Zanzibar is a Tanzanian island off the east coast of Africa where the spice trade has been the predominant industry for hundreds of years.This has brought people from all over the Indian ocean who left their customs, skin color and religions behind. It’s a place where you can wander through the stone streets in it’s aptly named capital, Stonetown, scuba dive in world class waters, explore tidal pools, windsurf and eat incredible seafood.
The east coast of Zanzibar, where we spent most of our time, is a long stretch of beach oriented towards the vast expanse of the Indian Ocean. It is protected from the waves of the ocean by a system of reefs about a mile off of the shore. This creates a long flat area for tidal pools that span the distance from the reef to the high water mark on the beach and when the tide goes out it goes out nearly the whole mile to the reef, exposing the tidal pools. The tidal pools were teeming with life. Sea grasses, urchen, fish, seahorses, shrimp, crabs, octopus, sea cucumber, starfish and the reef itself where all under various depths of water, from a being totally exposed to being a foot or two submerged, during low tide. This was the time for us visitors to explore and the time for the locals to harvest what they could from the oceans bountiful reefs.
We spent a week exploring the island, staying in Paje, Nungwe, Stonetown and Pongwe, without much agenda. To our very pleasant surprise, Frank had been scheming with Chris to come and meet us there (yes, Frank plans random surprise trips to small African islands many days and many plane rides away) for the week and Frank brought his girlfriend Alex. It was wonderful to reunite with Frank, who we hadn’t seen in a couple of years, and to meet his new girlfriend, Alex. It was really just a time for us all to play, enjoy fresh fish barbeques, swim in the warm water of the Indian Ocean, learn about the spices of the island, read, relax and enjoy each others company, which was a great last leg of our journey with Chris and Courtney.
The east coast of Zanzibar, where we spent most of our time, is a long stretch of beach oriented towards the vast expanse of the Indian Ocean. It is protected from the waves of the ocean by a system of reefs about a mile off of the shore. This creates a long flat area for tidal pools that span the distance from the reef to the high water mark on the beach and when the tide goes out it goes out nearly the whole mile to the reef, exposing the tidal pools. The tidal pools were teeming with life. Sea grasses, urchen, fish, seahorses, shrimp, crabs, octopus, sea cucumber, starfish and the reef itself where all under various depths of water, from a being totally exposed to being a foot or two submerged, during low tide. This was the time for us visitors to explore and the time for the locals to harvest what they could from the oceans bountiful reefs.
We spent a week exploring the island, staying in Paje, Nungwe, Stonetown and Pongwe, without much agenda. To our very pleasant surprise, Frank had been scheming with Chris to come and meet us there (yes, Frank plans random surprise trips to small African islands many days and many plane rides away) for the week and Frank brought his girlfriend Alex. It was wonderful to reunite with Frank, who we hadn’t seen in a couple of years, and to meet his new girlfriend, Alex. It was really just a time for us all to play, enjoy fresh fish barbeques, swim in the warm water of the Indian Ocean, learn about the spices of the island, read, relax and enjoy each others company, which was a great last leg of our journey with Chris and Courtney.
Thanks for still writing about different legs of this sweet journey.
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