One of the main attractions of Tanzania was the opportunity to go to Zanzibar. Just the name conjures up images of pirates, Arabian nights, mystical African history, slave trading, Indiana Jones and deserted islands with white sand beaches. So we booked it for our last few days.
We flew from Kilimanjaro and even the arrival was quite exciting. It was just after midnight on the day the government decided to impose a tourist tax of about £25 to cover “health care”. Needless to say it was chaos, the airline didn’t mention it, nobody on the flight knew about it, the online payments didn’t work, nobody had cash, and we were all knackered at 1am.
As we learned, the country and inhabitants are poor and if this helps then great, but as we always have to remember, this is Africa, so it will be slow and disorganised, and so it was.
My online transaction failed, but when i checked the Revolut card it had actually gone through, so with that evidence we were let in and the cab was waiting.
We then discovered the main road on the island was being dug up, so had a ride through the back streets of Stone Town that doubled the journey time and at times was a bit alarming as it appeared slave trading might still be in fashion based on the neighbourhoods, but finally we made it to the hotel.
Before we arrived, I tried to work out the best location to stay, and to be honest it seemed to depend on what you wanted from the hotel because everywhere looked stunning.
Perfect resort
We stayed at the Tui Zanzibar Bay resort on the east of the island. In my experience hotels very rarely live up to the hype, but this one did and it was exceptional value as well, we might have just got lucky booking it late but it did feel like we were on a tropical island.
Beautiful pools, beachside location and a pier to watch the sunset the sunset and drink cocktails. The beaches 10 miles up the coast were better but most people seemed to stay on the resort anyway.
When you get past the initial romance of Zanzibar and start investigating what to do, then you quickly discover there isn’t much apart from sitting by the pool, enjoying the ambiance and have a holiday.
Wooksie (my long suffering wife) was very pleased with this lack of options, particularly after being bounced around in a safari vehicle and climbing the foothills of Kilimanjaro, so sat back to read her book in the shade.
After one day of paradise my ADHT kicked in and I started to investigate the options, I decided it was the right time in my life for scuba diving lessons and maybe even some deep sea fishing.
The only other options were a rather hot and sweaty trip to see the slave trading history of Stone Town or take a coach to other beaches that seemed sounded wonderful but similar to the one we were on.
I offered the options to Wooksie, who declined, pointing out she didn’t like being in the sea, asked if I’d noticed she was a red head and would get sunburned on an exposed beach and didn’t want to get hot and sweaty, and picked up her book again.
So I took to walking along the beach and looking at the strange stone formations and wondering how long the walls would last as the sea was busily eroding away the foundations.
It is worth noting that outside of these resorts there is nothing to do. A community had grown up around the hotel but apart from that it was empty.
A friend of mine (The Chemist in The Crew) had his honeymoon on the island, they rented bikes and rode around the villages and were stoned by a bunch of lads playing football. Initially I thought he meant they had taken drugs but nope, they actually had rocks thrown at them. Personally, I’ve thrown rocks at him in the past as well so I’m not passing judgement, but this does suggest travellers might need to wary of the locals.
Scuba diving
So to keep me occupied, I did two days diving which included lessons, it involved a coach trip up the coast and spending most of the day living the island paradise dream, out on a small dive boat, with fun people and exploring the undersea paradise.
It’s fair to say we weren’t alone out on the ocean. The diving happened around a coral reef about a mile out to sea. The diving company were very safety conscious, other than the danger of being run over by another boat.
The trip was only for experienced divers, to be honest I was a little bit obscure about my diving experience, I mentioned diving on the Great Barrier Reef (didn’t mention it was half a day lesson) so they gave me a refresher course as it was 30 years ago and I quickly picked up the basics. After years of surfing, being under water isn’t much of threat and that seems to be the main obstacle to learning.
The diving instructors were really good, he was looking after 2 of us, and over the 2 days we did 4 long dives and he took us down to a depth of 18m so technically we had achieved the requirements for the PADI certificate. Unfortunately I hadn’t registered for it so will do it on a future holiday.
Unfortunately I didn’t have the Go Pro with me on the holiday but underwater pictures don’t tend to be great anyway, needless to say we say lots of fish and I came a little too close to a Moray Eel, even though it was small it was an evil looking son of a bitch and I never want to see one again.
Leave a Reply