a piece of pastry, then cooked on a hot plate!
There was also Banana and chocolate pizza for pudding. Well it would be very rude to come all this way and not try one (or two)!!!!!!!!!

After a good feed, we waddled our way back to the room.

Nov 18th ; Patrick was awake at sutpid o'clock, turned the lights on and complained that he could not sleep any more!!!!!!!!!!
I did try my best, not to kill the insomniac!!!!!!
Breakfast was served on the roof-top. Not as romantic as it sounds, because all you could see was other pigeon covered roof-tops!!
After breakfast it was down the steepest stairs in the world, to the reception where we waited for the Vespa.
When man with the Vespa arrived Patrick went and sorted out the driving permit, costs etc whilst I packed the bags ready to leave.
Everything paid, we went for a test drive to get fuel.
I have never laughed so hard in my life!!!!!!! Patrick had not ridden a bike in years and I have never been on one, this combined with very narrow winding streets, made for a very amuzing 30 mins!!!!!!
There were shouts of "Hey Mzungu", but the looks we got were the best!!! They were not hidding what they thought of the whities trying to ride a Vespa around the narrow winding streets and out onto the main road!!!
After trying to go the wrong way up a one-wat street, we went back to the hotel and collected the bags.
With the clothes bag on my back, the camera around Patrick and my hand bag stashed in the small cubby hole, we piled onto the Vespa again. At last we were ready to leave Stonetown, and explore the rest of the Island.

It was great fun!! It did not take long to get the hang of the Vespa. Then nothing could hold us back, well apart for cattle (they are HUGE when you are on a scooter!!) and police.
The police just wanted to stop us and talk. It was very obvious that they thought it was very funny seeing 2 mzungu's on bike,one with a big bag on her back!!!! The biggest problem with being stopped by the police was that we had to turn the bike off every time we were pulled over - this meant that Patrick had to kick start it again.

After 3 hours of arse breaking driving, I had pain in places I did not know existed, let alone could be this sore!!!!
Finnaly Paje beach came into view, oh and another police stop!!!!
Pulling in to Paje By Night, arse still numb, hands still tingling, we wobbled into one of their standard rooms and died!!!!!

Once everything had stopped moving, it was time to see what the beach was like.
Well it was the worst beach I have ever seen!! Brilliant white sand as far as the eye could see, crystal clear waters so shallow you can just about see the waves breaking on the horrizon, and clear clear blue skys!

It took all of 2 seconds to get used to it!!!!!!

Nov 19th ; Breakfast was not served until 8am, so I had a lay in, whilst the Insomniac was up and out of the the room before sunrise!!!
Breakfast was huge!! Fruit salad, toast, cake, spanish omllete, fresh juice and coffee!!!
After that much food I was very worried about falling asleep on the back of the Vespa!!

Leaving Paje beach to carry on being perfect, the Vespa tured North, in search of the spice farms.

Well the farms went unfound, as buzzed our way around the Island, slowly getting more and more "disorientated" (man talk for lost!!!).

We did find Jozani Chakwa National Park, where the endemic Red Colobus Monkeys are.
Suckered in by the prospect of cute monkeys, we paid the fee and went for a guided walk.
The forest grows on a dried coral reef, but all of the trees have been introuced over the years by the many invading countries. The Monkeys have adapted to eat the fruit from most of these introduced trees - how clever!!!
The Red Colobus monkied are sooooooo cute!! There were everywhere, all aorund us as soon as we were 500 metres into the forest!

As I was filming some of the babies playing, one broke off from the group and ran to within 1 metre of where I was and sat ther ewatching me! It was magical to be that close to a wild animal and kjnow that they were as intersted in me as I was in them!!
Sadly it was, all too soon, time to move on and carry on our buzzing north.

Not far from the Park we were pulled over AGAIN, problem was when Patrick tried to start the Vespa again his shoe fell to pieces!! So, with the police watching, he put on my right shoe, started the bike, put his knackered old shoe back on and we drove off!!!!

Bums ruling the day again, they dictated what time we went back to Stonetown!!
Vespa and tired sore passangers arrived in Stonetown around 3pm. Patrick arrranged for the Vespa to be collected and we went for a walk, to try and get some feeling back in our bums!!

I was keen to get some ear rings to match the necklace we had got in Kenya. Both Patrick and I had to laugh at the prices they wanted for them. It started off at Tsh3500 (around £1.50), and ent all the way up to $10 (£7.50!) - now we only paid £1 for the necklace so there is no way we were paying more for the earings!!

The stall holders did not seem too bothered at us laughing at the prices and walking off - they obviously knew that another tourist would think they were cheap and get 2 pairs!!
So we left the narrow curio riddled streets with new shopes for Patrick, put no earings, and we in search of a cold shower before dinner.

As Patrick came out of the showeer he was bleating about his leg being sore. On the inside of his right calf was the biggest brise IU have ever seen!!!! It could only have come from kick starting the Vespa every 50kms! With the bruise named "kick-start claf" we went and found dinner.

Nov 20th ; After breakfast we went for a walk down to the harbour to arrange a ticket back to Dar. The earliest ferry was not running until 1pm, so now there was a whole morning to kill!!!
Ticket purchased, it was back to Pyramid to see if we could leave our bags there whilst we tried to waste the morning wandering around.

So Patrick, Kick-start calf and I went walking around town again. After an hour we were both bored - there is only so many time you can look at the same curio shops!!
We stopped at a coffee shop for a drink, this killed 45mins, then went back to Pyramid to collect the bags.
By now it was 11, so we sat in Murcury's had another drink, then at 12 went around to the terminal to check in.

Im glad we went around early because they started boarding the ferry at 12.15!! We took the comfy seats with extra leg room,at the front and settled in for a 45min wait before the ferry left port.

After a bumpy 2 hour crossing, we docked in Dar.
Now the fun started again as we tried to get though the millions of touts! They had come into the terminal and were blocking the ramp off fo the ferry!!! By the time we got out of the terminal I thought my name was "Taxi"!!!!

We made good time to theh South Beach ferry terminal and were across and getting in a taxi within 30mins of getting off of the Zanziabr ferry!!

Back at Sunrise Beach Resort we collected our car. It was like getting a long lost family member back!!! You get so used to your whole life revolving around her, that when you are without her for 3 nights it feels like you have lost a limb!!!
We cooked our own dinner and then curled up in our own bed - it was the best nights sleep in 3 nights!!!