Friday, January 11, 2008
Zanzibar pt II - Swahili Beach Resort
Okay, so I have to say...being a Canadian who really doesn't like snow and cold weather, a trip to Zanzibar is definitely a great way to spend Christmas. I stayed at the Swahili Beach Resort. The resort is more a lodge set up as it's too small to really be a resort. it's run by two young Americans, Anna and Ted, who's brother in law, a Zanzibarian, own the resort.
The place is less than a year old and it was fantastic. It has a main building, a restaurant and pool area and the actual accomodation are beautiful bungalows. Here is the resort from the beach from the beach and the bungalow I stayed in.
The resort is on the southeast of the island right next to Kizimkaze, a fishing village, about an hour from Stone Town. This picture is pretty representative of the surroundings on the way to the resort. The houses are very similar to the houses we saw in Drakensburg in South Africa...a wooden frame wall, filled with rocks then mudded over.
The place is less than a year old and it was fantastic. It has a main building, a restaurant and pool area and the actual accomodation are beautiful bungalows. Here is the resort from the beach from the beach and the bungalow I stayed in.
And here are some stunning pictures of the beach...it's a fishing village and the tide goes in and out twice a day. The fishermen leave their boats anchored and they rise in the water or beach at low tide. Really one of the most breathtaking views I have ever seen.
A big reason people go to Zanzibar is to snorkel with the dolphins. I decided to go and had a great time. I got off to a rough start though--I got stung by a jelly fish the first time in the water. I didn't see it at all and only felt it when it was stinging me like crazy on my right forearm and thigh. I had no idea and tried not to panic, and the boat captain, Suliman, said it was no biggie, they were white rather than blue so I'd be alright. I had a row of maybe 6 stings and welts that look sort of like giant mosquito bites the size of a quarter across my thigh. Two weeks later, the welts are gone but the sting marks are still there. I was hesitant to get back in the water but the dolphins are really beautiful and I figured I'd be careful and try to keep an eye out for them. There was this couple from Norway on the trip and I figured I'd just follow after him and he would have cleared the way. Plus the jelly fish sometimes have visible electric blue eyes and I kept my eye out for them. I didn't get stung again luckily and we swam with up to 15 dolphins another 3 or 4 times. It was amazing and probably something I will never get the chance to do again. I didn't take my camera with me as I didn't have a rugged/water one and I didn't want my good digital to get wrecked in a motor boat--but here are pics that are pretty representative of what it looks like. The ones we saw were probably about 25 feet from us. Truly stunning.
Zanzibar - Part I - Stone Town
For Christmas this year, I decided to do a trip. I wasn't sure where I wanted to go and I was chatting with someone at work and she had just returned from Zanzibar. I'd heard of it but didn't actually even know what country it was part of or really where it was. North Americans are all about the Caribbean and unfortuantely are pretty ignorant about much of the rest of the world.
And here is the view from the hotel roof restaurant/bar balcony.
I spent the morning walk about along the water then over to an unofficial market. Here is the view from the park on the waterfront:
Stone Town is incredible and very very different from anywhere I had ever been. It was really settled by the Sultan of Oman in the mid 1800s and has a lot of Indian and Muslim influences.
Unlike South Africa that has a lot of black tribal cultural influences, Stone Town isn't and really has the flavour of the cultures that inhabitated it in the 17th C.
I also decided to live on the edge and try something new, so drank coconut juice out of a coconut. It actually tasted nothing like I thought it would. It didn't have a flavour really, and certainly not like coconut. I tasted the coconut itself and it was actually gross. The coconut one buys in the store is dried and raw it is really soft and rubbery...it looks like calamari sort of. Slimy.
Anyway, she raved and gave me the name of a guy who helped her with getting good pricing so off I went. Turns out Zanzibar is an island off the coast of Tanzania. The flight goes from Johannesburg to Dar es Salaam, the capital of Tanzania, then a quick 20 minutes to Zanzibar.
The main town is called Stone Town and I spent two nights there in the hotel Chavda. The city is laid out with regular roads where cars drive, but the main way many people get around town is walking thorugh the many many alleys. These aren't alleys like at home that run behind a row of houses, but rather a network of narrow paved paths. Here is the view of my hotel from the alley to the side of it:
And here is the view from the hotel roof restaurant/bar balcony.
I spent the morning walk about along the water then over to an unofficial market. Here is the view from the park on the waterfront:
And I saw this man with a huge wooden cart piled with fruit. These carts are very very common around Stone Town. There are tons of vendors in the streets and they all seem to use these carts.
One thing I saw that was particularly funny was the Trade Ministry. One would think that maybe a government agency would have an official sounding email address, but in Zanzibar, nope. Cick on the picture to enlarge it and you will see...they use a hotmail address!!!
And here is the building itself:
Something else funny is the way the locals use Freddie Mercury from the band Queen to pull one over on the tourists. Mercury was born on Zanzibar and spent some of his childhood there. On my walk about, I had lunch at a beach front restaurant called Mercury's. Inside there are various pictures of Freddie and the band and inside the menu is his biography. Funny thing...his name on Zanizar wasn't Freddie Mercury...that's a stage name. There was also an art gallery that is called Mercury House, leading one to maybe think that was his house...according to my guide Jackson, it wasn't.
Stone Town is incredible and very very different from anywhere I had ever been. It was really settled by the Sultan of Oman in the mid 1800s and has a lot of Indian and Muslim influences.
Unlike South Africa that has a lot of black tribal cultural influences, Stone Town isn't and really has the flavour of the cultures that inhabitated it in the 17th C.
I did a tour in the afternoon and saw the town up close. Zanzibar was part of the stop on the spice islands/slave route back in the mid-1800s. On the tour we stopped at a church that was built over the slave market. The market is where Africans from central and eastern Africa were brought to be sold to other areas in the east. The first picture is the church and the second is the basement holding area underneath. Up to 80 people were held here at a time before being brought up for auctioning. The centre slot was the waste dump and when the tide came in, the water came in and washed it away. That water doesn't come in any more...it's a main street called "Creek Street".
The other area that every tourist sees is the market. It's huge and absolutely nothing like the St. Jacob's market in Waterloo I can tell you. Zanzibar is incredibly hot and humid. The market is all open air and there is no electricity so everyting is just laid out on tables. There were flies like you wouldn't believe, in that heat, the smell was pungent and it was less than clean. All I could think of when we went through the fish market was food poisoning. I could smell the meat market and we opted to just skip it...I didn't think I really could do it without losing lunch. But, it was interesting to see how other peopel do things. (Click to enlarge)
I also decided to live on the edge and try something new, so drank coconut juice out of a coconut. It actually tasted nothing like I thought it would. It didn't have a flavour really, and certainly not like coconut. I tasted the coconut itself and it was actually gross. The coconut one buys in the store is dried and raw it is really soft and rubbery...it looks like calamari sort of. Slimy.
Thursday, January 10, 2008
Sahara's First Plane Ride!!
My sister Jaclyn, and her baby, Sahara were off to Cape Town for Christmas to spend some time with Sahara's dad and meet his family. So, that meant her first plane ride ever. It was an early morning flight and domestic terminal was nuts. We got in a very long snaking line. I, of course, was worried, but the airlines have done this before and a while before the flight, they called people for the Cape Town flight to get in a separate line. They got checked in and the Christmas spirit is alive and well and they didn't charge for extra baggage even though there was a pram, a flod down crib, a bag with clothes for both of them for a week plus gifts, as well as a car seat. Then off they went through security to catch the flight. 
going
Here Jac and Sahara are waiting in line to check in, with their boarding pass and going through the security line.
And here they are arriving back at OR Tambo in Johannesburg.
going
Wednesday, January 09, 2008
Christmas in South Africa...Sahara's First!
Both Jackie and I had separate plans for actual Christmas so we celebrated a couple of days early. It is odd for a Canadian, used to snow and freezing cold Christmases to be having breakfast and opening presents out on a patio in very warm weather. It actually doesn't seem to be nearly as big a deal generally as it is at home.
Anyway, it was fantastic spending Sahara's first Christmas with her and my sister. Here is Sahara opening gifts. Like probably every child, she seemed more interested in the wrapping paper than what was inside.
And, gifts for Jackie and I had a distinct theme...it really is all about Sahara! The shirt I'm holding says "If my Mom won't, my Aunt will". How true that is!! And Jackie is holding a baby signing book. We're teaching Sahara to sign and we need this.
Even Jesse James got in on the act...
For Christmas dinner, we went to a local Italian place, Doppio Zeros...at least we had a tree somewhere in our Christmas Day!
Anyway, it was fantastic spending Sahara's first Christmas with her and my sister. Here is Sahara opening gifts. Like probably every child, she seemed more interested in the wrapping paper than what was inside.
And, gifts for Jackie and I had a distinct theme...it really is all about Sahara! The shirt I'm holding says "If my Mom won't, my Aunt will". How true that is!! And Jackie is holding a baby signing book. We're teaching Sahara to sign and we need this.
Even Jesse James got in on the act...
For Christmas dinner, we went to a local Italian place, Doppio Zeros...at least we had a tree somewhere in our Christmas Day!
Swaziland
The next day we went over to Swaziland. Jac has a friend there who has a backpacker's in Manzini. Unreal how different Swazi is to South Africa. This is probably what people imagine when they think of Africa, this is the immigration office at the border between South Africa and Swaziland and the second picture is the actual border...basically a boom arm and a guy there to move it up for you. Seriously secure...not. Crazy, especially compared to the US-Canada border.
It is very lush, and in the countryside, everyone seems to be very self sufficient, tending to gardens etc. It is a very very stunning country. They get more rain than South Africa and have plantations of suger cane, tea, etc. Really unbelievably beautiful. This is the view from the little place we ate lunch at. It might be one of the only restaurants to eat at in the area.
It is probably even more rural than Drakensburg, and it is very important not to drive too fast on the road, even though the speed is 80km, because there are farms everywhere, and fences are rare. It is very likely you will encounter at least one cow on the road in your travels.
One of the big things from Swaziland are the candles. A lot of the animal candles one sees in South Africa come from Swaziland and there is a place called Swazi Candles that is a must stop visit for every tourist. In the picture below, the guy is making a giraffe candle.
There is also another very large export business in Swazi...glass. Below, the artisans are making giraffes. There are four in a row and after the runner brings the raw blob, each one does a little bit of the overall finished product. It takes 8 of them to make one piece.
It is very lush, and in the countryside, everyone seems to be very self sufficient, tending to gardens etc. It is a very very stunning country. They get more rain than South Africa and have plantations of suger cane, tea, etc. Really unbelievably beautiful. This is the view from the little place we ate lunch at. It might be one of the only restaurants to eat at in the area.
It is probably even more rural than Drakensburg, and it is very important not to drive too fast on the road, even though the speed is 80km, because there are farms everywhere, and fences are rare. It is very likely you will encounter at least one cow on the road in your travels.
One of the big things from Swaziland are the candles. A lot of the animal candles one sees in South Africa come from Swaziland and there is a place called Swazi Candles that is a must stop visit for every tourist. In the picture below, the guy is making a giraffe candle.
There is also another very large export business in Swazi...glass. Below, the artisans are making giraffes. There are four in a row and after the runner brings the raw blob, each one does a little bit of the overall finished product. It takes 8 of them to make one piece.
Bush Babies in Hlue Hluwie
It really is amazing the cool things I am seeing while I am in South Africa. It is totally nothing I would see anywhere else. Anyway, at the bush camp we stayed at in Hlue Hluwie, they have bush baies that come down to the deck of the outside restaurant every evening to get fed. They are wild, but trained to know that if they come down they will be fed.
We learned some cool info about these interesting animals. They are also known as "night monkeys" and are indeed primates. They are unable to move their eyeballs in the socket and have very flexible necks that can go almost 180 degrees. Their eyes are enormous, and because of the dark, their pupils stay dilated, resulting in the "white eye" in the pictures.
And of course we had our little "bush baby" too. This is Sahara, sitting with a wooden hippo. She is about 8 months old in this picture.
We learned some cool info about these interesting animals. They are also known as "night monkeys" and are indeed primates. They are unable to move their eyeballs in the socket and have very flexible necks that can go almost 180 degrees. Their eyes are enormous, and because of the dark, their pupils stay dilated, resulting in the "white eye" in the pictures.
And of course we had our little "bush baby" too. This is Sahara, sitting with a wooden hippo. She is about 8 months old in this picture.
St. Lucia--Hippos!
No, not the one in the Caribbean...the one on the south eastern coast of South Africa, near Durban. The next day after the game park, Jac, Sahara and I went to St. Lucia to go on the crocodiles and hippos. Very cool. We only saw a couple of crocodiles but saw tons of hippos. Apparently this is an area with some of the most hippos in Africa as a whole.
If you click on this one, you may be able to see the baby on the right hand side.
If you click on this one, you may be able to see the baby on the right hand side.
Subscribe to Posts [Atom]