6:30pm Disembark in Zanzibar, slightly sea sick and very tired, but, after almost 15 hours of travel THAT DAY, at least I'm there. Take a taxi to Jambo Guest House, which only has triples... drag bags to two more hotels until finally, one is available... give up and unpack. This, um, 'hotel' (very loosely speaking) is called Annexe of Abdullah; It's clean enough, but very hot (with no fans!) and the bathroom faintly reeks of urine... yum.
8:00pm Time to find dinner... the restaurant I picked from my guidebook didn't seem to exist... "settled" for an amazing Italian restaurant called "La Fencie"... mmmm... beef and vegatable lasagnia... finish off the dinner with strawberry and mint chocolate chip ice cream from an Italian cafe across the street. Thank goodness for all the expats setting up shops abroad! Hmm, maybe I should actually go to Italy next time?
10:00pm Wander around a bit, looking for my hotel... Zanzibar's streets are a mess of narrow winding alleyways and crumbling mansions, making finding anything incredibely difficult. Evenutally I stumbled across a really beautiful guesthouse with rosebushes out front, appropriately named "Garden Lodge"; Their security guard walked me 'home' (which turned out to be five minutes away), and I decided that I would switch to the Garden Lodge the next morning.
11:00pm Lay in bed watching reruns of M*A*S*H and the A-Team... fall asleep sometime after midnight to the sounds of Arabic music still playing outside...
8:00am Convince the hotel owner that I do, in fact, want to move to a different guesthouse... for $10 extra, I can have a bigger bed and a private bathroom that, thankfully, doesn't smell like anything, and particularly not like... well, you get the point. Drag bags over to the Garden Lodge and climb the winding staircase up to the roof terrace just in time for brekfast. Perfect!
10:00am Camera slung over shoulder, hair loosely covered with a thin gold-colored scarf, venture outside to begin photographing. I spent the afternoon wandering through streets and alleyways, sometimes sneaking pictures and other times getting permission... surprisingly, most people were happy (or at least willing) to pose for pictures; the key seems to be to hang out with them for a bit first, introduce yourself, show them some of your other photographs... even the religious women were willing to loosen their headscarves a bit and let me take a picture. I'm not sure how well they're going to turn out, but at least it was good practice...
6:00pm Dinner at "Mercury's", a candlelit seafood restaurant overlooking the water. It's named after Freddy Mercury, who was born in Zanzibar... took some more photographs, mostly of the ships leaving harbor and the sunset.
9:00pm Wander through the night market... i'm sure that this used to be a really authentic Zanzibari experience, but with so many tourists around it's become very commercialized, expensive, and more of a hassle than anything else. I bought some overpriced fruit and settled down on a small wooden bench; I was quickly joined by a local ice cream vendor and his baby monkey, named Cobra. This, of course, attracted a lot of attention, and I made friends with two Israelis who were traveling through; oddly, compared to India, there are almost no Israelis around... I'm starting to miss advertisements for samosas in poorly-written Hebrew! Came back home around midnight, packed up the remainder of my things, and passed out, hoping not to oversleep for tomorrow's 7am trip back to Dar es Salaam...
6:15am Wake up in a panic, because I was supposed to be in a taxi 15 minutes ago! Scramble to get ready, hop in a taxi about 10 (yes 10!) minutes later, and arrive at the dock with more than enough time (this is african time, after all... the immigration window wasn't even open yet...). Luckily, I met a Norwegian guy, Jonas, who I ended up chatting with during the boat ride; He kindly dragged my giant duffel bag on and off the ferry, and then several blocks further to a little lunch spot. Then, goodbye Tanzania! Off to the airport...
Girls by a doorway, Zanzibar
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