It takes about a week to settle into a new country – as I’ve mentioned there’s the currency and the culture, the roads, the distances and of course the camping. Tanzania spaces out her treasures; parks are at least a day’s drive apart. A full day driving here, say seven hours, is exhausting. Every few kilometers the speed drops and 2-lane-wide vicious speed humps announce the entrance to a village. Or maybe just a few food stalls, it does not matter. Tanzania loves its speed humps. Between the humps and the road conditions we average less than 50 clicks an hour (that’s 30 miles an hour, in case you don’t have Goggle open). And then there’s the police stops. Jim is amazing  – he has apologized his way out of three (deserved) violations already. Our new routine is to move one day, stay in place two days. And so we have found ourselves on an Indian Ocean beach at the southern edge of Dar es Saleem, the capital city of Tanzania. I never imagined us here. But off the coast is Zanzibar Island – let’s go there.

Zanzibar does not deny its history of slavery and its slave market. There is an excellent tour and interpertive center; we went down into the dungeons where the captives were kept prior to the auctions. A more miserable place cannot be imagined. Sea water would come up with the tide to wash the sewage away, it could come up too high and drown the captives. Would a man be considered lucky to have made it this far on the deadly journey from the interior to the coast? Or would death on the road be preferable? Where would the will to live come from in this hell? It is so far from normal and yet was so normal at the time – and slavery continues, just in different formats these days. Zanzibar does not spare the details. An Anglican Church is built upon the former auction and whipping block. Guides give a just appraisal of the history – and if you were to come here to be informed and saddened, the tour goes on every day, all day.

The sobering experience of the slave market museum contrasts with Zanzibar Island, one of the most hospitable of places we’ve every been. Everyone is delightfully friendly and few are out to hustle you. We walked through dark and narrow alleys at night, lost on the way back to our hotel, and people would stop and ask, can we help you? Not your average dark-alley-late-night experience. Stone Town has the lazy island feel mixed with Indian and Arab architecture and along with the sordid history of slavery, they have preserved the birth place of Freddy Mercury – the Queen front man. All this makes for a culturally soaked four day visit and we got some good snorkeling in as well. The stunning blues of the Indian Ocean, the beaches of powered sugar sand, the fresh fish and dark coffee, the tour of the community spice plantation – it was a wonderful vacation from our “vacation”. And on we go.