Jozani is Zanzibar’s largest forest. It’s a dense jungle without human management, except they run guided walking tours. The highlight are probably the red colobus monkeys that jump from treetop to treetop at high speeds, but they also have miniature frogs that fit on a thumbnail (at the tip of the leaf below), black monkeys,…

Another opportunity to dive, this time at the opposite end of the island. More corals, more fish. I was with a group of newbies which gave me more opportunities to explore. Saw a giant lobster, a turtle, box fish, and all sorts of strange spiky sea stars and soft and hard coral. The Nemos are…

Nungwi is at the north end of Zanzibar island, Paje is near the southeast end. To get there it’s necessary to connect in Zanzibar City, which involves a long motorcycle ride because each line has its own bus station. The “bus” to Paje was really a Thai-style songthaew, a truck with two facing benches along…

Nungwi is a town capping the northern tip of Zanzibar island. All the beach hotels and bars cluster right at the ocean. Instead of a second and third row like in Kendwa, the rest of the town is where the locals live, with very little attention to the tourist industry. Almost all houses are single-story,…

Kendwa is all about beaches. What isn’t on the beach is boring, endless walls that enclose the resorts that are open only to the beach. There aren’t even souvenir shops more than 100m from the beach. If you don’t come to the ocean then the ocean will come to you, at high tide some shops…

There is an One Ocean dive center just around the corner from my hotel, and I went out with them for two dives. It’s off-season and I was the only customer, so I had the divemaster to myself. The water temperature is 30 degrees, visibility is very good, and at a depth of only 16…

I am back on the island, now in Kendwa near the northern tip. Kendwa is all about its beaches, beach pubs, fishing boats, and beach boys. “Beach boy” is the official term for a young man who wants to sell something, or who plays annoying music and wants money. No idea what other services they…

Four-wheel drive trucks have their limits. Ours was a a wet grass field so soaked that it was more like a swamp. The rear wheels sank in and were just spinning in the mud. A group of Massai (aka Maasai, an ethnic group in northern Tanzania and southern Kenya) came to help, bringing rocks and…

Tarangire is the last park on my circuit. It’s more about the landscape than the animals, although they do have the usual elephants and things. The largest trees are the baobabs, huge trees with an emormous barrel-like trunk. Six postings down you’ll find photos of the Madagascar type; here they are more the type that…

Serengeti is a large national park, over 30,000 square kilometers. It’s all grassland with very few and occasional small rocky hills call kopjes, usually occupied by lions. It’s flat grassland all the way to the horizon in all directions. The hrass is green because the rainy season has started; a month earlier this was all…

Ngorongoro is a national park in the center north of Tanzania. The main attraction is a huge intact volcano crater, 610m deep and 260 square kilometers inside. You can seen the crater rim from any point inside. It’s a bowl of wildlife. I was visiting with a small group of six, in a 4WD truck…

Hakuna matata means “no problem” in Swahili. I took an early morning flight to Arusha on the Tanzanian mainland with Auric Air. The goldfinger in charge of the x-ray regretted that sunscreen can’t be in cabin baggage because it’s flammable (what?) but — sotto voce — for a small fee he could let me pass.…

Got a driver and ventured out  to a Spice Farm, a popular tourist destination, after helping the driver to push his car to a gas station when he ran out of fuel. The farm is really a large forest where they grow cloves, nutmeg, cinnamon, pepper, cardamom, vanilla, jackfruit, coconuts, yellow and red banana (red…

Zanzibar is part of Tanzania in east Africa. Stone Town is the historic part of the capital, and it feels like a large number of old buildings had been randomly scattered and densely packed near the ocean. There are almost no streets, the haphazard layout allows only very narrow and never straight alleys. It’s easy…