Tanzania 2010: 9th, 10th & 11th February - flight to Zanzibar & Echo Beach Hotel

This morning we were woken by Joice at some ungodly time. We had asked her for breakfast at 7am as we were supposed to be being picked up at 8am. Well the driver bless him, had thought we were flying at 8am and so called for us at like 5.00am!! - which was not long after we had gone back to sleep after the Bou Bou bird came!!

Anyway, Joice double checked the flight times for us and we explained to the driver his error and he had coffee whilst we got ready and had breakfast. We thanked Joice for a wonderful stay, packed up the car and we were on our way. We'd had quite an adventure in Northern Tanzania and we were quite sad to leave.

We arrived at the airport and checked in. Nothing out of the ordinary here except we went through the departure checks with the President of Zanzibar!!! I watched the news on the airport tv for a while. The channel broadcast was Al Jazeera. The channel choice suprised me at first, as mainland Tanzania has a Christian majority, albeit not much more than 50%. Zanzibar however is predominantly Muslim, so it wasn't so surprising really. We soon boarded our aircraft, which was the first propellor aircraft we'd been on for a while.

Once our flight left I was looking out of the window for our last view of Kilimanjaro before leaving. She was there, in all her glory. I took this picture at 19,000 feet, almost the same height as the summit, which demonstrated just what an adventure we'd had up the mountain.

The flight to Zanzibar is fairly short and after some refreshments and a read of a magazine I could see Stonetown and the small islands around Zanzibar out of the window

This is Grave Island aka Chapwani. It was called Grave Island because a small part of it has been used as a cemetery since 1879, mainly for British sailors

We quickly moved through Zanzibar's tiny airport, negotatiated the bizarre taxi allocation system and were soon on our way. From the moment we arrived I noticed a burning smell. At the airport I assumed it was just the fumes from aircraft but the smell persisted. We were to find out that it was the smell of generator fumes. The electricity supply to Zanzibar failed on 10th December 2009 and is still off as I write this. Therefore, there was to be no mains electricity to the island for the whole of our stay. Generators rumbled everywhere but those who could not afford them went without.

We passed one of Stonetown's main markets

Shortly after, the taxi driver pulled over and we watched the President's motorcade go by. This wasn't the only interruption to the journey. The driver pulled over to answer his mobile phone a least 3 times and then we were introduced to Zanzibar's police checkpoint system. We hadn't been stopped at all on the mainland but on Zanzibar we were subjected to 3 police checkpoints just between the airport and the hotel! These checkpoints are supposed to be to check the credentials and permits etc of the drivers but we would learn that it's more about supplementary police pay than anything else. At the second checkpoint the driver passed his permits to the officer but clearly visible was a tanzanian currency note. Aparently, the norm is not to hand money over in front of tourists but to 'pay the officer on the return journey after they have been dropped off.

After a journey of about an hour, we arrived at Echo Beach. We were geeted by Moray with a refreshing glass of fruit juice. Once the formalities were over we went to our room to freshen up.