We have been lucky enough to travel in the tropics all around the world but one of my favorite memories of all times was a ten day trip we took to Zanzibar Island off the coast of Tanzania (that’s in Africa if you are geographically challenged). It was unplanned as was our entire trip to Africa but we eventually found ourselves on the island dubbed the spice island with no reservations and no knowledge of what to do. This is, by the way, my favorite way to travel. Over planning a trip is a sure way to miss out on accidental discoveries and unplanned invitations.
Going to Africa was never on our around the world adventure schedule. While walking down a street in Geneva, Switzerland, I saw a sandwich board with cheap tickets to Nairobi. Knowing how much a ticket costs from the states ($1800), I randomly decided to check a local bookstore carrying Africa travel books and find out when was the best season to visit Kenya. The answer was the month of October and it was currently September 25th . We arrived five days later with no plans of any sort except to fly to India by the end of the month when our 30 days visa expired.
The ferry dropped us off in the port of Zanzibar city. It was somewhat interesting with a fort wall built around it and twisting streets leading to restaurants serving spicy curried meats and stodgy yet filling casavas. We found a great hotel where we parked it for a couple of days eating tropical fruit and bought time figuring out what to do next. Our friends we had met on safari had plans to party on the north part of the island and they immediately rented a jeep, found some girls and headed off to get tanked on cheap rum and beer. We had declined their invitation to join after spending a couple of weeks traveling with them already. They were German travelers, enough said.
Somehow the idea popped up to rent a dirt bike as their were many around town. We inquired at our hotel and within an hour a guy showed up with a Honda 250 we could rent for $12/day. We went through our backpacks and put everything in one bag, stored the other at the hotel and ventured out on our motorcycle to discover the island.
Zanzibar Island sits on the coast of Tanzania between the triangle of Africa, Saudi Arabia and India. It has historically grown spices, mainly cloves for centuries. The cloves are picked from trees and set out into the roads to dry in the sun. As you drive, you pass giant piles of pepper, cloves and cardomom as they fill the air with their perfume. This on a motorcycle was exquisite.
The two of us ventured off road onto muddy paths leading to small villages with children playing in puddles gathering around us while we checked our maps. Most of the village huts were built with bamboo and thatched roofs. Women carried wood on their heads while nursing babies on their hips. Everyone was friendly and waved and smiled. Life seemed slow and comfortable, as it always does in the tropics.
As the sun began to settle lower in the sky on our first day, we began looking for a hotel. We came across one that looked rundown and perhaps even closed. We were surprised to find a man sitting under a very large palapa style gazebo,
surprised by our arrival. He eagerly ran up to us as we attempted to drive the motorcycle through the knee high sand filling the entrance road. We inquired about a room and he led us to a cabana with a bedroom and bathroom and the most beautiful hand carved four poster bed with mosquito netting covering it.
When the door was open and you were laying in bed, you could stare directly out at a beautiful coconut palmed private beach with crystal clear water. Our cost, $12/day which included meals.
We parked our motorcycle in the front of our cabana and paid a few days in advance. There were tons of papaya and coconut trees around the hotel, ripe for the picking. We could see that only a few cabanas were in working order and the main covered area was obviously a restaurant. It looked like perhaps a hurricane had hit this place awhile back and no one had ever bothered to fix it up. But then it could be just lack of resources that hit it, another common theme in the tropics.
That night for dinner we ate by candlelight in the restaurant as their was no actual electricity at the hotel, even in our cabana. We ate fried fish with spicy black beans and rice cooked in coconut milk. Papaya with lime juice and salt was served at every meal for dessert. The food was fantastic but simple, repeated daily. Our host was drunk from the moment we paid him until we left. He was kind and funny and accomodating. He taught us how to play Bao on an old wood carved board with real Bao tree seeds. In the states you can buy this game at Target but it’s called Mancala. We spent our days swimming and watching the local women collect natural sponges in the shallows and carry them on huge baskets on their heads. They wore skirts and headwraps that matched in colors of bright orange, pinks and reds.
The tropics on Zanzibar island are almost exactly the same as where we are this morning, on the coast of Mexico. Our bus is parked under coconut palms and we eat fish, beans and rice plus tortillas. The mornings are muggy and damp and by noon you are swimming to avoid the humidity. Although our host currently is not drunk, he did hire some builders to work on his palapas once we paid him. He might live hand to mouth, just as many people do around the world. Life is slow but it seems content. I see how time can go by without a care in the world. It feels like a vortex as our kids get tanner and older while we sit and watch.
While writing this historia, as they say in Spanish, I randomly looked up images of Zanzibar Island. I remembed the name of our hotel because it was called Pongwe and how can you forget a name like that. The hotel website popped up and all of these photos are taken from the exact hotel we stayed at ten years ago. It looks like someone cleaned it up, added a swimming pool and now charge $80/night. I bet that price doesn’t include meals though, or a motorcycle, or privacy, or baobao or a drunk manager, or papaya…
www.pongwe.com/gallery/
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