Zanzibar Town's rather understated ferry port seen from "Mercury's" bar, which is surely not trying to cash in on Zanzibar's most famous sonI'll be quite honest here – I'm not a fan of tourist, beach places and I didn't really expect much of Zanzibar. I didn't really like Lamu all that much and as the ferry pulled up to the docks, I was expecting more of the same. After getting a Zanzibar stamp in our passports for some reason, we stopped for a drink while we worked out where to go, and eventually set off looking for a place to lay our heads for the night. As we wandered around the small, winding streets of Stone Town (the old Swahili quarter of Zanibar Town, the main town of Zanzibar Island – surprisingly), the place grew on me very quickly. There were tourists around and the place had a definite beach-town feel, but it was somehow very different from Lamu. I didn't at all get the feeling of being an animal in a zoo who is expected to buy everything from everyone and where anyone who offers to help is just looking to make something. People said hello and smiled, gave us pointers and welcomed us. I don't know why but it just had a completely different feel to Lamu, even though technically they were quite similar. As we got (unsurprisingly) lost in Stone Town's alleyways, a guy offered to help and guided us to the place we were looking for. It was full, and so he took us to another one, which was also full. His third suggestion had space for us and we settled into the sweltering room.
Typical (above) street scene in Stone Town
It's the hot and rainy season in this part of Africa and the air is oppressive enough as it is, but Zanzibar has an extra problem – in December of last year, the electric cable under the sea from the mainland snapped and Zanzibar Island, which has no power stations of its own, was plunged into darkness. It's been that way ever since even if a few places have generators. I suppose it creates a largely similar scene to what it must have looked like a century ago – merchants did business at night in the flickering light of candles and hurricans lamps, and fans and air-con are distant memories. While it creates a nice atmosphere, it's been rather tougher on the island itself as Western travel companies have cancelled all of their bookings. There are still a fair amount of tourists around but everyone says that it's far less than it normally would be at this time of year. Taking the positives out of this situation as they can, hotel owners are using the slump to carry out renovations on their hotels, waiting for the electricity to come back on. No-one really seems sure about when this will happen though. As often happens in Africa, people take the situation as it comes and are dealing with it in a way that just wouldn't be possible in Europe...
A Cathedral. What else to say about it ?Stone Town is one of those places where you just wander around and take in the atmosphere in the small cobbled streets. You eat whatever you can find (because of the lack of fridges outside of the expensive hotels, a lot of restaurants have scaled down their menus drastically and the drinks are warm. It's alright though and we don't really mind – it does some good to get away from the comforts of life sometimes (and in my opinion the more the better). The evening was a lazy one having a cold drink on the seafront, getting lost once again and eventually finding our way back to the “Abdalla Guest House Annex” for a shower in the dark (if you can't see that you're still dirty then it doesn't count, right?) and a pretty sweaty night.
...little did we know we'd be just in time for the Eid-al-Moulid celebrations! Hurrah!
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