Monday, March 26, 2012

Zanzibar, Tanzania

For the past few days we have been in Zanzibar, where we have done absolutely nothing. It has been glorious.
We left Cape Town early in the morning (so early that our taxi driver was still asleep while taking us the airport... scary, we watched his eyelids the entire trip), and flew to Zanzibar via Jo-burg and Dar es Salaam. We then traveled to the north end of the island to our hotel in Nungwi, Zanzibar. Nungwi is a fishing village right on the white sand beach. It is in an interesting location in terms of the tides, because at low tide the beach stretches far and wide, but at high tide, the ocean comes up under the buildings (which are built on stilts for that reason). The beach and the ocean are nothing but white sand, seashells, and bright blue water. It is beautiful. We have spent most of our time walking the beach (Joe obviously looking for seashells), watching the beach life (fishermen, boats etc) and sitting by our perfect-temperature pool. We have also been eating super delicious, fresh seafood. Our favorite has been the calamari, which they grill rather than fry and each calamari ring is as big as an onion ring.
Unfortunately, with beautiful sand beaches also comes the sun, and we had a little snafu with sunscreen. The first day, we got a bit burned in a few areas that we had missed with sunscreen (especially backs of the knees- not bad, but really annoying), and since we were running low on sunscreen anyways, we went to a supermarket to buy more. Today, we completely covered our bodies with a really thick coat of our new "SPF 40" only to find out later that this "SPF" was an overexaggeration to say the least. We sadly are a bit burned, and will be more careful about buying sunscreen in other countries in the future :(
Tomorrow we head to Stone Town, which is the main town on Zanzibar and the historic center of the island. We plan to go on a spice tour (Zanzibar is famous for growing many spices such as cinnamon and cardamom) and do some more relaxing. We'll let you know how it goes!

1 comment:

  1. Anna! Holy moley that sounds awesome (expect the sunburn - from a very pale person, I feel your pain). I'm living vicariously through your posts in the constant world of 72 and florescent. Currently my only entertainment is Ray Lynch's "helpful" advice to me as I'm trying to place an ET tube. I would repeat it but I've already been banned from some blogs. I especially loved your Cape Town journeys, it really took me back. Also glad that I'm not the only one who turns on the windshield wipers when I went to turn.

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