Connected in Cairo

What a relief! I have Internet here, and it's not slow! Well, it's no broadband, but compared to my last three countries, this is phenomenal! I'm uploading pictures to my picture-site very rapidly at the moment, and am also uploading more videos here, and so I figured this would be a good time for another "regular" update as well...

So, my last full day in Johannesburg, after posting the long update here (below), I went to Montecasino (picture left). This suburb / casino is supposedly Johannesburg's most popular tourist attraction. To some degree I can see why, though I think it does say more about the rest of the city than about the casino itself. On the outside it looked like a little (fake) Tuscan village; on the inside it was almost an exact copy of the Venetian casino in Las Vegas, with fake sky painted on the ceiling and everything. Seeing as I don't gamble, and the casino area (though supposedly the largest in Africa) seemed quite small to me (being "used to" Vegas), I wasn't quite sure what to spend the rest of my time doing there until I'd get picked up. I decided to see a movie, and it was a great decision, one of the best movies I've seen in a long while ("The Pursuit of Happyness"), I'd definitely recommend that one!

The flight to get out of South Africa got all taken care of, be it at some additional cost. But, that's the (actual) price of my own stupidity, I suppose. I flew into Dar Es Salaam, but because I would probably miss the last ferry over to Zanzibar, I decided to fly straight on to Stone Town. It's only a 20-minute flight, and I was quoted $70. But, once I got to the airport in Dar, the nice young lady at the counter thought about it for a bit, looked me up and down, and decided $50 would be enough. Nice! Especially considering that the hour-and-a-half long hassle of a ferry ride costs $35! Sadly I didn't get a good view of any of the coral reefs from the plane, seeing as it was a bit overcast. The "big rain" season in Zanzibar runs from Easter until June, so I guess there was a risk there.

But, I ended up getting tremendously lucky with the weather (as I feel I have been, pretty much all of the last three months)! After some light rain that first afternoon I arrived, I didn't see any more rain during my time there (only some overnight showers). And, I suppose I was also lucky to avoid the "hot season", though I'm not quite sure what to call this season if not hot (the "also-hot-but-maybe-not-quite-40C-anymore" season? Or the "hey-it-cools-off-to-about-28C-at-night!" season?). In other words, I lost a lot of water-weight on Zanzibar.
The hotel I was staying at was quite lovely (picture above to the right was the garden, with treehouse). Sadly, the first three nights, because I'm a nice guy, I stayed in the one room (of four total) that did not have air conditioning. As soon as I mentioned it I was immediately allowed (nay, encouraged!) to switch rooms. Guess I should've said something earlier; sleeping became a lot easier after that! The hotel was otherwise empty my first three nights, with only one other room taken the last two, so switching was no problem. The hotel is owned by an American living in Italy, and managed by a Zanzibari who works at another hotel (still following this?). During the day there were two staff there; Nasoro the caretaker, and Majuma the housekeeper. Though their English was a bit of a struggle, they made for good company and accompanied me everywhere! One of my favorite spots was the tree house, from which I had a great view of the sunsets (like the three surrounding this piece of text). I gotta say, these rivalled (if not surpassed) the ones from Mauritius!
The town I was staying in, Bububu, is about 10km north of Stone Town, the "capital" of Zanzibar. This meant that there wasn't much else to do around where I was staying, other than 'beach'. Not bad, though, seeing as that was basically the reason I picked this location. I did spend one day in Stone Town, as my last (brief) post indicated, but am not so much a fan. In general, I've come to look at Zanzibar as Mauritius' poor cousin, and Stone Town is a bit exemplary of that. Lots of poverty all around, and though it's fun for a little while, walking around the little winding alleyways (picture right), I was pretty much done rather quickly. Besides, the "ticks" I mentioned in the last post ensure that the best way to walk around is quickly, and as though you have a purpose or destination in mind. When you don't really have this purpose, but still walk around at these high speeds, you'll be done looking pretty quickly, since it ain't that big!

At least I got to experience the local transport, the dala-dala; mostly converted mini-buses packed with people that drive you from A to B in a high-speed, high-risk fashion for very cheap. No tourists take them, but I enjoyed it the two times I took them. I even enjoyed the "conductor" trying to cheat the "white man" to pay more... but I'm not so easily fooled... anymore!

But my favorite unique and non-tourist experience was when Nasoro took me to his village to watch the PSV-Liverpool soccer game: some guys laid out a couple square meters of tarp and some 70 or 80 local boys and men were sprawled all over them, outside, watching the two Champions League games simultaneously, on two tiny old televisions. I didn't take any pictures, it didn't feel right to do so there, but the atmosphere was phenomenal, just about the coolest of the many, many times I've watched soccer (too bad about the outcome though...)!

So, I had already mentioned the spice tour (whoever can guess what the picture on the left is of wins... well... absolutely nothing. To be honest, I don't remember either actually...). It was fun, and I think previous comments (like the one on the video) made me seem perhaps more ignorant than I really meant to come across. It was very interesting, and most spices were quite easy to pick up even for a collateral cook (or helper-chef) like me. The hard part particularly was recognizing plants by sight alone, or having to smell parts of the plant that don't necessarily make up the spice, such as the seeds of the cinnamon bush (everybody could've sworn it was vanilla, but upon smelling and tasting the bark, well, it was quite obvious instantly). And, the beach we went to with our group (me and the 8 girls in the group... yes, I know, some of you see a pattern developing here!) afterwards was absolutely gorgeous (see this video). In between, we also visited one of Tippu Tip's slave caves (he was a famous slave trader). In this cave (picture right), the slaves were kept; the weak were separated out from the strong by the harsh conditions (smoldering heat, and food only once a week). Rather chilling, hot though it was. (picture below: one of the many "mudhuts" on Zanzibar that we drove past on the day of the spice tour)

The other day trip I took was the most phenomenal one, on my last day there. It was a combination snorkeling / dolphins / monkeys trip. Yes, I know that sounds weird, but it all made sense. In the morning, we drove south to board a tiny little 15hp boat to go see the dolphins. Once we spotted them, we were allowed to jump in (with snorkel gear) and swim along with them. This was absolutely superb! There were about 5 boats around (each with some 6 tourists), but I ended up being the only one who stayed in the water the whole time and able to keep up with the dolphins. They dive down every so often and then stay down for a minute or two, so I had to indicate to everyone in the boats where they were going. The best part was, one of the times, when they came back up to catch a breath, I was literally swimming right over them, so some of them popped up in front of me, behind me, left, and right. And, I stroked one on the tail as she (I think she, though I'm not sure how I'd check) came up. Truly amazing!

After that we sailed east a bit to go snorkeling on a little coral reef. Too bad the underwater camera I have been carrying around all over the world was... well, back in my hotel room (you know I'm not so bright by now!). In any case, it was an amazing sight, and my favorite was the General from Finding Nemo; he was there, in the flesh (or is it in the 'fish'?), well, a whole bunch of him! Oh, and there was also one (just one) rainbow fish, with a sort of horizontal rainbow stripe, looked extremely cool! My other not-so-smart move was staying in the water that long without T-shirt or sunscreen on my back. So, I burned my back, but luckily not too bad (my body can take a beating [burning] now, after all these sunny countries!). And, it earned me some rubbing from a few lovely ladies, haha.
After that, we went to Jozani Forest, the largest forest (government-protected) on the island (picture above). There I saw the "red colobus monkeys", who were just perfectly happy being around me, eating lunch, and in one case trying to play with me (though I didn't quite get that at first; I thought he wanted to steal my camera!). In any case, they're unlike any other monkeys I'd ever seen, and believe me, I know my monkeys (V taught me well)!! I have two short little videos of these monkeys as well (click here and here); and, of course, lots of pictures (left). In the evening I went out to dinner with the two girls from London that just arrived at my hotel, and we ate (fifth night in a row for me!!) at the only restaurant walking distance away, for the fifth time also with the same British family (from Norwich) staying there. Nice night, but I had to pack and, well, sleep.

The alarm this morning (Friday) felt far too early, even though at Zanzibar airport you only have to arrive 1 hour before international flights (let's face it, it's tiny, and the only international flight goes to Nairobi). My "e-ticket" that I had printed clearly stated that I was supposed to pick up the ticket at Kisauni airport on Zanzibar, but when I got there, Kenya Airways doesn't even have an office there!! So, in order to not get bit in the butt again by flight plans going awry, I found an amazingly friendly tourist willing to lend me a few hundred dollars to buy a new ticket to Nairobi from Zanzibar (Luca, if you're reading this, you're a life saver!). It is wonderful to find that there are still some amazing, helpful, and wonderful people around. I was panicking, I admit, but this worked out perfectly.

Of course my troubles weren't over yet with that though. After getting cash at the ATM in Nairobi (I left the airport with special permission of the Immigration Chief, seeing as I didn't have a Visa to enter Kenya), changing that cash back into US dollars, and paying Luca back, I had to get my actual ticket that I couldn't pick up at Zanzibar. They claimed it had not yet been paid for, which I know for a fact that it has. So, they made me buy a new, full-price ticket (twice as much as what I paid for it the first time!!) to get to Cairo. At that point, I couldn't be bothered, I just wanted to get on the plane. But, when I get home, I'll surely bug the hell out of Kenya Airways until they give me my money back. For now, all I can do is tell you all: don't ever fly Kenya Airways! There was some wonderful ground crew that helped me get a ticket 12 minutes before the flight was to leave, and still manage to get on board, but as a company, they're a giant PAIN and extremely disorganized and unprofessional (even by, and pardon my political incorrectness, African standards)! Only good part of today: we flew pretty much right over the top of Kilimanjaro (picture above to the right), so I managed to snap a few great pictures of it. Good motivation to come back there some day and stand there to wave at the planes!
In any case, I'm in Cairo. My last country. I'll spend my time here, and a few days in Luxor, and then a red-eye back through Prague to Brussels on the 14th. I'll try to make it count for something ;-) It's hard to believe I have only 1 week of travel left. I don't want it to end, on the one hand, and am not exactly looking forward to being unemployed, and a full-time job seeker, at least for a little while (and hopefully only for a little while). But on the other hand, I'm tired, and think that a little home-pace would do me good at this point... But first, Pharaohs and Sphinx, tombs and trains. Happy Easter / Passover / Moulid an-Nabi / whatever you care to celebrate!