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CAPE TOWN
We start our trip home in just a few hours so here's a quick recap of what we did in Cape Town. What an amazing city!
Aquarium
Ferris wheel
Explored the V&A waterfront
Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa
The castle
Table mountain cable car!
Drive around the beaches at sunset
Iziko South African (natural history) Museum
Nick got a haircut
SA Jewish museum and Holocaust center
Explore Bo Kaap
Sunset cruise
Kirstenbosh gardens
Groot Constantia for wine tasting
Drive to Stellenbosch, explored on foot
Breakfast at the b&b
Miniature and toy museum
Rustenberg winery
Cape of good hope
Drive back to Cape Town to find that the Hertz is closed. Drive to airport, drop off car, Uber back
Try to take ferry to Robben Island - shut down
Tried to eat/walk in Woodstock - literally everything is closed
Bookstore and brunch back in the city center
Walk to green point and sea point for dinner
Woohoo! Now for some pictures:
Zeitz MOCAA
Nick loves heights!
The South African Jewish Museum
Sunset boat cruise feat. dolphins
Our b&b, crammed full of books and art
Stellenbosch architecture = Dutch
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Paje, Zanzibar
We arranged a spice tour with Alawi for the next morning. He picked us up and we drove about 30 minutes out of the city to a spice farm where we wandered around and played a game of “guess which spice tree this is you dumb American.” Kidding, he was nice to us despite our ignorance. We smelled tons of leaves, ate a few new fruits, and actually guessed a bunch of the spices correctly. It was really cool to see what everything looks like before you dry it out, grind it up, and put it in a McCormicks bottle.
Achiote seeds (also called lipstick tree bc it dyes your skin), vanilla, nutmeg, tallest palm tree ever.
One of the spice farm guys made us crowns and accessories from banana leaves as we toured the farm. Nick even got a tie that he should probably wear to his first day of work (only if he wants to make a good impression).
We drove straight from the farm to Paje, where we struggled to find our Airbnb villa. Thankfully, Alawi wouldn’t let us go until we had tracked it down. Unfortunately, we forgot that we had all the phone numbers written down and had to turn on data to find the number and call the host who still couldn’t give more helpful directions than to drive south and turn right at some point. We eventually found it, and it was pretty clear why there weren’t any directions. Paje is a little village that stretches along a gorgeous turquoise strip of ocean on the east coast of Zanzibar. There’s one main road that goes from north to south and tons of dirt paths connecting the beachfront hotels to the corrugated metal-roofed huts that cluster behind them.
The villa we stayed in was an incredible change of pace from our accommodations on Mafia. First off, air conditioning. Second, a pool. Third, a newly constructed house made from concrete. The whole thing was super chic and impeccably clean.
View from our balcony and the pool deck out front.
We weren’t on the beach but we were a short walk away and we spent the next 2 days eating on the beach, swimming in the ocean, watching kite surfers (who flock to Paje for the strong winds and calm water), and reading by the pool.
We walked far far out on the soft sands in low tide for probably 1.5 hours and still couldn’t make it to the break. Instead, we found ourselves surrounded by scary looking sea urchins. Side note: All mothers will be proud to hear that we did not get (more) sunburned. Instead, we got absolutely gouged on gross sunscreen in Stone Town which we very eagerly bought because we had been looking for a week and hadn’t been able to find any at all.
This beach had a totally different feel from the others we had visited. There are tons of tourists - we saw more white people than we had in the previous 2 weeks combined, I think. Everyone seems to be there for the water sports and it has a very beach bummy vibe. Also unlike the Mafia beaches, the water here is spectacularly green/blue. It’s so pure that it looks fake, even when you’re standing in it.
We had good food in Paje. Our most notable meal was at a little restaurant inland from the beach where a bunch of locals had gathered to watch the Manchester City/Arsenal game. Nick and the waiter struggled through a language barrier to talk about soccer. At the end of the meal, the waiter gifted him an entire pineapple which he proudly carried back to the villa (where our host Caterina aka Italian Eva took it off our hands).
One more night in Paje and we were heading to the Zanzibar airport to start our full day journey to Cape Town. The trip wasn’t particularly notable, except that a waitress in the Johannesburg airport dropped Nick’s sauce-covered chicken on the table, ran away, and asked if she could eat it when she realized Nick wasn’t going to. It was weird. But we landed in Cape Town as the sun set. Outside our windows, we saw mountains, city, and sea, faintly illuminated but the sun’s remaining pink and orange rays and we knew we were in for a good last week.
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The cooking class from beginning to end. Not pictured: the blue marlin and the plantain dessert
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Stone Town, pt. 2
Sticking with the food theme, we spent the entire next day eating. Well, almost the entire day. We started with a walking tour led by Alawi, a guide born and raised in Stone Town who taught us everything we know about Zanzibar and hooked us up for the rest of our visit with a spice tour and transfers to and from Paje.
Alawi's shadow.
On our walk through the city, Alawi told us about the coral stone that makes Stone Town Stone Town, the history of Zanzibar, the secret meaning behind the door carvings, religion, and the massively corrupt government that has fought with UNESCO and kept the house of wonders closed for “renovations” for 5 years while pocketing the money.
A few hours later he dropped us off at the same market that we had barely caught a glimpse of the day before. This time, we met up with our cooking class instructor Lutvia and dove in. We shopped for vegetables, spices, and fish in the bustling, wild place. We got a taste of Zanzibar candy (baobab seeds died red and cooked in sugar and spices) and headed back to someone’s home for our lesson.
After leaving our shoes in the entrance, we climbed to the second floor to discover that our kitchen was a mat on the floor in the middle of a large room with bedrooms branching off. We started cooking at 11. On the menu was fried blue marlin, veggies (eggplant, okra, tomatoes, and onion) cooked in a coconut sauce, pilau, and sweet plantains cooked in coconut milk for dessert. I don’t have the recipes (not that there were any recipes - all spices were measured in the palm of Lutvia’s hand), but each dish was loaded with freshly ground coriander, ginger, garlic, turmeric, cinnamon, black pepper, and cumin.
We shredded the coconut using a coconut chair (which is literally a chair that you sit on to brace the spiky paddle that shreds the coconut) and cut all the veggies in the air with super dull knives.
Lutvia was not impressed with our skills BUT no one lost any fingers so I think we did alright. All of the dishes were cooked on two charcoal burners that sat low on the floor. They had one setting: fire.
While the food cooked, we sat under the fan and chatted with Lutvia, who is also 27 but lives a very different life. She lives on a spice farm outside of the city with her husband and 3 kids. She showed us pictures of her kids, we showed her pictures of our dogs. 3 hours later, our feast was ready. We sat at the table, but Lutvia said she wasn’t used to eating at a table so we joined her on the floor. The food was amazing and we happily devoured much of it. The rest, she took back for her kids.
We waited out our food coma back at the hotel for a bit and managed to score a reservation for the tea room restaurant at Emerson on Hurumzi that had been fully booked the previous day. Before heading to dinner, we went to the museum of slavery where we saw the site of the 19th century slave market, the slave chambers, and learned about this super dark chapter of Zanzibari history.
A chamber that held 50 people.
Our dinner was spectacular. The setting, with its colorful fabrics and 360° view of the city at sunset, blew us away.
And the 3 course Zanzibari/Omani/Persian meal was too good, considering how recently we had eaten lunch. We ate spicy spinach fishcakes, baba ganoush, goat curry, pumpkin tagine, pilau (ours was better), fish with lime, papaya salad, and so much more.
For dessert, a fruit salad, Zanzibar delights, and ginger tea. There was live Taarab music played by local music students. The whole thing felt like a ceremonial meal and we left full and very happy.
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Stone Town, pt. 1
The next morning we took an Uber to the ferry terminal to buy our tickets to Zanzibar. We had read that the port is an absolute madhouse full of people trying to “help” you buy your ferry ticket and “help” you with your bags when they really mean to help you away from your money so we were prepared for the insanity. The car pulled up and immediately, we were swarmed by guys in yellow vests trying to open the trunk to grab our bags.
It was like a zombie movie where the zombies have a semblance of authority because they’ve got the gear. We pulled our bags over the seat and managed to hang onto them while we got out of the car. They surrounded us as we looked for the single legitimate ticket office out of half a dozen. We managed to shake a few with a firm “we don’t need help” but it was truly a crazy scene. I was worried that if we stood still long enough, they’d literally lift us up and carry us to their ticket office. When we crossed the threshold into the correct ticket office they stopped following us so we knew we were in the right place. We paid for the tickets we had reserved the night before and they sent us back out into the mob. Remember that picture of me dead from the heat? Yeah the ticket lady definitely saw it.
We walked down the street to a cafe in the center of downtown where every square inch of the windows and walls were plastered in those jokey inspirational coffee quotes. It was wild. After a quick bite, we went back to the port, again ignoring the swarm until we found our own way to the VIP (that’s us) waiting area where we sat for approximately 10 seconds before we boarded the ferry. The ride was smooth and calm. We stayed cool in the top deck’s AC and watched the water change from a deep blue to a crystal clear turquoise.
When we disembarked in Zanzibar, we had to pass through customs and show our yellow fever vaccination cards again. This confused us because we hadn’t left the country. We later learned that after the Zanzibar revolution in 1964, Tanganyika (the mainland) and the newly formed Republic of Zanzibar merged to form Tanzania. The new name took the Tan from Tanganyika and the the Zan from Zanzibar. Inside of Tanzania, Zanzibar is still considered a separate country, hence the separate customs.
We stayed in the Best Western in Stone Town where we continued the tradition of bathrooms with see-through/nonexistent doors. that first afternoon we wandered the labyrinthine alleys, taking in the architecture and noting the similarities between some of our earlier destinations.
The UNESCO site is almost reminiscent of Islamic Cairo but with an island vibe. There’s a lot of Arab influence due to the fact that Zanzibar was under the control of Oman for hundreds of years. The dusty, crumbling coral stone (hence Stone Town) buildings have these incredible carved wooden doors that we later learned indicated the occupation of its inhabitants. This door has fruits and vegetables indicating farms and plantations, fish scales indicating fishing boats, and chains around the border indicating an involvement in slavery/the slave trade that is a big part of Zanzibar’s history.
We had read about a tea house restaurant on the top of a locally owned hotel with an incredible 360° view of Stone Town so we tried to get in for dinner, not realizing that they have 12 tables and one seating every night. Instead, we pregamed dinner with fresh pressed sugar cane juice (with a hint of lime and ginger and, scarily, ice) and a sweet Zanzibar pizza with Nutella and plantain.
Get a load of that plantain.
We ate dinner at a floating restaurant while the sun set. There were tons of people splashing around in the water and a few bravely backflipping into it from the stone wall separating the garden and sea. Our first taste of Zanzibari food and...holy shit. Spice Town lives up to its name.
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Chole Island, pt. 2
On our second day, we went snorkeling with the boat captain Mohamed and the guy in charge (whose name I can’t remember ahhhh). They took us on an amazing boat ride through the calm, turquoise bay to mangrove gardens on the north side of Chole. We swam around in the beautiful blue water where the sun lit the ocean in horizontal rays, spotting tons of colorful fish, a giant blue starfish, and an eel. The trip was almost twice as long as the whale shark trip, but felt like it was over in a snap. On the way back, we passed some puffed out puffer fish floating helplessly at the surface.
As with the rest of our time on the island, we waited out the midday storm while reading and relaxing in the outdoor dining area, watching the rain erase Mafia Island in the distance. We watched the tide leave behind a stretch of sand and shallow, clear water. And we spent the rest of the day doing more reading, relaxing, and walking . This time, we spotted the famed Chole foxes (they’re fruit bats) and made it to the eastern side of the island.
That night after dinner, the stars stopped us in our tracks for the second time. It felt like we could see infinite layers of stars.
On the morning of our final day in Mafia, we trekked through knee-high water to the boat 200 meters away. They ferried us across to Mafia and we drove up to the airport where we were told that the 12:45 flight we hoped to catch was full. It was 10:30 am and...so hot...I can’t express. Our lodge was a drive and a boat ride away so we waited around for ~2 hours to see if we could make standby. Nope, everyone showed up for the flight. So we booked the next flight out at 5 pm. In the time it took for the airline lady to take our names and book our tickets, my brain was scrambled from the heat. This is what I looked like:
I was a full zombie but luckily a tuk tuk rolled up right as we were finishing. The driver took us to the first place we stayed where Hassan warmly greeted us and got the kitchen to prepare a “quick” lunch for us of calamari, fries, and veggies. We happily rested in the shade, reading and enjoying the ocean. We sat near the Swiss family who Hassan had taken searching for whale sharks that morning and discovered that their search was successful and their waters not so rough. A total bummer for us because we could have gone out with them that morning and ended up on the same flight, skipping the whole full flight fiasco, but what can you do! We did get a glimpse of a massive shark from the air as we left the island. While we’re both excited for air conditioning and haribo gummies, I’m hoping we make it back at some point, this time to SCUBA with the whale sharks.
We spent one night back in Dar Es Salaam before taking a ferry to Zanzibar. Our driver from the airport was a super inquisitive guy who had a lot of questions about the education system in the US. He drove us through the main market on our way into the city. We went to a grocery store and spent the night in a place with air conditioning (not the grocery store, don’t worry). Total luxury. For the first time in...too long, we weren’t immediately sticky and smelly after getting out of the shower.
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Chole Island, pt. 1
After a bit of a rest, we started our journey to Chole Island, an even smaller island off the coast of Mafia. We drove to the east coast of Mafia (a protected nature reserve) as the rain picked up. We hopped on a little boat which ferried us and the grocery run (some coke, a watermelon,a pineapple, etc.) over to the island where we disembarked in the pouring rain.
Our new home (for 2 nights) overlooks a mangrove forest. The rooms are simple but clean with notably fewer ants inside (but notably more flying bugs outside). The sandy walkways are raked every morning and the landscaping is adorable.
Chole Foxes Lodge during low tide.
We’re the only ones staying here and since we are tucked away in a quiet corner of Chole (which is inhabited by only 152 people), it feels like we’re on a private island. Especially because we escaped the loud Italians from the previous place who were constantly fighting with each other or with others. After it stopped raining we walked the island from south to north, strolling down dirt paths, past mud houses and farm animals and palm trees.
As with Mafia, everyone says hello as you pass. Some kids are shy but most are eager for a solid high five and a photo.
We gathered quite the following at times here too. We found a soccer field by the beach but Nick’s feet are so unbelievably burnt from the first walk in Mafia that he couldn’t exactly join in.
Who knows how, but we navigated our way back in time for the sunset and dinner. Because there’s literally no where else to eat on the island, all of our meals are at the Chole Foxes Lodge (where we’re staying). On the islands, you order lunch and dinner with breakfast because everything is solar powered so there aren’t fridges with stores of food. Instead, they ask if you want lunch and dinner and then head out to find the fishermen (there’s not really a market on Chole) right before each meal. There’s no menu but you can guarantee you’ll have some fresh seafood and an impeccable floral table arrangement.
Yes, that's a skull.
The chef at the lodge is incredible. Our meals have been amazing and we have come away from every meal stuffed. Lunch the first day was chips salad (an omelette with French fries in it). Dinner was octopus with a masala sauce and coconut rice and freshly fried donuts dripping in sweet syrup for dessert (which SOME (it’s me) say was the best meal of the whole trip). Pancakes (more like fluffy crepes for breakfast the next day) and Seafood pasta for lunch. I’m already excited for dinner.
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Kilindoni, Mafia
We touched down at the world's smallest airport in Kilindoni, the main town on Mafia Island.
That's the whole thing.
Our first attempt at getting cash out of the ATM failed. This had happened in Moshi as well, and the only fix appeared to be going to a Barclays international ATM. Mafia has precisely one ATM - the one that wasn’t working. Nick assured me that we would call USAA and figure it out. I did a bad job of pretending I agreed while frantically mentally calculating whether we could survive for 3 days/get back to Dar with the little cash we had.
We took a tuk tuk to the Juani beach bungalows which sit along the south western portion of the island, facing the Tanzanian coast (not that we could see it).
It was hot as hell and the winds from the sea were super refreshing. We rested for a moment before walking up the beach to the town center. We walked through the market, saying hello to everyone we passed. People don’t speak much English here and our Swahili hasn’t improved beyond being able to say “hello”, “thank you”, “thank you so much”, “slap” (which sounds like coffee, which is why we know it), and “white people,” so conversations don’t go much farther than “hello.” We met 3 adorable young boys who assailed us with high fives and then followed us through the market. We all held hands, Nick and I swinging the smallest boy between us, until their mom called them back and they scattered. At the center of town, we tried the ATM again and were successful this time 🙌
We took a long walk on the beach in the other direction. The tide was low and the sand stretched on forever. Clouds covered the sky. It felt like a windy desert, but with crabs and an ocean in the distance.
We sat and read for a while before heading back to the bungalows. By the time we got back, Nick’s feet looked like this:
The sun set and we ate a good, filling meal on the beach.
The next morning after discovering that we had open snacks in Nick’s bag that ants had raided overnight (gross), ingesting a few of the ants (Nick), getting rid of those snacks (sad), and discovering that something had also chewed through the netting on Nick’s bag (nightmare), we went out in a boat looking for whale sharks (cool). It was raining in the beginning, but the ride was nice and we were excited by the prospect of swimming with gigantic, nice sharks.
Once we were pretty far from shore, the boat stopped and we started scouting. I think. No one really spoke English so Nick and I had no idea what to look for other than 13 meter sharks. The boat sat perpendicular to the waves and rocked us from side to side...this was not a gentle rock. Pretty soon, one of the crew was vomiting over the side of the boat. Nick’s hands were numb. I wasn’t feeling so hot either. So, we headed back to shore, much to the crew’s confusion (yes, even the vomiting guy). The manager, Hassan, offered to send us back out another day with a group of Swiss people but the thought of getting back in that boat gave us both the spins so the whale sharks will just have to wait!
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To the islands!
Sundays are for rolling with the punches, apparently. We arrived at Kilimanjaro airport with plenty of time to catch our flight to Dar es Salaam. There were no airline signs at the check in desks, so we asked the closest person where to check in for a fastjet flight. Blank stares. They pointed us to the next desk where we were met with more blank stares. Someone told us the office was outside and around the corner so we we walked over to find a printed sign indicating that all flights were cancelled until further notice. Fastjet folded shortly after we bought the tickets and didn't warn us. We quickly booked tickets with another airline for the next flight out...10 hours later. Luckily, a guy who worked at the airport helped us out by calling fastjet so we could get a refund and finding an early flight to Dar. It was a nice change of pace to find unsolicited (but actually helpful) help with nothing asked in return.
We headed to our gate. Nick had gone through security approximately 1000 times by this point because he was back and forth figuring out the flight while I sat with the bags, but the last checkpoint was the most fun (for me). They scanned and rescanned his bag. Then they took things out, one by one, scanning the bag again after each item was removed. Headphones. Snack after snack. Receipts. His wallet. Nothing went untouched. We had no idea what they were looking for but they seemed pretty determined to find it. Finally, when the bag was essentially empty, they pulled out a bottle of Pepto bismol, looking very confused. We explained that it's for your stomach. He said that it looks black on the machine. I said, "it turns your tongue black!" which was apparently not helpful. We explained that it has metals in it. He said "taste one." We said no. He said okay. We went through.
When we landed in Dar es Salaam, it was time to figure out how to get to Mafia Island the next day. We knew the flights were unpredictable and that the prices were better on the ground in Tanzania, so we waited to buy until we arrived. The second costal aviation person we talked to told us that we could get the resident price (more than 50% off) if we booked on the same day. With 6 seats left on a probably 6 seat plane, we took the risk.
That night we stayed at a hotel not too far from the airport. Dar es Salaam is the business capital of Tanzania so naturally we ate dinner at pizza hut (there isn't much to do or see as a tourist here, especially this close to the airport). The next morning back at the costal aviation office, our ticket lady told us her credit card machine was broken so we needed cash. Terminal 1 is basically a tiny bus station so we quickly darted to the main terminal to hit up the ATM. We got back and retrieved our tickets, which were quarter sheets of computer paper with our names written backwards. If the airport is like a bus station, the planes are like buses. We hopped onto a 12-seater propeller plane and we're able to snag the seats right behind the pilot. In a quick 30 minutes, we were in Mafia!
Escorted to the plane
FRONT ROW BABY
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