Dec 31, 2018 - Jan 5, 1019
How do you respond when someone says “Hakuna Matata” to you? “Thank you”? “You too”? “What a wonderful phrase”?
As the song goes, it indeed means “no worries” (but they only say it to tourists), and though they’ve had a heavy history, the phrase definitely represents island life on Zanzibar.
“The snorkeling trip leaves at 9am, so arrive no later than 8:44” means that they’ll still be waiting for passengers until 9:45. It takes 20 minutes for someone to appear at the hotel front desk if you need something, and 20 minutes to check in and check out. The sign saying breakfast is from 7-10am, doesn’t mean anything on New Years Day. And “It’s actually at 11am today” definitely means after 11:45 when they finally served us. Even the clock in the hotel lobby changes from between 20 minutes fast and 20 minutes slow on any given day. I don’t even know how it manages to do that! So guess what? If you worry, you’ll go crazy. So just relax and Hakuna Matata!
There were a lot of unknowns about planning the trip to Zanzibar so I’ll share just in case someone else plans to go. Even picking on which side of the island to stay was a tough choice. There are many beautiful resorts all over but the neighborhoods have different quantities of nearby attractions and different levels of sandy beach access. Finally I decided on Nungwi in the north, as the tides wouldn’t change so much and it was close to sandy beaches that weren’t too dependent on the tide. Also the Tanzanite Beach Report had a nice pool and relaxing lounge areas, with on site tourist services.
I booked the flights from the Tanzania mainland myself on the local carrier, since it was cheaper than booking a package through a travel agent, and booking the taxi through the hotel was cheaper than other online services or the guys you can haggle with when you arrive. We didn’t need the ride, but simply walking away from a driver at the airport got him to reduce the price of his offer from $65 to $55 to $50, without saying a word. We paid $40 through the hotel.
It was 10pm on NYE and I was worried we’d spend midnight in the taxi. After 80 minutes of traffic and bumpy roads, passing shops and restaurants (which are all literal holes in the wall), pickup trucks full of people driving around, and crowds of locals everywhere, we arrived. Before we pulled up to the hotel an advertisement on the radio came on in Japanese and the driver asked me what it said. Lol.
After a few days of safari, when closing our eyes we still saw little pumbas everywhere. The sky was full of animal shaped clouds. But once we laid by the beach as the clock approached midnight, the sound of waves (and bad karaoke next door), took us to a different paradise. Reflecting on it, we had an amazing year - got married (twice), went
on some amazing trips with friends and family, and have a wonderful community around us. We couldn’t ask for more.
Except maybe an ATM? There aren’t any ATMs in Nungwi so we had to bring USD and use exchanges with poor exchange rates (essentially charging 5%). So the thing I’d do differently next time is bring more dollars. You can spend USD but the shops generally take about 10%, so it’s better to change USD to the local currency. Other “powerful” currencies like Euro or GBP seemed to get even worse rates. Our hotel wanted to charge 4% to pay with a credit card so we used cash to avoid this, but after having to pay a higher rate to convert more cash at the exchanges, we might have been better off paying the 4% credit card fee and using the cash for shopping and meals. It’s annoying to pay extra for stuff like this, but I guess it’s the cost of business in remote places.
Worth paying a small price for evenings like this
As the numerous resorts developed, they’ve pushed the locals away from the beach, so they could have the prime locations. Just across the street from the resorts (going more inland) there were very modest shelters made of concrete blocks, simple walls with nothing else inside, surrounded by palm and banana trees, cows and red dirt. Some shelters were covered in dried leaves or made from sticks and mud. There was a lot of trash and plastic bottles on the side of some roads, near the beach and some in the water. But people seemed to be enjoying themselves, especially the cute little kids running around. Even if they were “poor”, it seemed everyone had very bright clean clothes. And smiles.
We happened by the Mnarani aquarium to see the turtle rescue. We’re always a little skeptical of "tourist traps", especially when it comes to animal captivity, but this place at least appears to be doing something nice. They save sick or struggling turtles, or eggs with little chance of survival and help them recover. Then they have a big release every February, and start all over again. The local guides (who seemed like local teens, but were very passionate and knowledgeable about what they did) knew a lot about turtles and were very motivated to teach us something. We fed seaweed to the turtles, which the guides and volunteers pick from different beaches every day. There seems to be a lot of questionable aquariums around that have animals for display, but this place seemed legit (we hope) since they are actively trying to help them rather than just profit from showing their animals to tourists. At least we didn’t feel bad about giving them a few bucks. Other places seemed to shamelessly ask for money just to glance at their giant snake or alligator.
The sandy beaches around Nungwi were very nice with beautiful blue water, but it was super humid. And the water is almost warm so it’s not really refreshing at first.
Another lesson learned was about booking excursions. Even though the taxi was cheaper through the hotel, the day excursions were not. In our case the best deals were found just by walking on the beach and letting the “salesmen” approach you with their offers. Of course you’re nervous about the reliability at first, but we took a chance. We agreed on a snorkel tour to Mnemba for the following day and half expected not to see the guy there at the designated meeting time. He had required a $5 deposit the night before, so there wasn’t a lot at stake. Luckily he was there and helped get us set up. We took a 90 minute boat ride in the hot sun, sitting in the front to get a good look at potential dolphins, but didn’t see any. Instead, Z got a little crispy. The snorkeling wasn’t anything special compared to what we have in Hawaii, but it was still fun, regardless of the small jellyfish stings. The highlight was visiting a remote beach and the crew grilling fresh fish and rice for lunch. That alone was worth the $20 tour price. From our hotel they would charge $30 for the same tour. I went back for a second helping of lunch and the guy kept piling food on my plate until I insisted he stop. After making sure everyone had their fill, I noticed the 7 workers take the small amount of leftovers, sit around some drift wood in the shade and scrape the pans and suck everything off the fish bones. I don’t know the exact word to describe the feeling I had when I watched that. They were so satisfied and happy to have just a few bites, while the rest of us greedily filled our stomachs like it was our last meal. They’d been working hard already for several hours so they must have been starving. Witnessing their generosity and selflessness makes me want to be a better person.
One thing I heard about Zanzibar is that during high tide you may not be able to walk along the beach, and during low tide you may not be able to swim due to rocks and urchins. But in Nungwi this was fine. There are a lot of restaurants and hotels along the beach. Local teens were running, working out (doing burpees and flips) or playing soccer on the beach. Z and I spent time just sitting and watching them run on rocks and shells like their feet had a layer of armor on them. We had a CCM moment when we bought our own Savanna cider in a shop and sat in a bar on a pier. We ordered one Savanna there just to be an official customer, but then pulled our own drinks from the backpack and drank them. The waiter must have wondered why it took us so long to drink one cider between the two of us. To prevent suspicion we took the empty bottles away with us.
The food was good in the resort but the highlight must have been the HUGE and buttery tasting avocado we bought from the hotel restaurant for $2 and ate it with bread on the beach. It was so big that we had leftovers and still didn’t need lunch.
While lounging around the beach, we noticed some Italian ladies speaking to everyone in Italian (both employees and guests) and they were irritated that nobody understood them. To be fair many local businesses seemed to speak Italian for some reason. But to expect everyone in Zanzibar will speak Italian seems unrealistic. They didn’t even try in English when Italian didn’t work.
I had bought 4 different bottles of mosquito repellent, expecting swarms everywhere we went, but in the end the only bites came while sleeping in Zanzibar. The bed had a mosquito net but we didn’t use it very effectively. So we had to put spray on during the night, which is kind of annoying. But in the end, I only had a couple small bites, which is a win.
By the way, Z and I had an argument about if saying someone “looks like Michael Jackson from thriller” is a compliment! I voted no.
After a few days at the beach, we went to Stone Town for our last day, which is where Freddie Mercury lived. It was a bit chaotic, with streets filled with aggressive vendors in narrow alleys, and motorcycles cruising past constantly. It was hard to keep saying no to everyone when we window shopped. In the end it’s just luck whenever we would finally decide to buy something. Not because someone got into our face offering every trinket and treasure for a “very good price.” Bargaining is a balance between feeling like you got a good deal, but we also wanted to pay enough to support the locals. When a rain storm forced us to seek shelter next to a spice vendor, we ended up buying a lot in exchange for letting us stand there. Zosia got really good at talking to vendors and being confident about her negotiations. The guys in the food stands were also aggressive, and we wanted to eat but were skeptical of the meat since we saw them preparing the raw meat in the hot sun earlier that day. How long has that stuff been sitting out?
Zanzibar has a history of Arabic rule (Omani) as well as a British “protectorate” until the decolonialization in the 1960s. During this time there was a revolution by the locals overthrowing the mostly Arab government. This started a bloody revolution, the results being many people fleeing the country (like Freddie Mercury’s family, who went to India). The locals were then the ruling party of an independent state, and a union was formed Tanzania.
The slave museum in Stone Town was heavy. It was one of the largest slave markets. Mostly run by the Arab elite but other powerful local tribes were involved too, and they would just grab any weak people from other tribes to sell. The ivory trade drove up demand (a lot of it going to the US), as well as local clove plantations. Eventually pressure from the British government put an official end to it, though some forms of slavery still exist today (like in many places around the world).
One of the most fascinating things we experienced was hanging out by the waterfront in the late afternoon. A group of about 20 kids took turns running and jumping off the boardwalk into the water, doing crazy acrobatic flips and playing up to the crowd. I didn’t notice them asking for money from the 100 people watching. I think they just liked doing it, like an after school activity hanging out with friends.
Speaking of kids, Zosia’s mom gave her a bunch of candy from Poland to find some kids to give it to. But on the days we walked around with it, we couldn’t find any kids who wanted it! We started following kids around, looking for the right moment, but then felt like creepers offering them candy. We ended up giving it to a hotel employee for his family.
If you need to take a taxi from Stone Town to the airport, it’s around $10 for the hotel to organize it. A random taxi on the street we saw the night before said he’d do it for $8, but we didn’t know if we could rely on him to show up on time the next day. Again, it’s not a lot of money, but we started to run out of USD and Stone Town seemed to be a terrible place to change money. ATMs were not common and the ones we found charged $7 per transaction. Ouch.
The final story relates to our last day in Nungwi when the hotel gave us the bill, and there was a water on it that we didn’t buy. It was only $2 so it wasn’t a big deal, but just to show the “no worries” attitude, the worker asked us to just pay for it and he’d give us a water. It was “already in the system” and we “needed water anyway”, according to him. He asked nicely and had been very helpful all week so we agreed, but it took some effort to not be annoyed by the principle of it. Deep breaths. Hakuna Matata indeed.
