Stone Town,Zanzibar

Sunday, July 4 – Happy 4th of July!! Today was a bit of an adventure. After having some breakfast and checking out we hopped in a taxi with another couple. The driver was going to drop the first couple off at a spice farm and then continue on and drop us in Stone Town. The drive proved to be quite an experience. Along the roads in Zanzibar there are a number of police checkpoints. I'm not really sure what their “official” purpose is, but it seemed as if their unofficial purpose was to just collect money. Apparently our driver, who looked to be all of 14, had had his license taken by the cops the day before. In addition, he wasn't a licensed tour guide, so he wasn't supposed to be carrying tourists and he didn't have the proper permits to drive on certain roads. No less than 5 times we were pulled over and our driver had to get out of the car to plead and pay. At one point in time our driver told us to tell the cops, if they asked, that we were just workers at one of the hotels. The other couple we were with, were from the states but were currently living in Sudan. She worked for the World Bank and he worked for the U.S. government, Katie and David. He had a diplomat passport, so that did get us a few free passes. Nevertheless a 15 minute ride turned into several hours. We finally arrived at the spice farm and decided to check it out as well – Zanzibar is after all the Spice Island. We saw all kinds of different spice trees and plants and I found it quite interesting. We then continued on into Stone Town. We dropped our bags off at our hotel and ventured out along with Katie and David. We first checked out the House of Wonders, the first building in East Africa to have electricity and a lift. We then searched for a place to have lunch. The streets of Stone Town are a maze, it was quite easy to get lost. Finally we ended up at the Swahili House, where we climbed seemingly endless flights of stair until we reached a rooftop restaurant. We enjoyed a delicious lunch and some much needed beers. Around 4:00 pm we bid Katie and David farewell (they were headed back to Nungwi), but not before Keith retrieved his phone back from our driver (he had given it to him to call our hotel and hadn't gotten it back – needless to say our driver was quite disappointed to see Keith). We went back to our hotel for a bit and then ventured back out. We wandered through the streets and had dinner at the open food market in Forodhani Park. My Lonely Planet describes it as the following: “The seafront comes alive at around 6pm every day, with stallholders setting up their wares of fried fish and chicken on skewers, piles of squid and octopus and mounds of chips.” It seemed to a popular spot with both the tourists and the locals. After some dinner and doing a bit more wandering around, we called it a night.