POST 32 – TANZANIA: Getting there and Zanzibar!

I took a 35-hour train ride and JB flew for 2 days to meet each other in Dar Es Salaam, a major city and port on the coast Tanzania. We spent two nights in Dar checking out the city and figuring out our plans for the coming almost 3 weeks. Dar Es Salaam (and Zanzibar, where we went next) were really interesting because of the many different cultural influences there, such as European, Indian, American and African. It was fun to be in such a diverse place!

From Dar, we took a 3-hour ferry ride to Zanzibar, a beautiful island in the Indian Ocean. We first spent 2 nights in Stonetown, an old colonial style town that serves as the main city for the island. Stonetown is a really colorful area with great food and fun markets. After Stonetown, we went on a spice tour and learned all about the different spices we use all the time, such as cloves, tumeric, cinnamon and nutmeg. Then, we headed to the more remote eastern coast to a place called Jambiani.

Jambiani a small beach town with snow white beaches and really friendly people. Our hotel was right on the beach and had the best food. We stayed for 6 nights and did not have a single meal we didn’t love. We also learned a lot about the culture in Zanzibar when we took a tour of Jambiani. JB and I particularly enjoyed the seaweed farmers who came out at low tide to work. The tides of the Indian Ocean go out really far on the East coast and women wrapped in their brightly colorful kangas (traditional cloth worn by Tanzanian women) come out to work the seaweed farms growing in the low waters. We have a lot of great pictures of this!

I’ll write about the second half of the trip in the next blog!

xoxo