ZANZIBAR DAY 1, TANZANIA

So, a little to update. We arrived with the plane that was 30 minutes late and we didn’t even get to sit together – very weird. We needed to fill in the form but forgot to bring a pen and the airport didn’t provide any (mental note, always bring a pen.. x) ). So it took a little longer than planed because we needed to ask for pens. Then we needed to stand in line for visa photo and then another line for pay and another line for the actual visa. Also, only one queue with a lot of people but the other ”stands” had people sitting there but seemed to be on a brake or something. So this took a looong time, especially when they seemed to have all time in the world and did not hurry up.. x)

Finally we were out of the airport. And when we came out we had a guy holding our names on a board. This was unexpected because we were planning to go directly to Zanzibar and not to the hostel the tour had provided. It was a miss communication between our contact person and us, that we were planing to go to Zanzibar directly. But we asked the taxi driver if we could go to the ferry terminal instead (witch was not very close to the intended hostel) and he said yes! Very nice, and we didn’t even need to pay

On our way to the ferry terminal we met people selling different things. Luckily I sat on the left side so Tobias got all the questions ^^ One time a guy tried to sell a big map over Africa, I told him that we didn’t need one, we have Google Maps – I don’t think he got the joke.. x)

When arriving to the terminal the taxi driver gave us a ”serious talk” and told us to absolutely not talk to anyone outside the ticket office (witch he pointed out for us), just walk straight in. He said it many times so it was very important. Also that we needed to be aware of pickpocketing. We really understood why when he drove by the office. A little bit funny was that because we had the windows down, they started to talk to us before we even exited the car. But the driver just causally ”rolled up” the windows while they where talking ^^ But seriously, it was crazy. As soon as we left the car, there was at least five people that wanted to sell tickets or make us go in to their office. We just walked as we were told but some of them followed us. We just kept on saying no and walked. Also, this place was crowded and hard to walk – and so warm! We finally made it to the office and it was cool, nice and not as much people. We got our tickets but needed to wait for the next ferry because the first one was full. Only 30 more, so it was OK (16:30). But now we had 1.5h to kill in the very warm sun, with backpacks, no sunscreen and definitely not acclimatised. I felt like I was melting or something 🥵

When it finally was time to go to the ferry we dove head first into the craziness by the terminal entrance. Hard to know who to trust but we made it in. Our bags got tagged with our names and phone numbers and we left it at some kind of wagon and got told to memorize VIP2. We got a little nervous because the ticket said we had front top deck and we really didn’t want to sit in the sun, no shade and water reflections all over ☀️😵‍💫 We took a seat in the air conditioned room and hoped for the best 😎 The boat ride was trouble free and we had two curious kids in front of us. Very cute and had no sense of personal space 😆 They kept staring and sometimes tried to speak to us but we didn’t understand.. I think they thought it was very interesting with white people 😆

When we arrived to Zanzibar the time was around 18:00 and we walked straight to our hostel. We were a little bit tired and decided to chill for a while and then head out to the Food Market for dinner. Very nice and a lot of fresh food to choose from! We decided to eat Tanzania pizza which is almost nothing like ordinary pizzas. Very nice though! Then we walked around a little bit more, bought some skewers and ended with a nice all chocolate ”pizza”. Because the time was quite late and we were tired, we decided to head back home, take a nice shower and go to sleep. A nice start on our fairly big trip in Africa 🙂