Welcome to the concluding part of the Tanzania Adventures series where I share my Stonetown and Nungwi experience. If you missed the earlier posts in this series, you can read them here TNZ Adventures 1 and here TNZ Adventures 2.
Stonetown
The big sign that welcomes you to Stonetown, Zanzibar reads “Karibu Zanzibar” which translates to Welcome to Zanzibar. Immediately, you get off the boat, your skin pores immediately expand and you begin to produce a lot more fluid…Zanzibar is HOT! It is an island that is an hour and 30 minutes by boat from Dar es Salaam.
We had booked an Airbnb home and it was just 10 minutes walk from the sea port. By the time we arrived at our accommodation, we were sweating like we poured a full bucket of water on ourselves. Thankfully, our Airbnb home was a pure delight (Details about this coming soon). We showered and the next thing we were looking for was food. Our host recommended Lukman Resturant which was a stone’s throw from our home. We quickly made our way there and we had the most delightful food yet. For the first time, we didn’t need extra spice because the food was spicy…yaay!
Once we satisfied our hunger pangs, we decided to explore a bit of the town and we did a quick walk to the former slave market site which houses the East African slave trade exhibit. We toured the underground rooms, saw the chains and I must admit I got emotional at this point and we quickly had to wrap it up. Slavery is disheartening!
The day we arrived Stone town was New Year’s eve and we asked our host if there was any place that had fireworks or anything of that sort but there wasn’t any so we retired to our home and later streamed cross over service from Nigeria.
Nungwi
The next day which was the 1st day of 2018, we made our way to one of the best beaches in the world as recognized by CNN in their 2014 “100 Best Beaches in the World” selection. This beach is located in Nungwi town which is an hour from Stonetown by dala dala (local bus).
We arrived at a long stretch of pure blue sea water staring us right in the face. The amazing folks at @Globejaunters had attempted to go swimming with dolphins a year ago at Dolphin Bay, Kizimkazi (see their attempt here: Zanzibar Adventures by Globejaunters) but I knew there was no way, I was going to do that. My basic swimming skills & wild dolphins are not a good match!
After walking along the coastline for a while, we plunged into the water. Bear in mind that I am not an expert swimmer but I was determined not to let this opportunity of swimming in the Indian ocean pass me by. I kept it safe by swimming close to the shore before I ended up in the middle of the ocean swimming with sharks?.
At the beach, there were a variety of water sports and other activities but after swimming, we settled down for some cold drinks and watched the sunset beautifully.
We then made our way back to Stonetown for the night and we got ready to catch a boat ride back to Dar es Salaam the next morning and then an onward flight to Nigeria via Ethiopia. Tanzania was lit and I can’t wait to be back!
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