International Pleasure

Zanzibar. What a place. International destination for the wealthy, the young, and the beautiful. This place is like a Peter Stuyvesant advert, filled to the rafters with stereotypes and cliches for every palate. Its Africa For The Tourist, and the locals know it. The reason is abundantly simple, even from the air, looking over this ancient island. You can see the natural beauty, Zanzibar's biggest natural resource by a long shot, even before you scream over ramshackle huts, cattle and dirty children playing soccer, only a few hundred feet above their heads. When you land on the hot, steaming airstrip, fringed with coconut trees, rusting junk and litter the heat gently bakes you in the aeroplane like some kind of sunblock frittata. Hustle forth, customs awaits! How many things have been nicked from your luggage? And how many times has the fishing rod been snapped by the overzealous baggage handlers? I, inexplicably, had several packets of organic seed, a USB cable and some batteries pilfered. The chap in charge was certain it had happened in Johannesburg; a fair assumption. "Too many skelms there in Johannesburg", he said. News travels fast here in Africa.

So off we set, lets find some fucking lunch before I gnaw my arm off! Fuck the azure blue tropical waters, fuck the sights, fuck all that shit. I need to EAT, now. The egg mayo sandwich I ate on the plane, the mere scrap that served as dinner for last night and breakfast this nauseous morning barely touched sides. Why is it always egg mayo on long trips? What kind of perverse impulse is it that makes everyone think an egg mayo sarmie is exactly the thing for a long trip, cramped up in a big aluminium cigar tube with 200 other people?

After a delicious snack of rice, more rice, some bread, some veggie stuff with coconutty sauce, and some other things, we set out to explore Stone Town quickly, and make our way to the taxi rank, to visit Ian, of Zanzibar fame, in Nungwe. A quick tour through the back streets of Stone Town guided by a crack head , we wander through maze-like streets past tiny little shops selling touristy trinkets (humorously for me, they're identical to what you can buy in Cape Town, but more expensive), coils of terrifyingly disorganised electrical wire discharging from every wall, like snakes in a feeding frenzy, street vendors selling mangoes and sugar cane juice. Scooters, bicycles and motorcycles squeeze past you in the claustrophobic alleyways as you wander about, feeling a lot like Tintin in The Crab With The Golden Claws. Ridiculous prices are quoted in dollars, on chalk boards on the pavements, for any activity you can think of that relates to the ocean. Underwater kite boarding, jetski tuna fishing, scuba turtle surfing, they have it all here, if you have enough dollars. Is Zanzibar a good destination for budget travellers, people ask. Well, lets re-examine your definition of the word 'budget' first. For a brief trip, two weeks or so, I could recommend you bring maybe a million dollars. You could do it on less, but for the full experience, I'd say a million would be a good budget.