How does one encapsulate a week in paradise in a few paragraphs? I’m going to have to try, however, given the incredible holiday experience I just had.
Last week we headed off on the 44-hour train ride from Kapiri Mposhi (a town a couple of hours north of Lusaka) to Dar-Es-Salaam, where we were to meet another friend and proceed to Zanzibar. The trip got off to a slow start when I was stuck between two incredibly fat ladies for the bus ride from Lusaka to Kapiri. The day got better though, as we boarded our train, settled into the “luxuries” of our first-class cabin and prepared for a couple of days of train life. Since there were four of us we had a compartment to ourselves and this was where we spent basically our entire trip. Someone always had to remain there to protect our stuff from the numerous suspicious characters that occasionally roamed the hallways. Otherwise, it was comfortable, spacious, sleeping was easy, and we enjoyed hours of games (dice and Yahtzee being particular favourites), reading, talking, and watching scenery from our window.
All was going well until the afternoon of the second day, about 24 hours into the trip, when we stopped in Mbeya, a city in southern Tanzania, for an extraordinarily long stop. After much frustration we finally departed only to wake up that night to find the train stopped. Clearly it had been stopped for some time and it didn’t appear like it was going anywhere anytime soon. As it turned out, 16 hours was spent in the middle of no where. The cause: a derailment further ahead down the tracks that took some extensive cleaning up and track repair. Since we had acquired very few Tanzanian shillings at the border, were beginning to run out of water, and needed to contact our friend somehow, things were getting a little tight. Fortunately, we were able to convince the people on the train to accept Zambian kwacha even though we were in Tanzania and our problems were solved. Finally, we were back on our way and pulled into Dar at about 5 am on Sunday morning – 60 hours after our departure from Kapiri.
We met up with our friend and headed off to the port to catch an early ferry across the ocean to Zanzibar. Upon arrival we quickly waded through the obligatory port touts, got our Zanzibari stamp in our passports, were swamped by the intense heat and humidity, and found ourselves in a culturally and historically vibrant community that is the result of hundreds of years of international trade and interaction between Africans, Arabs, Indians, and Europeans.
The old quarter of Zanzibar Town is known as Stone Town. Normal navigation can be thrown out the window – narrow alleyways cut between the tall stone buildings. Large elaborately decorated doors frequently appear on the houses, although one has to be careful of the numerous bikes and scooters that zip up and down the “roads” while admiring these historical structures.
Our first day was spent looking around Stone Town, getting our bearings, and dealing with important logistical issues. Probably the most interesting attraction on this day was the House of Wonders, the former palace of the sultan which has now been converted into Zanzibar’s national museum. It forms an impressive landmark on Stone Town’s water front. It also is known as the site of the shortest war in history – when the British navy bombarded it the sultan surrendered within 40 minutes. I guess one could call it the original “shock and awe” campaign. Another highlight included the former slave market (Zanzibar used to be the centre of the slave trade coming out of eastern Africa until the British forced the Arabs to shut it down). An Anglican church was built on the site of the original market, although some musty basement rooms where slaves were kept in large numbers in horrid conditions have been kept for posterity.
Throughout the trip we were constantly blessed with Zanzibar’s amazing assortment of fresh fish and fruit. Surely this was the healthiest I’ve ate all year! We also ate on the ocean front all but one night. Dining room tables won’t quite be the same again. I had numerous species of fish for the first time during this trip: shark, barracuda, swordfish, a tuna steak, snapper, king fish, and I sampled some oyster, squid, and some other miscellaneous sea creatures.
Our second day on Zanzibar was spent on a spice tour. This was the only day where the rain seriously impacted our program as it rained throughout the tour and I ended up absolutely soaked. We were shown a huge number of bushes, shrubs, grasses, and trees that produce an endless array of spices. Zanzibar used to be a major exporter of spices; now most produce is only for local use although cloves remain an important export. The tour also included a visit to a nearby beach where, for the first time, I set foot in the Indian Ocean. The crystal clear warm waters and endless line of palm trees along the beach made for quite the idyllic setting. We visited another slave attraction – a cave where Arab traders hid slaves after the British had banned the slave trade. This deep natural cave along the beach was used to accumulate slaves before loading them onto boats at night time.
During our safari experience earlier in the year I had managed to get fairly close to some impressive land animals. Nothing was quite like swimming with dolphins, however. We were taken out in a boat in the ocean to find dolphins. When a pod had been found we donned snorkelling gear and jumped in to swim with them. Once they got too far away we would get back in the boat, find them again, and jump again. Often they had dived down pretty far so you could see them from above. That was cool enough, but on our last swim I turned around to find a group of dolphins no more than a few metres away from me. Pretty cool!
After a few days in Stone Town we headed off to the north of the island to enjoy the beach. In addition to enjoying the sandy beaches and crystalline waters, the guys went out fishing with some locals during the first day in Nungwi. We had boasted to ourselves that we would be hauling in huge fish, but it became quickly apparent that we were not fishing for such beasts of the sea. The tiny hooks were meant to catch little fish, which we did reasonably well, although certainly not in comparison with our local guides. That evening we got a local restaurant to cook up our fish, which they did and then served with cooking bananas and cow stomach. The next day many of us were feeling some stomach problems of our own – guess the fish got the last laugh!
On our second day in Nungwi we took a boat to a nearby island for some snorkelling. I thought it was pretty great, since I had never really been snorkelling before, although others with more experience had seen better elsewhere. In the evening we were determined to avoid the unpleasant gastrointestinal results of the night before so we looked for the most western restaurant we could find. Alas, even this approach failed, and one person on the trip ended up with some food poisoning.
During our last full day in Zanzibar we headed back to Stone Town. The guys headed out to Prison Island, an island off the coast of Stone Town, to see a giant tortoise sanctuary and do a little more snorkelling. A little souvenir shopping in the evening and the next morning rounded off the trip.
There was one last adventure in store. We had flown from Zanzibar to Dar, where we were catching a flight to Lusaka. On our way to clear the final security checkpoint to gain access to the boarding area we heard over the intercom: “Passenger E, P, P initial S this is your final boarding call for Zambian Airways flight to Lusaka.” This was then repeated for the other three members of the group. Never had I had my name announced over an airport intercom. The lucky thing was that we had just left a restaurant where we couldn’t hear any of the announcements. A few minutes later and we would have missed the flight. Its not even that we were late – the plane just happened to be leaving half an hour early.
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