Zanzibar, Day 3

Checking out yesterday took more than an hour, so by the time we got to Stone Town it was around 2 pm. We had lunch but only had time to walk around a few streets. There were some cool things in the stores. I got a few spice packages as gifts to take home. Our plane to Moshi was delayed, but luckily our connecting flight from Dar was held for us. We got back to home base around 10 pm.

Zanzibar, day 2

I had a lot of fun yesterday. We rented two jet skis and had them out for an hour. There are no speed limits or anything, and Mike went cruisin’. I was screaming and clinging to his life jacket and loving it. We went out really deep and got a lot of air on waves. We only ever fell off when we stopped to talk. The funny thing about falling was that it was a pretty busted jet ski with no emergency stop key, so if you fell off the motor kept going and it could get away from you. We had to swim after it a few times, but luckily it went very slowly. There were little things in the water that sting you a little as you swim, and I kept thinking about sharks and getting really freaked.

After a quick lunch we went to our sunset cruise, which was actually a creaky old wooden boat. To get to the boat you had to walk down a huge flight of stairs into the oncoming waves, swim to the ladder and climb up, all while holding your gear above your head to keep it dry. Me and Courtney made the Australian guy who checked us in carry us out to the boat because she was scared and I can’t really swim. He asked us if we had any questions, so I asked if there were sharks in this area of the ocean. He gave me a look and asked again if we had any questions. When he realized I was serious he said there weren’t. We were pretty sure he hated us.

We boated out to the coral, which was actually dark and ugly. You couldn’t see much, but some fish did come very close to us. We kept getting stung by those little water things, so we got back in the boat early with our guide (who we were pretty sure was on drugs) and napped on the waves. It was lovely.
We went to Zed for dinner, and it was wonderful. The presentation was awesome and everything was fantastic. We each had a four course meal for $25 plus drinks, and we were loving the first world comforts again. At the end of the meal Mike got really sick, and Carissa and Lauren had to walk him home. It turns out he was dehydrated and he was better the next day.

The sisters and I went back out for some drinks, and we were lucky to stumble on the ‘best bar in town’. There were about 15 people there, and more than half of them were locals trying to mack it with the mzungus. We tried ignoring them for a while, but it just got miserable and we left around when the bar was closing. On our walk home one of the gates to pass through the hotel area was locked and everything was very dark and deserted. We found someone to unlock the gate to let us through, and we linked arms and walked by the dark doorways and buildings. Carissa was tipsy and talking too much, and Courtney and I kept trying to get her to be quiet and put down the beer she was carrying. We were walking quickly along the beach and then saw a man following behind us at a distance. We were practically running by the time we reached a hotel with lights near the beach, but I didn’t feel safe until we were almost at our rooms again. That walk was one of the scariest moments of my life.
Now we are trying to check out and spend some time in Stone Town before heading back to Moshi, but the front desk is trying to tell Mike we owe $300 for New Years Eve. Good thing he kept his receipt!

Zanzibar, day 1

Yesterday was so relaxing. Me and the sisters went for breakfast near 10 and then we all spent the day sunbathing. It is the softest beach I have ever been to, and the water is clear and beautiful. It was almost too warm to swim in in the morning but as the day went on it became very refreshing. I put on SPF 70 about 100 times but I still got some blotchy burns. I got my hair box braided by some locals under a deck. I don’t really like it.. I think it makes me look like a man. For lunch we went to this place that looked good, but as soon as our food came out there were flies EVERYWHERE. If you weren’t swatting at your plate for even a second your food would look black from all the bugs landing on it. We were walking around the restaurant for a while in circles trying to eat so the flies couldn’t land on our plates, and then we tried getting foil from the kitchen to cover part of our plates. Neither really worked, and we ended up wrapping our food and taking it back to the hotel to eat. By the time we re-opened it we had lost our appetite and laid by the pool. Everyone else at the restaurant was a tourist but none of them seemed to mind the bugs at all. I thought that was pretty strange. After taking a nap by the pool we went to dinner. The food was only OK, but we were on a balcony over the water and there were no flies, which made it nice. Today we are sun bathing again but I am fully clothed. Later we will jet ski, snorkel on a sunset cruise, and have a nice dinner at Zed.

New Year's Eve in Zanzibar

Yesterday was really crazy. We had placement in the morning and left early to fly to Zanzibar. We went with Ferral, Nikki and Nie to Pasua to give money to some small business owners so they can expand their businesses. Nie and Jonas had spent the entire day before going over the money and how they should manage it responsibly. Ferral raised the money at home during the past year. It was incredible how much excitement there was over this money, and how helpful it would be to each family when it only amounted to about $40 American each.

John picked us up early from TAFCOM but then started picking up everyone else. We were freaked about missing the flight so we made him pull over and we took a cab back to home base. At home base I realized we scheduled our TAFCOM kids day for Tuesday next week, which is the day we’re supposed to go to Arusha. I asked Mama Fatuma to try to reschedule with TAFCOM for us while we are away.
We took a shuttle from Eco-Tours to the Arusha airport. The driving here is really scary and I had to keep covering my eyes. On the way there we saw a motorcycle accident. It was really scary but the motorcyclist stumbled away. The driver told us that he probably didn’t wait for help because he wasn’t licensed to drive a motorcycle or because he was drunk.
The airport was a huge kluge (one room, tons of tourists, no luggage belt), and from there we took a shuttle to the hotel. To get there we had to drive through some of the worst poverty I have ever seen. The poverty extended right up to the beautiful gates of our hotel, where we were swept inside and served fresh juice, warm cookies and a cool towel as we waited to check in. From this impression we thought the place would be great, but we were so wrong. They were out of the kinds of rooms we wanted, so we were given two king sized rooms next to each other. We soon discovered that our shower didn’t work, and when we complained the manager said he knew about it, oops sorry. We had no garbage cans or phones, and the hair dryers didn’t work. Yes, I know how ridiculous this sounds, especially since the hotel is next to such awful living conditions, but I paid a TON of money I shouldn’t really have spent to stay in a Hilton, and I wanted everything to work.

We figured we’d deal with the problems later and got ready and went down to the New Years Eve party on the beach. We were told at check in that the party cost $50 a person for a buffet, open bar, and entertainment. We were first taken to a balcony and offered juice and a drink, and then we went down to the beach to eat. We were the only people there under maybe 50. We sat at our table and the waitress came to take our drink orders, and informed us that dinner was 35,000 with no drinks included. This started a night-long fight with management, which we eventually resolved by paying the original price in cash. Mike, thank God, was smart enough to get a receipt. More on that later. Because of this dispute over the price and the African pace of the service, we only had a few drinks each and were afraid we wouldn’t even be able to stay awake until midnight. We stuck around, and in the middle of nothing, all of the staff rushed onto the dance area and started dancing and singing and going crazy! We figured it was midnight, and I got up and danced too. It ended up being a lot of fun.. definitely worth staying up for!

After everyone went to bed Courtney and I hung around the front desk trying to call our men-folk back home. We had to use an employees cell phone because no one could figure it out on a hotel phone. Around 2 am I finally got through to Dave’s house and he wasn’t home.
I went to my room around 3 am and soon realized there was no mattress for me to sleep on. To compensate the hotel gave me a free room for the night. I was very happy about this, only to get to the room to find that it hadn’t really been cleaned from the guests who stayed the night before. I slept there anyway (albeit pretty aggravated) because the bed was clean and it was too late for anyone to come clean the room. The next morning I woke up to a lovely call from the front desk at 7:38 am telling me that a new guest was coming and I had to be out of the room by 8am. I was too tired to fight with anyone so I spent the rest of the morning on the floor of Courtney and Carissa’s room.