Hello beach and tropical warmth! Our first day at Zanzibar

19.09.2010

After a sad farewell parting from Willie and Chuck, we drowsily headed to the airport at 6am in the morning to fly to Zanzibar.

As the computers at the Kilimanjaro airport were "down", we were issued with hand-written boarding passes. (on our return from Zanzibar to Dar, while waiting to be issued with our boarding passes, we all concluded that it was way faster hand-writing them!)

We were also unable to check in for both legs of our flight (Arusha - Dar; Dar - Zanzibar) so when we reached Dar, we had to wait for our luggage and exit the airport and enter again to check in for our Dar-Zanzibar leg of the flight! We had half an hour before the flight to Zanzibar took off! So Su and I went out first with everyone's passports to check in for the next flight, while the rest waited for the bags. We were concerned that the rest would be stopped at security because they didn't have their passports with them, but unknown to us, a "secret agent" had been sent to escort them via a "secret passageway" from the arrivals to the departures area (probably something like 10m apart). When they rejoined us they were very pleased with the "special treatment". Then we boarded for our 10-min flight. Yup, 10 minutes. From the time we took off to the time we landed in Zanzibar. Hooray!

The Zanzibar airport was really rustic. We loved the baggage collection area!

We were greeted by our driver and headed on to Matemwe beach. It started raining when we arrived at the airport, and I was getting increasingly concerned that I might be some kind of jinx! (It had rained so heavily the last time I was at Zanzibar and we were stuck indoors for a whole day...) But the rest just left it to fate and everyone promptly went to sleep in the minivan again.

But when we reached Matemwe, how happy and delighted we were to find bright sunshine and a beautiful spanking new hotel right on the beach! Below are specimens of what we each did upon entering our respective rooms.

W and TY

Li and R

QH and SuN

On finding out that we could not book any activities for the day because we had arrived too late (11.30am), and that we had NO CHOICE BUT TO NUAH around the resort for the rest of the day, we resigned to our fate and quickly engaged ourselves with other activities, such as:

-- Lounging

-- Eating

-- Playing

And photo-taking!

We were all so pleased to be back in the sunshine and tropical warmth. The girls told me that they thought Tanzania is a hot place but the first week had been just cold, cold, cold! Li Ling especially was happy to finally be able to wear all her beach/summer clothes! (From then on, it was a fashion parade for Li Ling who strutted and donned a different set of sunny beach attire everyday)

Karibu Zanzibar!

And then we had a lovely dinner, and thus ended our lovely day at Sunshine Matemwe. We leave you with more pictures of our lovely Sunshine Hotel!