Leave your heart
So we decide to head to Zanzibar. I figured this would either be the coolest thing or the most overrated thing. We had met so many people that loved Zanzibar. Zanzibar is this island off Tanzania that used to be it’s own country but now it’s part of Tanzania. Originally it was established to take care of that lovely thing called the Slave Market. Oh shoot, I forgot about Bagamoyo. That’s what I get for not writing in this blog for a while.
Okay, Bagamoyo. We decided to go see the ruins of Bagamoyo. It’s an hour and a half away from Dar. By minibus. And let me tell you – I wish I had not had that tea that morning. They are actually called Dali Dalas here and they just stuff a bunch of people in this minivan – it’s actually quite a neat system and as long as you aren’t going super far it’s pretty darn efficient. Anyway, we eventually get to Bagamoyo and find a hotel – after first going to this one in the Lonely Planet that apparently closed down because the owners decided not to pay taxes – then off to another one. It’s just so funny because Tanzania is apparently at the beginning of high season (starts at the beginning of July) and we’re quite literally the only ones at this hotel. And we’re not talking about a small hotel, a really big one and all the other ones around there are pretty much empty too. We end up staying in what we originally thought was a really cool room – literally a big hut sitting just inches from the beach – unfortunately the mosquito nets apparently didn’t work – which we have no idea how they were getting in – but John must have gotten bitten like 20 million times that night.
Anyway, the ruins. They were pretty cool but not very well maintained. They were built at the time when the slave trade was really big. Bagamoyo is close to Zanzibar where the Slave’s were sold. According to the guide we hired (who decided we should go there by bicycle which turned out to be really fun except for the lack of brakes – good thing it was mostly flat!), Bagamoyo means “leave your heart”, meaning if you get to this town and you haven’t been rescued by now you have no hope – you are less than a day’s journey to Zanzibar where you will be sold. I know it’s a part of history but I just really can’t think it’s super cool to look at ruins that hilight the slave trade.
The next day we headed back to Dar. The taxi driver, Valencia, that camps out at the YWCA where we stayed at like 20 times – okay 5 times – drove us to the minibus terminal to get there and then told us how to get back to the YWCA by transferring. That’s kind of the nice thing…even though we didn’t speak a ton of Swahili and the minibuses could have taken us for a ride, they just handed us back the correct change and treated us like all other people riding the dali dalas.
Okay, really this time…Zanzibar.
Tags: RTW Trip, Tanzania
JohnCin
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