Wednesday, December 16th - Zanzibar City, Tanzania

I slept in again and had a late start and an 8 a.m. breakfast.  We were planning to go to Prison Island but by the time we were ready it seemed too late to start such an adventure so we had a change of plans.  We decided to walk over to the Mbweni ruins and Protea hotel where we could see the ruins and spend some time on the beach.  Supposedly it was only a short walk away so off we went.  Well, it didn't take long for us to realize that we were lost.  It seems that what appeared as streets on google maps was nothing more than a pathway and we were obviously missing our turns or taking the wrong ones.  I think Randy estimated the distance at 1.5 km so less than a half hour walk. Well we walked a lot further than that and didn't see any ruins, hotel or beach.  Eventually we did pass a police station and Randy went in to ask for directions.  A nice young policeman came out and decided to walk us to our destination, which was still a long way away on a route too complicated to explain to us.  it was just after noon when we finally arrived at our location so we had about 1.5 hour walk instead of the planned .5 hours.

We decided to look at the ruins first.  there was not a lot but it was okay   Back in 1870. a wealthy businessman built a home here and the ruins were of the various buildings including a chapel.  Apparently when the hotel bough the property one of the stipulations was that they should keep the ruins open to the public.  The setting was very nice and all around the ruins there were trees and flowers and many of them were labelled.  There was also a very tempting spa in the one area but I passed it by.

After the ruins we went to the beach and found a couple of comfortable chairs in the shade.  We asked if we could have lunch on the beach and they said yes so we ordered and then quickly jumped in the pool just above us to cool off.  It was low tide so the water was a long way out!  I have no idea what I had for lunch but it was good and after assessing the situation we decided to stay for the afternoon and have dinner there as well.  I was reading and relaxing and the afternoon passed quite quickly.  Randy went for a walk along the beach and he went for a swim.  His description of the rocks and grasses below the water didn't exactly excite me but I did decide to go in after the tide came in.  Well I think I made it to about knee level before giving up and going back to the pool.  I just don't do well with rocks under my bare feet.

There was a long wooden pier out over the water.  It seemed quite high and strange at first but as the tide came in it was obvious that it was needed.  There were mangrove trees along the edge of the water when we arrived but they were completely surrounded by water by high tide.  The locals were climbing the branches and jumping into the water.  The white folks stayed more on the pier and some swam from the end of it.  The hotel itself was above the beach and pool area, and to the one side there were stairs going up to a lounge and a restaurant on a raised platform.  That's where we ha dinner.  There were only about four tables of people and one of them was back inside the restaurant.  The rest of us were sitting out on the patio area and it was very nice being out there with a gentle breeze blowing.  Unfortunately, since we hadn't planned to stay so long, we didn't have bug spray with us but we survived.

When we were ready to head home we made our way to the office to ask them to call for a taxi.  A British man sitting there was also waiting for one and had been for some time.  He said we could share his ride.   They called again and the taxi said 10 minutes.  He couldn't quite believe that since he had already been waiting so long.  It turned out that he was the general manager of the hotel and was heading into Stone Town.  The taxi arrived and we were dropped at our hotel and din't pay a cent as the other guy said he was looking after it - even though we knew we had taken him out of his way a few kilometres.

Once back at the hotel I called it a night, although I probably tried to do some computer work before going to sleep.