stone town
Part 1. Nungwi
Part 2. A bit of Nungwi, Page and Michamvi
Part 3. Stone Town and its beautiful islands <------
Part 4. Zanzibar Costs and Itinerary
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Over the past few years, I have repeatedly had an interesting exotic dream. I am in Cyprus with my family and friends, literally the last days of our trip, and I understand that the island is so well located that it is easy to get to the Maldives from it. I begin to call on everyone, they say, let's swim, there is such a beauty, but I don’t meet support. One of the counterarguments is that it takes four hours to sail one way only and there is no return ferry schedule. But I understand that in order to just take it and be on one of the most beautiful islands of our planet,
it's definitely worth it. Moreover, we will certainly return on some kind of ferry.
Sometimes at this place the dream was interrupted, sometimes there was a continuation that there is such a beautiful beach in Cyprus too and we will go to it now, but recently the continuation of sleep has begun to dream. I sail to the Maldivian island, but there is bad weather, the water is not very beautiful. In another dream, I immediately ended up in the Maldives and drove around the island in a Ferrari, I still think there are so many mountains here and all the streets are paved with paving stones like in Lviv. But in one of the last variations of sleep, I still manage to sail to the Maldives and it’s sunny there, I understand that now I will swim in beautiful water and wake up in a good mood. Finally, after so many dreams and attempts, I finally got to the goal. But really, we will get to the goal very soon and the beautiful Stone Town will help us in this.
Acquaintance with the city did not work out a bit. Fortunately, by the time we arrived in the morning, the clouds had dispersed and the rain had even stopped. We even found a local tray where SIM cards were sold and the girl put her finger on the scanner to write us a SIM card. Our fingers were not registered by mistake of the border guards, and they could not sell us a SIM card anywhere. The SIM card turned out to be half as much traffic as we paid for, but this was not critical for me. Here you just need to be prepared that there is a large concentration of unscrupulous locals in the capital. Then there was an unsuccessful attempt to check into the hotel.
Our room has already been occupied by other people, so according to the manager, we have to pay for a hotel that is twice as expensive. But in fact, the owner of the hotel had to pay, who could not accept us, again, the magical power of booking,
the operator in the correspondence immediately asked for information about all the additional costs associated with moving to another hotel, and by the evening they began transferring money to our card. Later, I read on the forums about the first hotel, that such situations are not uncommon there, and that people here had an even worse case, they were settled in the room of other tourists right during their stay. The new hotel turned out to be pretty good, so we can start exploring the new city while the owner of the first hotel rakes up a ton of additional compromising information that I sent to the booking managers about violations of the conditions.
The old town looked very cool for a typical colonial style capital. And the charge of positive over the previous nine days could not be broken by hotel managers, or a false tariff on a SIM card, or even a lat, in which there was no coffee by mistake,
which I got from the local bakery.
It was lunch time. There is a very famous place with local food and fast service Lukmaan. But even here, someone just left a review that he was shortchanged. Well, we go with the revision! It's really tasty and most importantly fast. The final score looked quite convincing, there seemed to be no catch. We paid, but when we left the restaurant, we realized that all prices give an amount less than what was on the bill. We came back and asked the waiter to show the bill again. In the check this time there was a position of mango salad, which we did not order and which definitely was not there for the first time in the same bill, that is, it was entered at the moment when we asked to show the bill again. The waiter returned the difference to us, like he made a mistake. But in order to break the system of fraud with a check, it is enough to order this mysterious mango salad,
as we did on the second visit. As a result, they simply won’t bring it to you (most likely they simply don’t have it), and such a global system failure will lead to the fact that the final score will be one and a half times lower than it should be, it will even be seen how the sum of dishes does not converge in favor of visitors.
It would seem that the city has so many fails in a row, I don’t even write about the conductor who didn’t want to give change, but I still like the city, it’s really cool, there is something in it. Apparently, all the beauty of the island seen shatters any notes of sadness or despair, we just joked among ourselves about everything that was happening and went to the embankment. The captains of all the boats immediately perked up there. The most active ones started offering their services in the next courtyard. We then came to float on one of the neighboring islands. The first spoke a lot of different numbers,
as a result, the complex Zanzibar mathematics did not succumb to him and it turned out that the cost of launching his motor boat to visit the two islands would be about the same as launching Elon Musk's ship, but he himself could not understand how he summed it up. We chose a captain who had a cool name for the boat “Wi-Fi” and sailed with him to Prison Island for 30.000 TZS ($13).
Prison Island
I want to note that 4G connection works so well here that I could show my mother live video from the sea. We landed on an island that used to be a large prison. Now you can walk around the island, swim and squeeze the centennial Seychelles turtles. Entrance to the island costs 10.000 TZS ($ 4.3), the ticket includes hugs with turtles and food for them.
Walking around the island is still so cute, there were practically no people here, and in an empty cafe a peacock proudly sat at a table.
In addition to the peacock, we also met a dik-dik here. This is just a small garden of Eden near the capital. When we realized that we had satisfied our desire to climb everywhere, we ran to swim in the beautiful ocean.
There is a most beautiful corner of azure water at the junction of waves. Bathing evoked serenity, many bright thoughts come in these silk waves, there is a desire to stay here forever, you understand that no work is worth it to live your life immersed in work only, you need to travel, you need to relax in this beautiful sea, that vacation very soon will end and begin a new virtual journey through Zanzibar, along with writing a story. We will return here many more times in our thoughts, and possibly dreams. Okay, you need to climb out of a cozy sailor and sail to Stone Town,
a very interesting activity awaits us there, two weeks ago Orel and Reshka left their bottle here.
Looking for a bottle
We sailed ashore, my mother in Kyiv took on the role of coordinator. She found out exactly where the bottle was and sent us detailed screenshots of what the place we needed looked like. And most importantly, I went through the Internet in search of reviews and found whether someone had already found this bottle. We needed an old boat, which is forty minutes walking distance from us. True, it is already quite dark, but this will only add adventure. The first half way we walked along the roads and passed along the night street food market, where the locals almost ate us in an attempt to sell us food. But food is out of place now, we have a higher goal!
The roads ended, and so did the people. We have come to the barrier. We confidently move on. The guard asked why we were here. We said we were going to the mosque
but he assured me that it was closed. We then said that we would just take a walk here, however, it’s not clear what kind of place this is. We walked through an unfinished skyscraper in complete darkness. In the light of flashlights, large puddles could be seen all around. There was no one here at all. The gloomy dark skyscraper ended, we walked along the sprinkled asphalt, through which the plants broke through. What was the Eagle and Tails film crew doing here anyway? There are only 200 meters left to the target. The Internet is gone - a classic! We were already making our way through thickets and puddles, on the sides there were small abandoned houses. The bottle is less than a hundred meters away, and in front of us is a high fence and a castle. Failure. On the other side of the fence, locals sit by the fire. We called a man and asked what to do with the castle. He said that he would help us, we should go around the tree-covered house on the right, and go inside. The proposal sounded like the start of a horror movie, but remember, this island is full of cuties.
I went into an abandoned house, and a man from the outside tore off the boards from the cluttered windows, gestured for me to climb over the window to him, I told Dasha that she was alive and she also climbed into the hut after me. A couple of acrobatic tricks with an old window and we are on the other side! The rest of the guys watched us around the fire with curiosity. To say that there were many abandoned boats in front of us would be an understatement. And how can you find the right one? We went to the most similar place on the map and chose the boat that had not completely sunk into the mud around. We carefully compared the elements of the boat, this is really it! No matter how much we searched in vain, we learned a lot about shipbuilding. We have not yet studied the boats in such detail. There was only one minus in this whole undertaking - the Zanzibar mosquitoes, which bit us a little, and it was really fun. All the way we returned to the city, we peered at people,
suddenly someone walks around with the coveted bottle. I wonder what the guard thought, who let us in for a walk in the closed area, because we went back in a completely different way)
The navigator showed us that there is a restaurant with a good rating nearby, but no matter how much we went to it, it seemed to move away. We went into the local not the most favorable quarter, the residents watched with curiosity as we wind circles here. One guy said that he had seen us here several times already and was ready to help us find what we were looking for. We started winding along with him, then he handed us over to another guy. He was determined, but also couldn't find that mysterious restaurant. At some point, we still stumbled upon an inconspicuous restaurant in the gateway, but it turned out to be so expensive that even the waiter was dressed more expensive than the cost of our tickets to Zanzibar. Let's look for something else. So,
where are we? How to get out of here?
The navigator showed that we were in all places at the same time. Yes, what kind of twilight zone is this, it is just as narrow as in Venice, but less well maintained and without channels. We wandered in this twilight zone for a long time, even helped a local resident translate into English the Ukrainian inscription on his T-shirt “There is no translation for the Cossack family”, our knowledge was enough to translate it as “Ukrainian warriors never die”. In general, something like this. After a long wandering, we ended up at the Dolphin restaurant, where we had a great dinner. Fatigue in the body was of cosmic proportions, after all, such solar drops every day are exhausting.
But now it will be possible to notably sleep off under the air conditioner. But it was not there, the lights were turned off in the old city until the morning, we had no air conditioning, no charge on our phones. Constant drops in electricity are associated with the fact that
that electricity to Zanzibar is delivered from the mainland. In the morning the manager brought a charged laptop and recharged us a bit. We had a great breakfast and started our final and unforgettable day in Zanzibar.
Panj Island
We came to the pier, where yesterday's captain was already waiting for us. He and I agreed to sail to Nakupenda Island for 35.000 TZS ($15). The sky in the morning, as always, was gloomy here. Our captain told us that by the time we reached the island, the weather would be fine. Well, ok, go ahead! The road to the island takes about 20 minutes. The island was really illuminated by the sun, but as soon as we stepped on the spit the sun hid. It was a long and high spit, in order to pass along it, it took about ten minutes. The navigator showed us that we were on the island of Panj, the captain stood his ground that this was Nakupenda. Perhaps this is also a local divorce, so as not to swim even further. Well, OK,
logically Nakupenda looks similar. Here we were absolutely alone. We studied the island in detail, the sun did not appear. Well, let's go see what's under the water for now.
Real coral skies were waiting for us under the water, we had never seen such beauty before. These corals are completely alive and each one is gigantic in size. Compared to Egypt, it is different in type, if the Dream Vacation hotel has large endless coral walls, then here it is more like fields. The fish are much smaller than in Egypt, nevertheless, everything is just as good in terms of diversity, we even saw a striped sea snake, which, as far as I know, is considered the most poisonous creature in the seas, but we were the least interested in it, if it was of course it was . In the meantime, the sun came out, and we jumped and rejoiced like bunnies on a sunny lawn. Many excursion ships were moving from the horizon to the island, now it will be fun here, I feel
but as soon as the first boat with tourists arrived, it started to rain, everyone ran to hide under a small awning, which the local captains immediately built.
We returned back to the study of the ocean landscape, because under water the rain is not felt at all. While we were swimming, the rain kept growing and growing, now it was already a heavy downpour. Well, at least a piece of the sun was caught. We swam until lightning struck the water on the horizon. Let's run! Let's swim! We began rowing towards the shore as quickly as possible, the second lightning struck the water much closer. My heart was pounding in my chest, we ran out onto dry land and hid under an awning. What if a third lightning strikes the only awning on the spit? What began to happen next could no longer be called a downpour, a strong storm began with a hurricane and drops that hit like small daggers.
The tent began to tear from the wind,
I helped drive the frame deeper into the sand with my weight. The bad weather was getting stronger and stronger, even the locals were no longer smiling so widely. Our captain, who was sitting in the boat, put on a life jacket. The tourists who arrived stood in horror with round eyes. What they saw was not at all like a photograph from booklets and those heavenly views that should have been here. This island belongs to the disappearing ones, after some time the tide will begin and the island will literally begin to go under water, at night it will disappear completely. Although with such a storm, he will disappear right with us. About an hour later, the world ended. There was no sun. The ships that arrived immediately deployed a whole infrastructure, restaurants, shops and everything you want appeared here. The island has been transformed from deserted into a mini metropolis.
We waited for another hour, understood
that we can't see the sun. It was time to return to the mainland. Since our mobile phones were finally dead and we had to have lunch, as the restaurants were opened for tourists who came here with a tour.
About mobile phones, it was really critical for us to be online all the time. We never saw all the Maldivian landscapes under a clear sky, but we saw something no less interesting - a strong storm right in the ocean. We sailed into the city while we were having lunch and put our phones on charge. The weather kept getting better and better. And here we are leaving the restaurant, and the sky is almost clear with clouds. But at the same time, we don’t know, maybe everything is just as bad on the island. What to do? Swim again to the island in the hope of still catching the bright sun there or take a break in the hotel and go for a walk? On the one hand, we will pay an extra 15 dollars and it is unlikely that we will catch the sun there,
on the other hand, it seems that there are no special plans for the evening, and if we decide to swim again, then there will be a chance to see those cherished Maldivian landscapes, but on the third hand, we have already seen a lot of extraterrestrial beauty during the whole trip.
We have almost reached the hotel, and Dasha asked me if there is a chance that I will regret that I did not dare to swim to the island a second time? Then I remembered that dream about Cyprus and the Maldives, which I so often dream about. After all, this is precisely the situation when the “Maldives” are so close, but there is no guarantee that it will be beautiful there now. Yes, and how did the last dream end? We sailed and it was still beautiful there! I replied that I would really regret it later that we didn't take the chance. Let's run back to the pier! Who's ready to sail right away? One of the captains was just getting the anchor out of the water. Greetings! Don't give a damn about Nakupenda right now? Just let's skip the long auctions and sail at the right price?
The captain was also too lazy to arrange auctions, he immediately offered 40.000 TZS ($17.25). Hands on, start the engine, go! And what do you think, we sail to the island, and there it is even more beautiful than it was in a dream.
This is really one of the most-most beautiful beaches that we have seen during the trip, it's sunny here, this is the perfect finale of our trip!! ! We did it, the route is completely passed and in some places even overfulfilled!! ! How beautiful it is here! Thanks Zanzibar! There was already one of the peaks of the tide, so the word island was more suitable for the island, it was already a small piece of land, completely without infrastructure and tourists, surrounded on all sides by beautiful water, which literally swallowed it up before our eyes! The last locals set sail with large bags, somewhere far from the island a crab was swimming in the water, which did not forget to pinch me, since I was on its way.
We didn't even know
that crabs swim, I screamed out of surprise so that birds would not soon fly up to the island. And now the last people remain on a small piece of sand, we were the first to open this island today and we will be the last to close it. I want to note that the corals on the island are visible only at low tide, but now they are hidden by a beautiful blue water. It didn’t fit in our head how beautiful and unforgettable the trip we were on. With a sense of satisfaction from the completed route, we sailed on a boat back to Stone Town, taking with us the remains of garbage from the drowning island.
Output
Should every traveler visit Zanzibar? Definitely a firm yes, personally it’s hard for me to even imagine how someone might not like it in this corner of beauty and serenity, gourmets will find delicious seafood for themselves at affordable prices,
romantics will live from sunset to sunset, snorkelers will discover real coral fields, and architecture lovers will definitely appreciate Stone Town. And if it seems to you that you have already seen a lot of exotic things and it is difficult to surprise you, just give Zanzibar a chance, you will not regret it. And the main point is people, even if some of them are a little rogue, able to steal one slipper or even garbage that we brought on a boat from the island.
Their openness, willingness to help and at any time to start a sincere conversation with you on any topic, will definitely leave a mark on your memories of the trip. Every time I saw a plane flying away in the sky, I felt a little sad in my soul that someone was already flying away and soon it would be our turn, no matter how lyrically it sounded, I really caught myself at such moments.
From all our travels, it was in Zanzibar that philosophical thoughts began to come to me that if our lives had specifically prescribed meanings, then one of them would be to visit or even live in Zanzibar. I wish everyone to see this incredible world of Hakuna Matata!
