Zanzibar!

Last weekend the kids had Monday off (Labor Day) and we had them skip school on Friday for a long weekend adventure.  A big part of why we're here in Rwanda in the first place is because of the wonderful experiences I had in Tanzania, one country over, while I was in grad school.  Visiting Zanzibar was a highlight of my Tanzania time, and when we decided (for a variety of reasons) to come to Rwanda instead of Tanzania for this adventure, I was determined to find an opportunity to take the family over there.  It didn't disappoint.  We had a wonderful time, and even the hard-to-please teenager expressed her satisfaction with the experience.  (Something like, "That was actually a fun trip."  High praise.)

Boarding the plane to Dar es Salaam

We left Friday morning, flew from Kigali to Dar es Salaam (2 hr flight) and then had a couple of hours at the airport before our flight to Zanzibar.  Unfortunately when we went to check in for that flight they didn't have a record of our booking (or they could see it in the system, and we could see that our credit card was charged, but apparently the airline didn't actually issue our tickets?) so we ended up having to scramble and re-buy them and then race to catch our flight.  Luckily it's a pretty cheap flight and we were on our way.  

Waiting for our flight to Zanzibar (before we figured out we didn't actually have tickets)

Getting ready to land...

Also, Caleb sat next to the Mayor of Dar es Salaam on the flight over.  Of course he did.

After a quick 20 min hop, we were on the island of Unguja!  (Zanzibar is made up of 2 big islands: Unguja is the bigger, southern one, and Pemba is to the north.)  Our taxi driver, Momo, picked us up at the airport and drove us 20 min to Stone Town, where we drove through the winding streets to the Tembo House Hotel.  The hotel was beautiful and colorful (it had a very Wes Anderson vibe) and right on the beach.  Apparently it was the US Embassy at one point.  (One thing I didn't know when I booked is that it's a temperance hotel, meaning no alcohol sold or to be consumed on the premises.  Zanzibar's population is 90% Muslim so booze is a little more limited than we're used to, but we adjusted fine.)

Tembo House Hotel at night...

And in the morning.

Kids' room

Looking out toward the water at night...

And in the morning.

Going to make this one into a puzzle.  There are a lot of cats in Zanzibar.

After we got checked in and settled, we walked over to Forodhani Garden and its night market.  We were immediately engaged by the first vendor selling an impressive assortment of seafood and meat skewers.  They took our order, sat us down on a bench, and brought us several plates piled with octopus, calamari, shrimp, chicken, beef, and bread.  It was all pretty dry and not that great, AND we paid a robust mzungu price for it... all part of the adventure. 

Over the next couple of days Caleb took photos of the market area from the same spot at different times of day... pretty fun.

Bellies partially full, we wandered the market a little more and then decided to go to a restaurant down there the water for a little more (higher quality) food and some ridiculous large cocktails with bottles of Corona in them.  (I don't think we knew about the no booze at the hotel thing yet, so we weren't overcompensating... just getting into vacation mode I guess.  I needed a good bit of help from Caleb to finish mine.)  From there, we walked back to the hotel and stopped for gelato along the way.  Then off to bed.

On Saturday, we had breakfast and set off on a walking tour of Stone Town with Khamis Mwalim, or as he introduced himself, "Chief Guide."  We've been pretty spoiled here in Rwanda by having Anaclet as our guide on our safaris and other explorations, and somehow we hit the jackpot again with Chief Guide.  As we walked around town, he was constantly greeted by locals, who would yell, "Chief Guide Chief Guide Chief Guide!" at him, and do a kind of call-and-response greeting in Swahili.  Pretty great. He took us to the Old Fort, and we were talked into having henna painted on our hands at one of the little shops set up in the fort.  

Chief Guide!

Henna painting, with a cat sleeping in my lap.

From there, we went all around the winding narrow streets of Stone Town.  As I remembered from my visits way back in 2006-2007, it's just an amazing mix of cultures... Arabic and African and Indian and European.  Its iconic doors apparently come in more-Indian and more-Portuguese designs - the spikes on the Indian ones were reportedly designed to keep elephants out of people's homes, and were retained even though there are no elephants in Zanzibar.  

Got caught in a traffic jam for a bit while this little TukTuk tried to squeeze itself through a tight opening.  Made it through eventually.

Chief Guide took us through the spice market and the fish market.  The kids were flagging at that point so we dropped them back off at the hotel, had lunch, and then went back to the old Slave Market site, which now houses an Anglican church (the English played an important role in abolishing the slave trade), a memorial statue, and a museum.  I learned a lot about this Eastern slave trade, which was a huge part of Zanzibar's history and development.  Apparently at one point enslaved people being shipped through Zanzibar on their way to plantations in Madagascar and India or Northern Africa made up about a third of the island's population.  The origins and drivers of this slave trade seem to differ quite a bit from the Transatlantic trade we Americans are more familiar with... one thing I'd heard before is that slavery in other places, including this Zanzibar route, was more fluid... people could become enslaved after losing wars to other tribes, and then be freed, and even have slaves of their own.  The chattel slavery system that's such a deep part of our American history was unique in being entirely race-based and passed from one generation to the next.  Which doesn't mean the Eastern system was "better" - it was also brutal and terrible, evidenced by the terrible slave quarters we saw where 70+ grown men were crammed, and the museum's images of people chained together carrying elephant tusks over long distances, a primary market of which was the US, it turns out.  So (fun fact!) our country also had a big hand in fueling these human atrocities AND wiping out most of this continent's amazing wildlife in the process.  Ugh.

Back to vacation?

I forgot that over lunch we also took a dip in the Tembo House's second story pool overlooking the spectacular Indian Ocean.  (Tembo means elephant in Swahili, by the way.)  

If Zanzibar was a highlight of my time in Tanzania many years ago, there was one rooftop restaurant I remembered visiting that was one of the most memorable parts of my time in Stone Town.  By sifting through old emails, I was able to find its name: the Emerson Hotel.  Back in the day, I think you could just go up to the restaurant for a sunset view & cocktail, but they've since made it so if you want to do that, you have to make a reservation and do a whole fixed-menu dinner.  Luckily, I figured this out earlier in the day and they still had reservations available.  We decided it was worth it.  (Caleb does our finances and can confirm that this was not a cheap trip.)  The hotel is tucked into one of Stone Town's narrow streets and doesn't look like anything extraordinary.  To get to the restaurant, you climb multiple flights of stairs in the building, and then a last narrow staircase from an outside patio up to the very top. The restaurant space is tiny and gorgeous, and it's one of the highest points in the city with a 360 degree view of rooftops and the ocean.  We arrived as the sun was setting and the Muslim call to prayer was vibrating through the air.  Spectacular.  

We sat with maybe 15 other guests on cushions on the floor and had cocktails and a delicious several-course meal with live music.  The kids were a little droopy at the beginning (Athena had chlorine-eyes from the pool and couldn't keep them open), but perked up and even tried dancing with the musical performers by the end of the evening.  A really wonderful night.

The next day (Sunday) we decided on a "Safari Blue" adventure.  We took a cab to a fishing village about 40 minutes south of stone town, and loaded up into a wooden dhow boat with an assortment of other tourists from all over (a couple from Botswana, three Muslim folks that spoke Swahili and could have been from Zanzibar or the mainland, an American and her Francophone African friend, a family of 5 from maybe Russia...).  We motored over to a small island and dropped a few crew members and food there to get started on lunch, and then went over to a little lagoon where we got out to swim.

Then we went over to a sandbar and played there for a while, before going back to the first island for a really yummy seafood lunch.  

After lunch we walked over to an enormous old baobab tree on the island.  It fell over at some point and just decided to keep growing in a new direction.  The kids and I climbed a bit.

Then it was time to load up and head back.  April-May are the long rains in Zanzibar and I was worried before our trip that we'd get dumped on the whole time.  It rained a bit on Saturday but not for long, and during our water safari it seemed like there were spots of rain in every direction when we looked around the wide horizon, but it never rained on us.  Another really wonderful day.

We got back to Stone Town in the evening and walked over to a place our hotel concierge recommended for dinner, serving lots of yummy local dishes (seafood and coconut curries and rice and beans).  Went back to the hotel and the kids played on the beach a bit, and then we sent them to bed and Caleb and I went to Livingstone's next door... sat on the beach and had cocktails and listened to music.  Lovely.

Monday was a bit of a whirlwind.  Caleb and I went back to the spice market, bought a painting for Anaclet (an elephant for an apartment he rents out to people coming to Rwanda on safari), then got back to the hotel and realized we were supposed to be at the ferry terminal already, so raced to pack up and get over there.  Farewell Zanzibar!  The ferry was a little rough... not too bad, but in retrospect the flights are a) cheaper and b) faster, so probably the better way to go.  

We made it to the airport in Dar in good time, got on the plane, and then realized I'd left Anaclet's painting (which was taken off its frame and rolled up into a tube) at the immigration area!  I let one of the attendants know, expecting a "gee, that's too bad," but she gave me her number and got to work trying to find it.  We had to leave before she succeeded, but when we landed I got a message from her that she had it back in Dar and was putting it on a flight on Wednesday.  Caleb successfully recovered it and we gave it to Anaclet as a celebratory gift on Thursday when we signed paperwork to buy 10% of his safari business and loan him money to buy a safari vehicle.  Um, yeah.  We did all that.  As I've said, it's the season of schemes...

Anyway, Zanzibar was magical!  Highly recommend if you're in the area.

Anaclet's Tembo

Great shot of the five volcanoes from the plane coming into Kigali.  Caleb has become quite the little photographer while we've been here.