A Week in Paradise aka Zanzibar

Jack Fruit, my new favorite fruit

Sultan's Bath House

Beach on eastern Zanzibar. Yep that's the Indian Ocean!

I just got back a couple of hours ago from my week long fall break trip to paradise otherwise known as Zanzibar. Everyone from my undergraduate group as well as a few graduate students went as well as a director and professor from Arcadia. Let me tell you I have never seen anywhere more beautiful. I felt as if I was transported out of Africa and placed into a middle eastern/ european city.

Last Saturday, the whole group of us loaded into a bus at 5am and drove for 11 hours down to the country's capital, Dar es Salaam. Dar is much larger and hotter than Arusha as it sits at sea level while Arusha is much more elevated. Nothing against Dar or anything but I really just wanted to get to Zanzibar so I did not pay much attention to the little time I spent there. What I can say is that was more built up than Arusha and it has the ocean...

At 7am on Sunday morning we all hopped onto a ferry from Dar to Stone Town, Zanzibar. The ride was 2 hours long and once I moved from the front of the boat which felt all of the movement to the back, I fell fast asleep. Once we got to Stone Town we checked into the hotel and headed to the east coast of the island to spend a day at a beautiful beach on the INDIAN OCEAN.

On Monday we went on a tour of the old fort in Stone Town then went on little boats out to Prison Island. We went snorkeling off of the coast of Prison Island (I saw an octopus and got a sun burn) and we went onto the island where we saw the Aldabra giant tortoises which were originally given to the island as a gift from the Seychelles government. There were several enormous tortoises that were over 100 years old! For dinner we ate at this huge outdoor food market in Stone Town. I ate octopus, squid, and barracuda!

On Tuesday several of us went to an amazingly beautiful beach on the north coast of Zanzibar island called Kendwa. I seriously felt like I had entered paradise. We spent the day just playing in the clear water and sitting in the sun. Wednesday we went on a spice tour of Zanzibar where we got to taste and see the different fruits and spices that the island produces. Cloves are still one of the largest exports of Zanzibar. As part of the tour we also went to one of the sultan's baths which was really cool.

On Thursday a few of us actually went back to the northern coast beach for the morning and went to a performance from a local music school in the afternoon. Like other aspects of Zanzibar's culture, its music is a mixture of many styles including middle eastern, Egyptian, and African.

On Friday morning we all reluctantly woke up at got back on a ferry via Dar es Salaam. After resting a little bit we headed over some very bumpy and dangerous roads to an NGO that makes sustainable stoves and ovens. To tell you the truth I was not that interested in the tour as I was hot, tired, and hungry and I could not understand the guide's accent at all. We decided at lunch that we were going to leave the next morning instead of Sunday morning because we

wanted a day to get things together before starting classes on Monday.

On Saturday morning we all piled into the bus and got about 1 hour outside of the city when our bus broke down. The bus driver found a little town in the side of the road with a mechanic shop and after some poking around they figured out that the radiator was broken because of something we drove over the day before going to the NGO. They thought they could fix it easily but that was not the case. Six hours later, we somehow got a replacement bus to drive us back to Dar where we had to spend another night. To make us feel happy our wonderful program director brought us to what I believe to be the only Subway (yes the sandwich shop) in Tanzania. It make me feel a little better but a subway sandwich is not enough to cheer me up after spending 6 hours in the scorching African sun. All I really wanted was a comfortable bed.

We finally left Dar at about 4:30 the next morning and drove the 11 hours pretty much straight through. It felt so good to be back in Arusha where although it is getting warmer, it felt freezing cold compared to Dar and Zanzibar. I'm still nursing my peeling sunburn on my back and some exhaustion from those early days and sitting on the bus but I really enjoyed the whole week so much! It was so nice to get out of town and take a break for a week.