Week One of Epic Trip 2012 – Tanzania: Zanzibar

Map of Tanzania, take a look.

Happy as a clam I embraced Swahili — not that I say more than “Jambo” = “fine”.

It goes like this:

Tanzanian: “Jambo?”

Me: “Jambo”

Tanzanian: “Karibu” (welcome)

Me: “Asante” (thank you)

Tanzanian: how are you my friend, where are you coming from, what is your name, when did you come, do you want to buy some paintings/ jewelry/ spices/ tours, maybe I can give you massage/taxi ride.

Me: Hehe, no thanks, no thanks, no thanks, no thanks…hehehe

Now time this by 18 and you get a good idea of my so-called ‘interaction with the locals’.

Had I been an Arab trader 400 years ago, just cruising in my Arabesque ship, I too would have dropped the sailor’s life in a heartbeat and looked into the wonders of the magnificent island of Zanzibar.

It takes 12 hours in a bus to go from the city of Mbeya (see map) to the commercial capital of Dar Es Salam. The sun was not yet out when we got to the bus depot, and in the chilly daybreak I sat on a little wooden bench behind our bus and had a spiced cup of tea from a flask a young girl was serving. Perhaps one of the tastiest of all cups of tea ever made. The ride was mostly spent exploring other gastronomical novelties, as one should always do when

around bus depots in this region of the world. The chipatis were the best, though the donuts, fried rice cakes and spicy home-made crisps were also very good. Needless to say I had a belly ache from all the fried foods by the time we arrived and had to settle for a cup of tea for dinner. The highlight of this most comfortable ride was going through Mikumi National Park. The bus dashed through picture-perfect scenes of zebras grazing, giraffes being tall, a wet elephant and a sleeping buffalo.

Since then the scenery has changed a bit to a deranged city, a port teeming with touts, a vast ocean, et voilà, the dream that is Zanzibar. We are armed with cameras, so I will not bother describing what you will be able to see as soon as we upload the pics, but I will say that a handful of juicy dates for the equivalent of $0.15 as soon as I got off the ferry onto the island was only the beginning of a most delicious exploration. We spend two beachy days in Jambiani — East coast of the island — and though I didn’t consent to any of the 200 offers for a massage, we have been salted, soaked, dried and fried and have come out as relaxed as cooked noodles.

We then moved on to Stone Town: mystery hides behind every elaborately carved door, every slim passage seems to promise a delightful surprise of something that smells familiar but you cannot quite place. If you follow your nose to the evening street food market, make sure to take a conservative amount of money, because no matter how much you try to resist, you will go home with empty pockets.

The sheer color of the culinary offers is hypnotizing. One stall after another, the grilled seafood looks like nothing I have ever seen before. Hence, we overpaid an embarrassing amount for two plates of seafood — which turned out to be mostly filled with oversized portions of cassava and plantain — and went home with a heavy stomach and the distinct feeling of having been scammed.

The absolutely best possible thing one can do in Zanzibar is take a spice tour. There are hundreds on offer, and we were lucky enough — perhaps karma was balancing that terribly expensive market meal — to find ourselves amongst a newly formed team of international tourists, all of whom seemed as interested in spices as I was. I had a lot of questions… a lot. This was my first encounter in nature with plants I had been eating my whole life. I refrained from hugging the cinnamon tree, but it took all my concentration to keep up with the walk and not start gathering wood for a new home for myself right there.