Our first stop in Tanzania (I still don’t know how to pronounce that correctly) was actually Dar es Salaam. Having nearly frozen to death during the South African and Namibian nights, it was nice to get some warm weather; however, with the heat comes the mosquitoes and with the mosquitoes comes malaria. So every room we stayed in was equipped with a mosquito net and I spent a good chunk of my time spraying myself up and down with bug repellent. Not that it helped—I still got the most bites out of all of us, probably because bugs can’t resist my sweet, Asian skin.
We arrived in Stone Town after a bumpy ferry ride (though the one on the way back was worse, with people retching and barfing every which way). Immediately we were confronted by dozens of papasi—literally “ticks” in Swahili—who pestered us about where we were staying, if we needed a cab, whether we wanted to buy their CDs, etc. The boy got fed up with one particular papasi who would not leave us alone, despite the boy telling him to “get lost,” and the two of them had a 10-minute showdown. Even though he said he’d finally leave us alone, we caught him and another guy following us to our hostel.
Stone Town was interesting—it’s a really old city with a mix of African, Indian, and Arab cultures. We spent only one day and night there, haggling at the markets and drinking the local Kilimanjaro beers. The papasi were unbearable. Later on, we did a spice tour that took us through a forest of vanilla beans, cinnamon trees, ginger, coconuts, and other smelly things.
Finally, we made our way to Nungwi, a northern beach town known for partying. I expected it to be more like Cancun in its atmosphere, filled with students getting their freak on, but it turned out to be very relaxed and laid back. The white sand beaches were amazing and the clear blue water was beautiful. Although the beaches of Zanzibar are a huge attraction in Tanzania, they still felt really private, not swarming with tourists. On our second day, we snorkeled at a coral reef by another island and saw some unique fish poking around. The boy chased some around while I struggled to tread water and not swallow it.
On the way back to Stone Town to catch our ferry back to Dar es Salaam, we were part of a taxi/bus chase that nearly drove our bus off the road. Some old dude had paid a cab to come pick him up, but it was an hour late, so he got on our bus instead. The original cab driver blocked off our path to the main highway, tried to run us off the road, then chased us down the highway, forcing us to pull over and argue with police officers at every checkpoint. A guy in the passenger seat was freaking out because he was going to miss his flight, so he wanted us all to chip in to pay the cab driver to leave us alone. No one seemed to give a shit about him or his flight, as the drama unfolding around us was too funny to miss. Entertainment, papasi style.
