Tanzania - Zanzibar

After our Safari, we headed straight to Zanzibar. We took the ferry from the terminal in Dar which took about 3 hours. We sat outside on the front deck, got wind blown and rained on. We arrived in Zanzibar and had to go through passport control, which was odd since Zanzibar is part of Tanzania (not that I am complaining...if you don't get a stamp it means you didn't actually go there, right?) We finally made it to our hotel with the help of the homeless guy wearing a fraternity t-shirt. We booked a few tours for our visit in Zanzibar and headed to lunch, where we had to take off our shoes and sit on the floor. It was quite the experience. 

After lunch we went on a walking tour of Stone Town. It was great. Our guide was very knowledgeable and was able to answer most, if not all, of our questions. We walked around and he told us stories about the slave trade and about what the town used to look like. It was really neat. He also took us through a market where the locals buy their food - where our guide told us not to buy any food from ;-) ha! 

Karly and I went to a nearby hotel to watch the sunset and have a fun, fruity cocktail, and then the three of us headed to dinner. The food in Dar is very heavily Indian influenced, and all of it was very flavorful.

Our second day in Zanzibar, Karly and I woke up early to watch the sunrise from our hotel rooftop deck. Unfortunately, we didn't see it, because it was so cloudy. We then headed on an all day Spice tour. It was soo cool. We were taken a bit outside of Stone Town into a jungle and we walked around learning about the different spices, fruits and grains that grow on the Island. They even made us lunch with all of the spices we saw. After lunch we went to the coast and had a short tour of the slave caves. This is where slaves were hidden after the trade was abolished in Zanzibar. The cave was huge! It ran from the nearest village, a couple of miles away, to the sea which was a bit closer, but still not near. After the tour, we headed to the beach to go swimming in the Indian Ocean. The water was crystal clear, blue, warm and pretty salty. It was fun to play in the water! We headed back to Stone Town for drinks and dinner. It was an awesome day! 

I woke up super sick on Friday - surprise, surprise (I think from dinner, which was shrimp :-( since we ate the same thing the entire day except for dinner). I wasn't about to let being sick get me down, so we got on a little boat and headed for Prison Island, which I will talk about next. After the Island, we got back on the last Ferry to Dar and headed back to Dar for dinner and an early night. My favorite part of the ferry ride home is that they were showing Captain Phillips....I couldn't control myself and mentioned to my friends how inappropriate it was that they were playing a movie were Somali Pirate boarded and captured a ship off of the coast. I had to laugh out loud.

Zanzibar seriously felt like a postcard. It was absolutely beautiful and has such interesting history.