I just got back to Dar after spending just over a week on Zanzibar, an island just off the coast of Tanzania. Zanzibar is actually part of Tanzania, but has some independence. Zanzibar has its own president and I had to go through immigration, but I didn't need a new visa.

My time in Zanzibar started with a boat ride over, which I had been very much looking forward to. I took the "slow boat" over to the island. It was supposed to take 3.5 hours, a good amount of time for the boat ride. Because I'm a mzungu (white person) I had to get a 1st class ticket and the accommodations were quite posh. We were in a nice air-conditioned room with couches and TVs. They were playing a movie (the Matrix something or other I think) and there were way more than enough couches for everybody to lie down and take a nap. There were only two other wazungu (white people - swahili is prefix based so the wa means plural and m singular - in the mostly people words noun class anyway) and about a half dozen Swahili in first class. I spent a little bit of time inside, but for most of the ride I actually sat outside staring out at the ocean, watching the flying fish (a couple must have jumped at least a foot out of the water), trying to learn to count, and talking to the other wazungu. It was very pleasant. Which was good because the ride lasted a tad bit longer than advertised. But three and half hours or seven hours, its the same thing right? African time...

The area of Zanzibar that the ferry came into is called Stone Town, which is know for maze-like streets, which are more like what we consider alley-ways than streets. It is pretty much a given that you will, at some point, get lost wandering through Stone Town. My goal for the first day was to just wander around and get lost, at which I succeeded. Wandering around the streets was a lot of fun though -- really exotic (at least when you got away from the curio shops). You might end up at a church, a mosque (Zanzibar is predominantly Muslim), the ocean front, a market, or a nice little restaurant. Luckily Stone Town is pretty small, so it generally doesn't take to long to end up at the ocean or one of the main roads from which you can usually find your way pretty easily.

On my second day in Zanzibar I went on the obligatory spice tour. Zanzibar is often referred to as the Spice Island because back in the day it was a major spice grower and exporter. On the tour I got to see, among other things cardamom (yummy - tasted kind of fruity), cloves, lemongrass, cinnamon (smelled wonderful), henna tree, curry tree (the leaves didn't really have any smell, not spicy at all), vanilla, pepper vine (apparently all varieties of pepper are from the same plant, but are harvested and prepared differently), durian tree, jack fruit, bread fruit, cocoa, yummy prickly-looking yellow fruit, yummier prickly-looking red fruit, coconut, the stuff that makes tandoori chicken red, a super-sour star-shaped fruit, and nutmeg. On the tour we also ate a wonderful lunch of spiced rice in a sort of coconut curry fish sauce which was very good. Then we went swimming in the ocean, and my goodness was it wonderful. It was a picture-postcard perfect sort of beach with palm trees, beautiful sand, and clear cool, refreshing water. I'm generally not much of a beach person, but it was so wonderful that I didn't want to leave.