It is not easy to get most places from Botswana. Zanzibar did not prove to be an exception. We left Gaborone on a 10:00 flight Friday morning and arrived at the hotel a little after 10:00 pm that night (there's a 1 hour time difference between Botswana and Tanzania). We flew from Gaborone to Johannesburg. There was a 1 hour delay posted for our flight (the airline desk said, "it's always late"). We ended up spending an extra 90 minutes in the airport before the flight was ready to go. It was about a 3 hour flight to Dar es Salaam (Tanzania). Everyone going to Zanzibar and Kilimanjaro was told to stay on the plane. Then after everyone else got off, we were taken to a very little plane. And then it was about a 20 minute flight to Zanzibar. We managed to clear immigration and customs without any problems and we had transport waiting for us. And then it was over an hour drive to our hotel.
And it was not an easy drive. For over half of the drive, we were on a very narrow, very dark road. And it's a common practice that people sit along the side of the road because it's "cooler" than sitting on the ground. The very last 10 minutes of drive was through a little village, dirt roads, badly rutted, very dark. It was a little hard to believe that we were actually going to a beach hotel.
But we finally arrived at the Z (Zed) Hotel (http://www.thezhotel.com/hotel.htm). The hotel was quite nice and right on the beach. The water was beautiful. The weather was fabulous -- hot and steamy. The hotel was very accommodating even arranging for babsitters to watch the kids so the grown ups could have dinners together. And there were a lot of kids (8 between the ages of 1 and 8). The only serious complaint about the hotel was they served instant coffee for breakfast (darn British influence). Not at all acceptable. Fortunately there was a coffee shop just outside the hotel grounds.
Thom and his friend Brad were able to book an afternoon dive trip and had a really good time. Diving from a wooden dhow was an interesting experience for Thom.
Although not highly developed on this part of the island, there is an abundance of "salesmen" all up and down the beach trying to persuade you check out shops for sarongs and "art". Walking on the beach was not a relaxing experience at all. But the sunsets were spectacular.
Monday we had to return to Gaborone and the trip home was just as bad as the trip getting there. We had to leave the hotel at 6:30 am only to get to the airport and find out that the flight was delayed for an hour (the hotel had tried to call several times the day before to confirm the flight and could not get through). The gate area was very crowded and not air conditioned. There was no coffee. Tortuously ironically the duty free shop sold Tanzanian coffee beans. Debra considered buying some to chew on but managed to resist the urge and survived on coke. The flight left 90 minutes later than scheduled which meant we were late getting to Johannesburg and just barely caught our flight to Gaborone. Our luggage finally caught up with us on Wednedsay. We were cranky for a few days.
Many, many more photos of Zanzibar can be viewed at Shutterfly: http://share.shutterfly.com/action/welcome?sid=8AbtWzhs0bt3lQ&emid=sharshar&linkid=link5
No comments:
Post a Comment