Today, we checked out of The Dhow Palace and spent our last day on the island of Zanzibar. As usual, we started the day early and made the best of the free breakfast. One thing to note was the delicious local cinnamon spiced coffee. I would rate the breakfast as being much better than Sunset Bungalows and Not touching the Sopa Lodges with a stick. The Sopa Lodge breakfast kicks the crap out of most hotels I’ve been to, but I digress. We picked a table next to the pool and were gleefully surprised to see our Italian friends sitting at the table next to us. We learned that they work at travel agency in Florence and both parties promised to visit one another. I have a vested interest as Andrea and Gemma both own motorized skateboards and promised I could ride one.
We went back to the room, packed our bags, checked out and left our bags with reception. We also purchased our ferry tickets at the front desk ahead of time for $40 a person. Continuing out the door we went down the main street and hit up Memories, a large and very touristy store where no purchases were made. There we ran into the Italians again. We also retraced our path from yesterday a handful of times where several of the store owners recognized us. There were a lot more stores open today because of the end of Ead.
Our major goal of the day was to buy some Zanzibarian spices – we bought cinnamon coffee, red chilies, saffron and cardamom. We also got a white linen shirt for me and other knick knack. Afterwards, we hightailed it back to the hotel and on the way, stopped at Doreen Mashika, a designer fashion shop we had been to three times today. Teresa had been teased by this bag in the front window every time we walked by. She ended up buying it.
Back at the hotel, the pool area was still sunny so we sat out for the last remaining hour we had in Zanzibar. I ordered a pizza and covered it with Tabasco sauce then went for a swim and finished by checking my email. 2:00pm quickly approached and we grabbed a taxi to the ferry port.
When we arrived to the port, we were welcomed by, what else, more people trying to sell their services to carry our fucking bags. I wasn’t even annoyed at this point and I already felt like kicking a chicken right in the beak. After turning down maybe five porters right at the gate, we went through two gates, at opposite ends of one another, like we were mice in a maze. At the end, we had to fill out immigration papers and I went out of my way to ask for stamps for our passports. From there, we went and sat with the big group of other people waiting for the ferry as well. Then all sorts of hell slowly started to break loose. Luckily we kept our cool. First off, once someone went to the ramp to the dock, EVERYONE started doing so. No sense of line whatsoever. So much cutting. Then this porter guy grabbed our bags out of our hand and insisted that he bring them to our boat. This took us by surprise and confused us heavily as this type of treatment was being given to no one else. We didn’t know what this guys deal was at this point, where or who he worked for, I just knew he had a badge. He asked us if we were first class to which we replied yes and then he said we could follow him because it would be we could then find a seat before it became full. The guy then took off with our bags down the ramp to the boat right past the security guard. The security guard would not let us through. At this point, we had no idea what was going on and we didn’t quite freak out, but we weren’t sure where the guy was taking our bags and if it was to the right boat. We quickly pleaded with the security guard to let us through and after a little begging, he allowed me to go though. I quickly ran down the ramp and found the guy waiting in front of the Sea Express 1 (which we thought was the wrong boat). I had to pry the two bags from this guys hands. The guy was clearly looking for money. I told him it was the wrong boat and to just let me handle it and towed the bags back to the line where T was. The ramp was divided into two lanes and by now the line to board was extremely long and T and I were now on the wrong side. We waited about 10 minutes for one of the boats to unload and then one of the security guards started checking tickets and people began pushing each other like it was some kind of Japanese bullitt train. T and I had no choice but to split up at this point. She was in line with the small bags and was on the wrong lane with both of our huge rolling bags. When the security guard saw that I was completely screwed, he looked the other way and let me down the ramp that everyone was exiting on. I was like a salmon with 100lbs of luggage swimming upstream. Pushing one bag in front and pulling the other behind me I slowly but surely made it down the ramp against traffic.
Now when I made it to the bottom of the ramp, the porter guy that had taken my bags t the top of the ramp took them again. Again without asking. Again right out of my friggen hands. This time he brought them through line of people to where they were loading bags onto the other boat, the Kilimanjaro. I quickly glanced to find T in the line boarding this boat and couldn’t find her. Then I looked at my ticket and saw that we were taking the Sea Express 1 and not the Kilimanjaro. I began freaking out and went over to the porter guy and tore him apart for stealing my bags again. Luckily, I was able to get both of my bags off of the Kilimanjaro and I wheeled them over to the other boat. At this point, I was sweating my bag off. T leaned over the top deck and beckoned me. It took like five minutes to make it up there, but I finally did and sitting was the ultimate relief. There were also a shit ton of open seats in first class.
The first class cabin was a room of about 50 seats with two 30″ TVs on both sides. The TVs were playing an old school dubbed John Woo movie called “Heroes Shed No Tears”. I started to get into this, as wacky as the plot was. Then two little girls sat in front of us and I gave them cookies that I had leftover in my backpack from the Kilimanjaro climb. After a little while, the boat took off and we started cruising. The first of the dubbed movies ended and another one about drug warfare began. When I had originally boarded the boat, I noted how weird it was for dubbed Chinese action movies to be playing in a ferry in Africa, but it got weirder. The next movie was I easily deemed to be madly inappropriate for the type of crowd on this boat. It seemed ok at first, but it quickly turned into a nipple fest that I was watching just above two young girls. Extremely awkward, so I just laughed. After about 10 minutes of this, the guy in charge of the movies finally recognized what was going on and changed it. The next John Woo movie started out in a Japanese gogo club. The movie guy was really striking out. He left it on. Then one of the girls in front of us woke up and started vomiting. This was turning into a show in itself. The girl vomited three times and T and I were beginning to feel nauseous and then we docked five minutes later saving us from our sick bags.
Spray on the window from the rough ocean waters!
Getting our bags back was not nearly as much of a problem as it was getting them on the boat. I was able to retrieve them very easily on the dock and then just had to wait for T to get off the boat. Again, there were porters on the boat and other guys trying to sell their taxi services. The first guy approached us and T told him our price (12,000 Tsh) which he said was too high, so we told him we would call our own taxi. He buckled and we made him carry our bags up the three flights of stairs. The driveway for the taxis was a mess and while we were trying to fit our ridiculous amount of luggage into the taxi two things happened. One, I noticed there was an oversized lady in the passenger seat who was the taxi drivers so called wife. This forced us to have to hold on to most of our smaller baggage during the ride. Two, I got hit by a cab while waiting to get into this car. Luckily the guy was going slow enough that it only buckled my left leg. I can still walk and sustained no injuries.
On the ride home, the wife picked up her phone and began verbally assaulting someone in Swahili. T and I were quite amused. The rest of the ride was characterized by driving through endless amounts of people parading down the street singing, drinking, and jumping on and off moving cars while celebrating Ead. The highlight of this was watching at least five teenage boys jump on the back of the dala dala (bus van) in front of us and following the thing at about 25MPH. This was all on a road with absolutely no streetlights. Now that I mention it, there are only a handful of streets with streetlights, lanes and/or sidewalks.
We had finally made it to Brian and Natalia’s around 6:30/7:00pm and relaxed for a short while. I felt good knowing we would not to have to worry about our luggage for the rest of the trip. Even more, Brian had been able to recover my missing luggage from the airport while T and I were in the midst of our adventures so that was also waiting for me in our room. One of the items in the missing bag was a box of 12 white chocolate macadamia nut Clif bars. I took one and destroyed it with ease.
Brian and Natalia took us to this cool outdoor place for dinner called Mafia Fish Lounge. The place was lined with what I deemed as a more expensive set of cars than you’d normally see in a parking lot and there was a Maasai tribesman guarding he parking lot. We had kebabs for dinner – chicken and fish which I was told was tuna – and chips. I actually liked the tuna a lot more than the chicken. This is probably the first time I have admitted liking fish more in my life. One thing I have been noticing however is the African chefs’ penchant for serving soggy chips. Leave em in a little longer will ya buddy?
Dinner was over and we went home in the bajaj and called it a night. T and I finished the rest of the Breaking Bad episodes I had left on the pad and fell asleep. What a crazy day.
