Our second stop in Tanzania was at a small town called Mikindani, just a few miles north of Mtwara on the coast. Mikindani is full of history linked to the famous explorer David Livingstone and also the slave trade. There are buildings such as the slave market and the house that Livingstone resided in for some time, which have over the years fallen in to ruin but are now being restored with the help of a local charity.
In our last entry we mentioned how postive our initial experiences of Tanzania were, however sadly so, this was short lived. We were warned by many travellers that Tanzanian's are known to try and relieve you of alot more money that is deemed fair (commonly known as 'being ripped off'). This inevitably happened to us when buying our bus tickets to a place further up the coast called Kilwa, which was a 3-4 hour journey. After buying our tickets and chatting to some locals we discovered that the amount we had paid could have gotten us to Dar-es-Salaam (Dar), atleast a 10 hour journey!! This was later confirmed when at 6am we got on to the bus and everyone going to Dar had actually paid less than us - to say we were annoyed was an understatement. We decided in the end to miss Kilwa and head all the way to Dar that day and managed to get some of the money back owed to us.
We realise a recurring theme in our blog entries is writing about the challenging and bumpy bus rides - but really this journey was the worst we'd had so far. We arrived very tired on 27th April to Dar after 16 hours on the bus, and were very glad to crash in a nice clean bed. Although we realised it was still the rainy season in Tanzania, we hadn't quite expected the roads to turn in to rivers as the rain continued to fall for days. One of the hazards of trying to wade through the water on the roads is the many drains and potholes that are hidden, as Nat soon discovered when she found half her leg stuck in a drain with water past her knee - much to the amusement of some locals!
We soon made our way over to Zanzibar by ferry,which we were really looking forward to as we'd heard many great things about it. For the first couple of days we stayed with a friend, Luis, we'd made whilst travelling in Mozambique, who showed us some of the nicer bars and restaurants Zanzibar has to offer. One evening we went to Mercury's bar with his ex-pat friends, which is named after Freddie Mercury as he was born and grew up on Zanzibar; with Queen music playing in the background we won the quiz and celebrated with a couple of drinks.
We wandered through the historic Stone town, which has a mix Arabic and Indian buildings, and got lost exploring the narrow alleyways with people selling food and their crafts. Zanzibar was the first touristy place we'd really been to on our travels and on one hand this meant there was amazing food and all the ammenities you need which was a treat for us, however on the other hand this meant we paid inflated prices and got hassled alot by people trying to sell tours and their crafts.
We made our way north to a beach village called Nungwi and we made this place our home for 4 days as we were hoping to relax on the beach and get in some snorkelling. Despite the rain we still managed to enjoy our time there, as we met a good bunch of people to hang out with. We were extremely lucky to choose a great day to go on a snorkelling day trip along with the friends we'd made. A dhow (small local sailing boat) sailed us for a couple of hours to a gorgeous island called Mnemba, where we spent some time snorkelling with the tropical fish amongst some beautiful coral. We even saw the fish Dorey from the film 'Finding Nemo'. After having a lunch of freshly bbq'd fish and salad on a stunning stretch of white sandy beach we headed back on the Dhow. Being a sunny day out in the ocean unfortunately Kim got extremely burned and turned the colour of some of the bright red fish we'd seen.
Along with one of our friends we'd made Beth, whose from California, we decided on a change of scenary and headed for a small village called Jambiani on the south-east coast of the island. As its low season its very quiet, which suited us as we swam in the ocean and relaxed reading. After being approached by a local who we thought was trying to sell us another day trip, we stopped ignoring him when he mentioned the word food and all of us ears pricked up. He was inviting us to his home for dinner, for a small price to experience some local cuisine and hospitality.
After some chill out time on the beach it was time to head back to Stone town and before we had to leave we all managed to squeeze in a spice tour on our last day on the island. We were all pleasantly surprised how interesting the tour was and made us realise how little we actually knew about where our food comes from. Our vibrant guide encouraged us to guess what the different spices were and even have a taste, with cinnamon by far being our favourite.
We were all made elaborate accessories from coconut leaves such as crowns, earings and glasses. We even got to watch one of the locals scale a coconut tree within minutes, chop off some coconuts, cut them open and give us fresh coconut juice to drink.
We said our goodbyes to Beth and got on the overnight ferry ride to Dar, which was one experience we don't ever want to repeat. The ferry sat in the port for 6 hours hours before heading off, and to say the ocean was choppy is an understatement. Hearing people vomiting whilst the ferry was rocking vigorously, we were extremely happy when we eventually reached the port in Dar.
The last 2 days in Dar have been spent recovering from the ferry ride and we have booked our train tickets to Zambia, for the next exciting leg of our journey.
Lots of love,
Nat and Kim xxx
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