Day 89: Back to Stone Town

Today’s variable breakfast option was pancakes, so we shared that and fried eggs. We decided to go back to Stone Town and not to another beach. We called a taxi driver who stuck to 40 000 TZS, this was still much cheaper than the $35 per person that Miramont wanted. We would have loved to try out a dala dala, but it was still raining and we would have had to walk almost 3km to get to a dala dala station. Here’s an interesting and funny read on the dala dala experience: Nungwi to Stone Town by dalla-dalla: A short adventure (sic)

A normal car taxi arrived at 12:00 to pick us up. We said our goodbyes to Petr and Kristýna, sad to leave them so soon. We got along well and it was nice to have some ‘fixed’ company for a few days. There were some really deep and large puddles in the road from all the rain. The water easily touched the door through one or two of the crossings. We also had to go up a steep hill with bad erosion. We would certainly have had to put the MonkeyMobile in low range to make it, but somehow this Toyota Corolla made it with just a slight spin. We got to the tar and then took a left. The driver chose the road less traveled so we got to see some a different part of Zanzibar. A few times the car stuttered, either because it was running on fumes or because the deep water got into places it shouldn’t have.

While sitting in the car we searched for accommodation options in Dar Es Salaam close to the Mlimani City Shopping Centre. We found a place on AirBnB, but the minimum stay was 2 nights. I sent her a message on AirBnB (the platform doesn’t provide any other contact details to ensure that payment is made through AirBnB, so that they can get their cut). I said we wanted to only stay one night and asked whether she had WhatsApp. AirBnB however even blocked out the word WhatsApp and would have blocked anything that looked like a number. She replied saying that it is minimum two nights because the bank charges are so high. I didn’t let AirBnB win this round and proceeded to Google translate my phone number typed out in words into Swahili and sent that to her. My message read: namba yangu ni sifuri saba sita mbili moja mbili sifuri nane sita sifuri. She understood the message and 2 minutes later my phone rang. Matilda, the host, was laughing the whole time as she spoke to me as she was just as surprised that it worked. We agreed that we can stay for one night and pay cash (no more bank fees for her).

We made it to Stone Town and got out at the the Zenji Cafe, where we started the Zanzibar journey. We contacted May again and booked the same room for tonight. We shared a ice coffee and samosas, before checking in.

Later we went for a walk again, trying to retrace our steps to the bakery we found last time. After zigzagging through several blocks we found it again. At first the door was closed, but then after circling back to it, the doors opened and piping hot buns was set out. We bought ten for 1000 TZS and immediately ate two, it was that good.

We went to the market again and to the other stores, but luckily didn’t splash out again. We only bought more cheese wedges, humus in a tin and a soft drink.

Before retiring to the flat we bought our Ferry tickets for tomorrow morning at 07:00.