Stone Town Zanzibar

We spent a couple of days wandering around Stone Town (the main town on Zanzibar Island). We took a guided tour one morning and then just wandered around shopping the next morning. It was hot and humid so we spent afternoons lazing around our air conditioned apartment. Today we’re flying back to Arusha for a couple of days before we return to Canada.

Here are some photos, in no particular order.

Food (of course).

Rani haggling for a mango.

We stayed in an Airbnb on this street, outside of the main tourist area.

More food - Lakmaan restaurant, family style servings.

Cats cats cats everywhere.

The old fort, built originally by the Portuguese and then expanded later by the Zanzibarians.  Now a sort of a mall.

Lots of elaborate carved doors in Stone Town.

Forodhani Park by the water.

Our tour.

Rooftop view of Stone Town.

Zanzibar was one of the main ports for the slave trade, this is one of the rooms where they keeps the slaves before selling.

Spice market.

Freddy Mercury is from Zanzibar.

Fruit juice on a rooftop cafe.

The Peace museum.

Sonya is missing her weekly workouts!

Pizza!!!

PS even in the Zanzibar airport departure lounge!

Beach Bums in Matemwe Zanzibar

After our Safari we decamped to the island of Zanzibar, to the town of Matemwe on the north-east side of the island. We ate, snorkelled, walked along the beach and generally lounged about for four days. Tomorrow (Thursday) we are moving to an Airbnb in Stone Town.

Here are some miscellaneous pictures.

We spent one night in Arusha after our Safari, before we hopped a flight to Zanzibar.

In Matemwe we went snorkeling a couple of times. You just hire a boat on the beach and they zip you out to the good corals.

Our beach is miles and miles long and full of locals selling various products and tours.  Hapana Asante!!!

Food food food!!!  (Chakula!)

On our last day we started to run out of Tanzanian Shillings so we walked about 90 minutes to the closest atm 😜

Safari Day 8 (and final day)

Today was our last day of Safari. We visited the Ngorogoro crater (actually caldera) in the morning, and then after lunch headed back to our hotel in Arusha.  (A crater is caused by a meteor strike, a caldera is caused when a mountain collapses. Ngorogoro crater (caldera) is 18km across and was caused by the collapse of a very large volcano!  Even larger than Kilimanjaro.)

It was an exciting day because as we were entering the crater we saw a rhino!  This is the last of the “big 5” that we hadn’t seen yet. (The “big 5” are named for the animals that are the hardest to hunt - elephant, lion, leopard, cape buffalo and rhino.). We also saw, in Ngorogoro within the next 90 minutes, lions, Cape buffalo and an elephant - 4 of the big 5!

In Ngorogoro we also saw pretty much everything else, including zebra, wildebeest, pink flamingoes, buzzards and hyena (munching on the body of a poor wildebeest), hippos and many more.  A good day to finish off our Tanzanian Safari!

(Photos are in reverse order again 😩)