holiday in zanzibar

this year i took a holiday and traded easter to celebrate mohammed’s birthday. i have spent the last 9 days on the island of zanzibar, off the east coast of tanzania-an island that is 95% muslim. so while i was sweating more than i ever have in my life, beautifully made up women wore makeup and henna on their hands, feet and face, without it running all over the place while the rest of their bodies were completely covered. i on the other hand, was wearing a lot of sunscreen and attempting to remain covered up and decent.

the holiday began in stone town, the main city in zanzibar. the buildings are beautiful and old. even in our budget hotel we had a bathroom sink carved out of one huge piece of stone. we were staying in what used to be a house for some important man’s harem. there was a beautiful rooftop restaurant where we ate breakfast everyday looking out onto the indian ocean. needless to say, i ate seafood for 9 straight days! a lot of squid, octopus, prawns, mussels, kingfish… anything i could get my hands on that wasn’t chicken. i ate from food markets as well as nice restaurants. i also took advantage of the daily happy hours by ordering amazing cocktails where the mix would include fresh fruit juice. i have also never ate/drank so many mangoes…. basically, the food was amazing. and when food, drink and sunsets are involved you can be certain that jules and i had a very romantic vacation.

in stone town we did a lot of shopping (surprising). we also went on a spice tour where we tried to identify all the spices from the plants, let me tell you, it was difficult. everything smells so much better before it is dried. we walked around in the sweltering heat crushing up leaves and smelling them. we ate a very fragrant lunch of curry with cloves and fish. we than headed to jozani forest, which is a huge forest that is home to the red colobus monkey, a very cheeky animal that is native to that specific forest. jules, myself and our guide walked around looking for the monkeys in the trees. we are trying to be quiet, not wanting to scare the monkeys, when one tries to leap over our heads and misjudges the distance, falling onto the shoulder of our tour guide and nearly taking us all out. thankfully, we didn’t scream to scare him away. so he just looked at us from the ground, shook himself, recovered and climbed onto the tree he had missed on the first attempt.

jules and i also went swimming with dolphins on the south end of the island. this involved putting on all of your snorkel gear and sitting at the very edge of a small motorboat poised to throw yourself overboard as soon as the boat caught up to the dolphins. this was a very exhausting but rewarding process that produced lots of bruises. the dolphins were beautiful underwater and dove very deep. obviously they have mastered swimming a bit better than me so it was difficult to keep up with them… hence getting in and out of the boat multiple times to catch up with them. we followed two around for about an hour before we went snorkeling.

after the south jules and i went up north to a small town called nungwi. we spent five relaxing days there, swimming, lying in the sand, snorkeling, scuba diving and reading in hammocks. really the opposite of landlocked zambia. more seafood and cocktails, including a full moon party that we had to take a midnight sailboat in order to dance the night away (see, every entry has at least one dancing story).

we met lots of really great people on our trip. two south africans (living in dubai) who basically had the same travel itinerary as us mocked jules and i saying that perhaps we should lighten up on the political debates during dinner, after all, we were on vacation. (obviously safe injection sites and legalized prostitution is perfectly acceptable dinner conversation… honestly). we also met a wonderful german girl studying medicine who will hopefully visit us in lusaka. two zanzibari boys were kind enough to show us around and make sure we didn’t get too lost in all the narrow streets of stone town.

so, basically, everyone should go to zanzibar. great food, small cute streets, lots of motorcycles and bikes, seriously blue water, sunsets, full moon parties, random people coming together… perfect beach holiday. and as long as you are travelling with jules and i, we will be sure to bring in the importance of social support and the problems with the world bank. obvs.