Leah’s Travel Page

We flew to Zanzibar from Mombasa, after 3 hours of delay during which we managed to weasel our way into a free meal from the airport. We were hardly in the air when the descent onto the island began. We flew over amazing turquoise waters, tiny white-sand islands and mangroves forests, before landing in Stone Town. We waited in a huge line to get a Tanzanian visa, and then just when we were two people away from the front, the guy went on a break, so we had to go to the end of another line…And then a bunch of people’s luggage was left behind in Mombasa (but thankfully not mine). It began pouring torrential rain while we were in the airport, and as we were driving to the Garden Lodge, the streets filled up with probably a foot of water… Not the most auspicious of beginnings.

But once we began to got to the hotel, it was amazing. It was a gorgeous old building with amazing Muslim architecture and gorgeous canopy beds (draped with mosquito nets, of course). By the time we arrived there, the rain had stopped, and from the dining room on the roof of the building we could watch the sun set over the Indian Ocean. It was gorgeous! Then a male voice began singing in Arabic, projected on a P.A. system out throughout the whole town, calling the men to evening prayers (This would happen 5 times a day).

Stone Town itself was a pretty incredible place to experience, especially for someone who;d never been to an entirely Muslim community before. The narrow streets were full of people dressed in traditional clothing coming and going by foot or bicycle, and with the ancient buildings and laid-back atmosphere it was as though I’d stepped into a medieval storybook. All of the girls in our group would drape ourselves in shawls and sarongs to be as covered as possible, but still we would get harassed by men wherever we would go… I never felt as though I was in a bad situation, but I definitely made sure to be walking around with guys after dark, and I felt as though the guys with us definitely had more of a chance to explore freely.

Unfortunately it was the last week of our program, so we had to spend a fair bit of time finishing up assignments and writing essays. But thank goodness we were there for nine days so that we could fit a ton of amazing things in. We spent one day out at a spice plantation, and seeing all the various spices growing in nature was actually really cool – pepper, cinammon, vanilla, tumeric, cloves (Zanzibar is one of the world’s largest exporters). Too bad the temperature was over 40, and we all thought we were going to melt into the earth, but at the end we got to eat local fresh fruit, which is always amazing – the mangoes on the coast are absolutely glorious, and I don’t even normally like mangoes.

We also took a dhow (one of the traditional sail boats) from Stone Town out to Prison Island, which is visible from the town, and where they used to keep slaves during the Indian Ocean slave trade. Around the island we got to do some great snorkelling over the coral reefs – I was doing a biology project on the association between clown fish and sea anemones (think Finding Nemo), so I got to do a bunch of observations on them in their natural habitats, as well as crazy amounts of starfish, eels, rays, sea urchins and other fish… And of course I got probably the worst sunburn of my entire life on the back of my legs and couldn’t sit down for a week without being in pain.

Probably the greatest experience of all that I had in Zanzibar was the chance to go swimming with dolphins in the wild. We went out in groups of 10 in local boats where they knew there are frequently groups of dolphins, all dressed up with our flippers and snorkels, although they warned us that it’s not guaranteed to have a sighting… Well then we must have been the luckiest group in the entire world. Within 5 minutes of being out in the crystal blue waters, a group of humpback dolphins glided by, coming out of the water. However, you’re not allowed to swim with humpbacks because they are afraid of humans, so we had to wait until we found some bottlenose. A few more humpbacks went by before we actually saw any bottlenose dolphins. The thing you have to do it drive the boat up ahead of the dolphins, the get into the water and let them swim towards you, because they will be frightened if you just jump in beside them and chase them. The first time we got in with three bottlenose, the just swam about 30 feet below us, but it was still pretty amazing. But then our boat hit the motherload. We saw a large group of dolphins approaching, and me and Dominique, one of the other girls on the trip, were the first to get into the water. Suddenly in front of us, we saw three adults slowly emerge out of the murky waters, coming directly at us. The sun was beaming through the water in rays as they approached, closer and closer until we could almost touch them and then just in time they swooped below us (and a good thing too, because they were huge! Much bigger than I expected). Then I turned around and saw probably about seven adults and two or three babies all swimming around our group. One of the guys swam down low in the water and a dolphin went down and did a loop-the-loop around him, and the babies swam right beside their parents as they continued in circles around us. The dolphins would come right up to us at the surface, I swear looking me right in the eye – so many times I felt I could reach out and touch them. They probably stayed with us for a good two minutes, and then as they began to swim away, suddenly there was an explosion out of the water 100 yards away as a dolphin soared into the air before splashing back into the water! Probably four dolphins did this as they left us – I didn’t even know they did that it the wild! It was so exciting and incredible, that the whole group of us bobbed on the surface and just screamed and yelled out of sheer excitement! I can hardly think of time in my life when I have felt so elated! That was definitely the most wonderful Zanzibar memory.

Alas, all good things had to end. So now, as many of you know, I’m in Nairobi, and our program just ended so I’m travelling independently now. I was supposed to stay on for a few months to do an internship in Nairobi, but because of a lot of logistical problems it kind of fell through. So I’ll be spending the next months travelling with friends before returning to Montreal to take some summer courses at McGill (which I’m actually really looking forward to…I’ve had so many experiences that I’m totally okay with taking some time away from it to digest it all).

Right now, I’m at Nairobi Backpackers, and I leave in a few hours on a bus for Kigali, Rwanda (22 hours, via Uganda). I’ll be there with 6 friends for 12-14 days, before heading back to Nairobi. Then I’ll have a few spare days before heading back to the coast to go to the island of Lamu, an island that’s similar to Zanzibar, only more remote – there’s a huge annual festival while we’re there called the Maulidi festival that’s supposed to be extraordinary. Anyways, I’ll keep you all up to date now that I have no school work to bog me down! So next time I send in my report, I’ll be in Rwanda!!!

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 29th, 2006 at 4:50 pm and is filed under Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.