Rap and reunion in Tanzania

Hello again! When we last touched base with you, we were in southern Kenya, reluctant to leave the smiling faces, the sunny weather and the seafood! But leave we did.

Lazy life

On the way to the Tanzanian border, we wandered into a tiny one-horse town called Shimoni — a sleepy fishing village with mangrove swamps, beautiful sunsets and great seafood.

So, content to leave Kenya behind, we headed across the Lunga Lunga border without a hitch. So far, Tanzania had been a pleasant surprise! But within half an hour, we realised all was not as smooth as we had thought.

First, we were stopped at a police roadblock for not having a working fire extinguisher in the car (one, of course, could be purchased for a fee from the cops), then, two kilometres down the road, we were fined for not having a sticker that told the cops we had a fire extinguisher in the car and then 20 kilometres further on, we were fined for driving at 10 km/h instead of the 30 km/h speed limit while leaving town. And then again 20 kilometres later for not having the reflective triangle on display — one day's budget gone on cop fees. Irritated, we headed into Dar es Salaam, "The City of Peace", and the cultural capital of Tanzania.

We found an inexpensive backpackers' lodge called Q Bar and began talking to the waiters, expats and locals. It turned out everyone knew everyone and within minutes, we had the phone number of friends we had last seen in Zimbabwe now living in Dar — and our night was filled with jazz music and dance. Tanzania wasn't so bad after all!

Ferry to Zanzibar

The next day we tried to get our Jeep on to a ferry to Zanzibar but it turned out a one-way trip with a car would set us back by $500 (Dh1,837)! So we decided to leave Roxy the Nissan on the mainland and head over to Zanzibar armed with our snorkelling equipment, backpacks, cameras and jack, and bundled into the busy two-hour express ferry.

Zanzibar was one of the first ports of call on the slave route and the history of the island is a heady mix of Arabia and Africa, with a distinctly Omani feel to it — the sultan of Oman fell in love with the place, building palaces and bath houses for his wives and making it the capital of Oman.

Warm and traditional

We wandered into the Africa House Hotel, which is where every tourist in the old stone town ends up, to watch the Sun setting over the azure waters. Martin, of course, was over the moon, as he filmed what we plan will be the final sequence of the TV series. We fell in love with the rooms, the friendly staff and the owner Denise's pet monkey, so we decided to stay there for the next couple of days. There was a health fundraiser fashion show the next night at the hotel — perfect footage for our documentary Cutting the Red Ribbon.

The next day we clipped the radio mike to our unsuspecting spice-tour guide, Jackson, as he took us around farms growing everything from nutmeg to cloves. The highlight was the charismatic coconut tree climber, who insisted on serenading us so he could be captured on camera collecting coconuts from the highest point of the tree and performing almost trapeze-like stunts as he sang! We will have that footage in the next webisode, which I'm editing at present, so stay tuned to Arabiatoafrica.blogspot.com

Blur of beauties

The rest of Tanzania was a blur of Giant Aldabra tortoises on Prisoner Island and lions at Selous Game Reserve (the largest in Africa). Jacky Selous, Martin's mum, came to visit us as well, which was a welcome pampering break. We then travelled onwards through Malawi to get to Mozambique for New Year! A happy New Year to all of you and we will see you on the road!