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Nicole's
Travelogues and Budget Travel Tips..
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ZANZIBAR (CONT.), TANZANIAAt 4am I wake up feeling very ill. I wrack my brain trying to figure out what I ate but I've been so carefull. Uh I feel like dying and I have to get better in 4 1/2 hours to meet Helen and Olivia. Ugh! Just kill me now....I go back to sleep and get up at 8am to take a quick shower. Crap! No hot water. So I take a cold shower which actually feels good since I have a fever and drag myself to Jambo Guest House to get Helen and Olivia. I'm soooo thirsty so I get a litre of water for 500 shillings and start drinking. The Spice Tour guide picks us up from the hostel (on foot because cars can't go where Jambo or Flamingo Guest Houses are) and we walk to the tour office to pay $10 USD or 11,000 shillings. What a rip! They want US dollars in Zanzibar too so if you don't pay in $$ - you end up paying a higher price in shillings. So in the tour office I am starting to feel faint. So I walk across the street to the pharmacy and ask if he has anything for bad stomach - he gives me Immodium but I have that - then I start feeling really nauseous and say I HAVE to use the restroom. He runs and gets the key and I make it to the threshold of the bathroom and up comes all of the water I had. Funny thing about the water - it was green. Damn! That damn avocado juice! It came out of a sealed bottle but sometimes they resell it using tap water and seal it again (as I was told by Shibo later...). Anyway, I found out later that day that everyone that drank the juice the night before was sick. Yikes.
We stayed at the beach until about 4:30pm and then headed back to the tour office. I went home and took a shower, changed clothes (uh my shirt had a bit of the green water on it), and felt much better - not quite good enough to smell or taste food but good enough to hang out. I went to pick up Helen and Olivia and we headed to Africa House Hotel for drinks. I was so sick I didn't even have a Tusker, just had a coke. How sad! Helen was bummed because I've been her beer drinking buddy - Olivia prefers wine. 3 guys from the Spice Tour came to join us - Jeff (American lawyer who hated it, quit, and has been in Africa for 5 months) and Karinas & Billy (2 Afrikaaners from South Africa). After about an hour, we all moved down to the Forodhani Gardens - a huge nightly outside market where you could get pretty much anything on a skewer for a few bucks (specialty is seafood of course). I was really looking forward to eating here but one whiff and I knew I wouldn't be this trip! They all got huge plates full of stuff which I'm sure was delicious but I still had to sit upwind of them! After dinner, we all went down to the coffee man's table and had coffee and fudge - well I mean I watched them have coffee and fudge. I'm told it was delicious! Nice to hear it! We all left the Gardens about 11pm and then Jeff and I went to Jambo House to have tea with Helen. We stayed until midnight, said our goodbyes, and Jeff and I walked back to Flamingo House. I was soooo glad that I made it through the night without puking on anyone! Yipee! A great day in Zanzibar - even though I was only about 30%.... |
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Anyway, after I got rid of the green water I felt a little better (though I was paranoid all day that I would puke on someone!). The driver knew I was sick so he told me to sit up in the front with him - at least I think it was because he thought I was sick! We were loaded into an open-air Zanzibar minibus and drove to a shamba (spice farm). The bumpy dirt road wasn't doing anything for my stomach but I was REALLY concentrating on not puking on the driver! Things for the next few hours are a bit fuzzy. We did get out and walk around for about an hour, while a guide showed us spice trees, bushes, and plants. They kept handing us stuff to smell and taste and it kept making my stomach worse. Eck! I do remember seeing the 'lipstick tree' that has pods that produce red dye and a 'soap bush' that had berries that lathered. At one point, Beth a Canadian said that it looked like I had a fever and she put those temperature things on my forehead. Oh yea 102 degrees - I took some aspirin. 
We, then, went to another village who prepared a veggie lunch for us which I'm sure was delicious but was making me nauseous so I had to go outside and sit with the chickens. The driver came by and made me some Ginger tea and said it would help. It was probably the last thing I wanted - something hot and spicy - but I drank as much as I could. Helen and Olivia said the lunch was great. After lunch, we stopped at another village who had fruit orchards and everyone got to try about 10 different kinds of fruit. Oooh the agony! I was missing out on some good eats! 
Let's see after the fruit binge, we went to ruins of a slave holding cave. I took a picture but can't remember what was said. I'll have to google it later. Then (this day was never going to end!) we went to Mangapwani Beach on the North Coast. I went to some rocks in the shade to lay down but couldn't get comfortable so I started wading in the Indian Ocean and it actually made me feel better (or the ginger tea was kicking in). Whatever the case I could now hold conversations without fear of puking on anyone. Life was good!
