Second to last working day in Zanzibar

Today was another good working day. We did, however, finish half an hour early due to the wish of some of the local participants to attend a funeral. I finished up verifying the data that they had entered during the day so in the end did not get away all that early but it was still good to leave even only a few minutes before normal.

I celebrated my liberty by going for a long walk around Stonetown. I had two objectives, firstly to find the hotel that Jo and I didn't stay at in December 1998 .... we had booked to stay there but when we arrived we discovered that it was Ramadhan and the hotel owners/managers wanted us to pay for bed and breakfast but only get the bed. We found another place instead and that is a whole different story. My second objective was to find the Anglican cathedral. Back to the hotel: I was unsuccessful for two reasons but mainly because I don't remember where it was. I have this vague idea in my head but the roads I take never seem to lead me to the place I imagine. It doesn't help that I can't remember the name so I can't ask anyone if they know where it is.

I did find the cathedral though. It is of course much easier so spot - great big spire that towers above everything else! The failure in this part of the story is that it is now on the tourist route so there is an entrance fee of TSh3500, a full TSh1000 more than I had on me. Whoever set up the gates to the cathedral were very clever too because there is no way of photographing the cathedral entrance without paying the fee to get in the gate. The reason the cathedral is a tourist attraction has nothing to do with the building at all. The cathedral is built on the piece of land that was the slave market. Apparently the cellar of the St Monica's Hostel next door was the pit in which the slaves were kept so it has all the significance of that past era.

From the cathedral I walked through the market, had a look at the fish on sale, decided to bypass the red meat section and looked at all the fruit on sale. The sun was starting to go down so I walked on to the harbour and back along the waterfront to the area where the night market is held. There were quite a lot of dhows setting sail to go fishing tonight. It is a beautiful sight. I followed a group of dhows along the shore and stopped to look at menus at some of the restaurants. I was thinking of spoiling myself tomorrow evening and going out to dinner but I can't decide where to go. There are a lot of choices and a huge range of prices. I will see tomorrow after work how I feel and then decide. Eventually the harassment by the young local men got too much and I retreated back to my hotel for some peace and quiet. They can really ruin a good sunset!

Below are a couple of photos from my walk about today, hope you enjoy them.

 Another dhow!
 On the streets of Stonetown
 I like clocks, not sure why
 Some local apartments
 A beautiful tree-lined avenue
 Calamari anyone?
 You really sure about wanting calamari?
 The fish market - wish I could share the smell with you :-)
 Fruit and veggies outside
 A flotilla of dhows
 The wildlife
My hotel - Abuso Inn

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A little fun in Mombasa

Image
It was so good to be back in Mombasa. It was 9 month since my last visit. This time I stayed at the Bahari Beach Hotel. Amazingly I had not stayed at this hotel before. Initially I had thought that I had been there but the beach hotels in Nyali are starting to all look the same to me. The Bahari Beach Hotel is a lovely place and I enjoyed it even though I was there for a series of back-to-back meetings. My bedroom was super comfortable with a lovely hard mattress. The only issue I had was that the in-room safe initially worked intermittently but eventually was fixed and for my inconvenience was given dinner and a glass of wine at the duty manager's expense. The gardens were really beautiful and a tranquil sight to wake up to every morning. And I loved watching the cats cavorting around the grounds while having breakfast. Unfortunately the tides were against me so only managed one walk on the beach but I did get to swim and I had fun one evening watching some Maasai dancers.
Read more

Roasting in Comoros

Image
After a dreadful series of flights on Kenya Airways to Mombasa last week, I started on this trip with some trepidation. My concerns were for naught really though. The inbound flight from Nairobi to Johannesburg arrived on time which gave me a lot of confidence that my flight would leave on time. In the end we left a half hour late but this was due to a passenger not having the correct travel documents and his luggage had to be unloaded. The wait in Nairobi was quite endless but I spent my time getting some exercise by walking up and down the departure gate corridors. There are only two so it was a bit monotonous but better than just sitting around. The flight to the Comoros departed quite late as the inbound flight was late. This meant that instead of arriving in Comoros at 23:35 we arrived at about 00:30. The Dreamliner arriving at OR Tambo International Airport There were ten of us that were arriving in Comoros for the same meeting and all of us needed to apply for a visa
Read more

Maputo

Image
My one night at home was a welcome change from sterile hotel rooms but there was so much to do and before long my suitcase was packed again. I thought that I would be nervous flying this morning since I was flying with SA Airlink who have had a bit of a bad time recently with accidents and incidents but I was completely okay. Maybe 2010 is my year for having discarded my fear of flying completely but the real proof will be next month when I fly from Mauritius to Seychelles and back on Air Seychelles since it is thanks to Air Seychelles that I developed this ridiculous fear in the first place. What contributed to my enjoyment of the flight was that it was on another cute little turbo propelled aircraft, this time a Jetstream 41. It only takes 29 people and there were only 11 on-board making it really comfy. Take-off was to the north-east so we had a lovely view of Durban and I couldn't help thinking as we flew over uShaka Marine World that that was the closest I have been to my off
Read more