ZANZIBAR TO MOMBASA

ZANZIBAR:  Zanzibar is a series of islands about 20 miles off the coast of mainland Africa.  It has a population of about 800,000 people.  The main city is Zanzibar Town with a population of about 200,000.  The city is divided into Stone Town (a World Heritage Site) and New Town.

In 1964 the people of Zanzibar overthrew the Sultan and almost immediately joined with the mainland country of Tanganyika to form the Republic of Tanzania, with a total population of about 55,000,000.  At the present the citizens of Zanzibar feel overlooked and ignored and during the last Presidential election they had an almost total boycott of the vote.

Betty and I joined four others for a tour of Stone Town and the surrounding countryside.  Our guide was born in Stone Town and his family have lived in the same house for 5 generations.  Stone Town was built in the 1600's and is basically a labyrinth of narrow allies with no street names posted.  The buildings have very elaborate wooden doors which indicate the wealth of the resident.  We spent almost 3 hours on a walking tour, with only a short stop for tea part way through the morning.  There was also a little shopping and Betty purchased a beautiful jewellry box.

Upon leaving Stone Town we were driven to a hillside Spice Farm.  Our tour there began with an elaborate coffee ceremony.  Coffee and cardamon were ground together with a mortar and pestel and the resulting coffee was served with dates and other condiments.  We then walked through the spice area.   As Betty was beginning to fade from the heat one of our two Spice Farm guides carried a chair so she could sit whenever we stopped to look at something.

At the end of the Spice Tour we were taken to the home of one of the guides where his wife had cooked a "typical" Zanzibar meal for us.  We ate stew, curried beans, fish and coconut potatoes and many different exotic fruits.  This meal was the highlight of the day.

MOMBASA, KENYA:  Mombasa is a crowded, dowdy city of 1.5 million.   Unemployment runs at 50% but education has gotten HIV down to around 20%. Perhaps because our expectations were low, the day turned out to constantly surpass them.  We had pre-arranged a tour (four of us) which turned out to be in a nice van complete with both a driver and a guide.  Our guide was Christian and our driver Muslim and they both assured us that there were very good relations between the two communities.

Initially we did a tour, including some walking,  of the city with usual stuff (a fort, a temple, etc.) but we were then taken to a wood-carving co-operative.  Here, 3,000 carvers work under primitive tin shelters turning out beautiful pieces (bowls, bread baskets, etc.).  We bought not nearly enough stuff but what we thought might squeeze into our suitcases.

Lunch was at a resort where we ended up talking to a Manager who explained that tourism was down and everybody was struggling.  However, President Obama's visit helped allay the fears of many prospective tourists.

In the afternoon we visited Haller Park.  Haller Park is owned by the LaFarge Cement Co.  LaFarge has re-claimed many acres of land from their quarries and created a beautiful animal refuge.  Although the park is less wild than those we visited in South Africa, there were lots of animals.  The highlight was our  hand-feeding a herd of giraffe.  It was incredible how these huge and majestic animals could very gently take food pellets from one's hand, albeit leaving a lot of slobber behind.

TEMPERATURES:   The last several days we have been experiencing  temperatures in the mid 30's with very high humidity.  As we did a lot of walking we found ourselves to be exhausted by the time we returned to the ship.  On both of the last two nights I fell asleep during the post-dinner show.  In addition, the air conditioning quit working in our stateroom.  Nonetheless, a technician came at 11:00 at night to do a temporary fix and this morning he arrived with a whole new unit.  Earlier in the cruise Betty had the hair-dryer replaced.  Somewhere in the bowels of the ship there must be an entire cache of spare parts.