We flew out from Siwandu airstrip to Dar es Salaam where somebody met us to check us in for the ZanAir flight to Zanzibar. We had about an hours wait. Not too bad. It had been fascinating watching the landscape change below us as we left the bush and headed back to the City.
Both flights were tiny planes and the safety demo on ZanAir was hilarious. Just the pilot shouting things at us that we couldn't really hear! Thank goodness it was only a 20 minute hop across. We landed at about 7pm and at Zanzibar airport it had been raining. We were struggling to fight off the many "baggage" guys and so caved in and allowed one of them to take our two bags. Imagine our indignance when he carried them about 15 feet out of the airport and dumped them on the pavement - "I'm not allowed beyond here" he insisted. But still demanded payment!
Our rep met us and we wheeled our bags through puddles to the minvan which had come to collect us. We couldn't set off straight away though, as our driver was doing evening Prayers. The rep settled us into the van with some cold drinks and luckily the driver was back soon and off we went... through the busy outskirts of Stonetown (Zanzibar's capital) up to the North of the island. Stonetown was hectic - jampacked "dala dalas" (buses) with conductors hanging off the back blocked our way as they stopped... seemingly every 20 yards. Our driver mainly just skirted round them. We saw a string of oxen in the middle of the road and donkey and cart wending its way out of town.
A few other things struck me as unusual or interesting. Firstly, once we got out of town, I noticed how many people were walking along the unlit and unpaved roadsides. And so many with no shoes. We seemed to climb uphill for a long time - through villages with roadside openair televisions - where groups of people sat on the floor avidly watching. Boys and men stood to pee on the roadside, and one friendly chap even threw an apple core at us, hitting the windscreen. Welcome to Zanzibar!
We felt a real sense of this being somewhere "different". Although as when we were in Bali, it was unlikely that we would see much more of real Zanzibar once we hit our tourist haven.
Also along the way we went through several police barriers in the road. Every time we did so, our driver would tell us "police station" and we passed with out incident. Although one guy did peer in the van and take a good look at us before strutting off. Power!
Finally we came off the main road at a sign saying "Nungwi - 5km". It took us another 30 minutes to get there! The road was truly hideous - pot holes everywhere. To avoid them, our driver took to driving in the ditches at the side, narrowly avoiding trees along the way. Finally we arrived at Ras Nungwi. It is near Nungwi Village on the Northern tip of the island. A padlocked gate and security guard greeted us.
The welcome at Reception was nowhere near as warm and personal as it had been at Selous - but the place looked very nice indeed. And hey - this is a 32 room hotel, not a 4 tent Private Selous! We were taken to our room and more or less went straight to dinner. The food here is wonderful - Seafood Spring Roll, Pumpkin Soup, Fillet Steak and Coffee couscous and Rice Pudding. All washed down with a fantastic South African Shiraz. However, it wasn't quite delivered with the loving care of Issa!
I pined for Selous - as this point I still needed to mentally transition from Game Park to Beach Resort. After dinner we went straight back to our room and had a quick shower before bed. Having an Ocean Front room is great - apart from the horrendous crashing of the ocean all night long. I slept ok. Roy was destined never to get a full night's sleep at Ras Nungwi. Even in the ridiculously sized quadruple bed.
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