Thursday, 5th August 2004
After a reasonable breakfast of fruit, cakes and biscuits, we wandered down to the beach and wandered out to the nearby headland where we sat and read our PADI books. We have booked in to do our Open Water dive certificate and this means spending the next 2 days reading a 150-page book and watching videos (all written in an incredibly irritating matey, american tone). We spent the morning lounging on the lovely white sand trying to stop our belongings blowing away (such as our newly acquired dive charts and instruction booklets).
As the day wore on, we wandered out towards the port, to Forodhani gardens, supposedly famous for its superb food stalls, but it was pretty dead, and we ended up sitting in the shade by a small sea-front cafeteria. We did manage to get some good samosas and delicious avocado juice. More reading followed, before we went back to the dive centre for our first video and our first mini-test. Our instructor was a french guy called Sébastien, who had a very un-French sense of humour....in that he was quite witty! Anyway, so far - so good.
We then went for a wander round the maze-like Old Town, made up of winding alleys and over-hanging houses, very reminiscent of Arabic northern Africa. We decided we were going to resist the touts for today, but still had a look around for potential souvenirs (although in one shop on a corner we were reprimanded for trying to take a picture of an Aladdin’s-cave of old looking junk (possibly acquired from the wealthy Europeans when they were ousted from Zanzibar)) - there’s quite a lot of good art-work, in addition tot he usual carvings, and the packs of famous Zanzibar spices.
In the evening, we went exploring to try to find a recommended restaurant, Two Tables Restaurant, which is based in someone’s home. Outside the main tourist streets, it suddenly got very dark, and we foolishly found ourselves wandering down dark alleys peering nervously into the shadows, and giving any approaching figure a wide berth. All a little creepy....but probably all in our minds, as we survived, and eventually did find the restaurant, which we booked for the tomorrow.
We then returned to the bright lights and chose the Dolphin restuarant for tonight’s meal, as it was recommended in our guide book. It was full of tourists, which should perhaps have warned us off, but we sat down anyway. The menu sounded good, with daily specials of local dishes; however, the reality was somewhat different, as the food took nearly an hour to arrive (even though everyone in the restaurant was eating the same thing) and it was particularly awful when we did get it. And all the time, the owner lolled about in a booth, chain-smoking, drawling at any passing customer, and yelling at the chef and waiter. At least we managed to get out to make a call home while we were waiting for our starters....but pretty bad all-in-all.
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