Nairobi International Airport

In August 2007, we left Vietnam for a two-week trip through Kenya and Tanzania.

We caught a bus out of Nairobi.

We headed south, crossed the Tanzania border and ended up in the town of Arusha.  This is a shot from the border crossing.

The border crossing was orderly, but there was very little of the Security Theatre feeling. 

Nobody was enforcing ziploc bag rules, sniffing bags for dope, or making people throw away their water bottles.

I guess the bicycle was for high speed pursuit of border jumpers.

Arusha, Tanzania

This clock tower lies at the smack-dab center point between Cairo and Cape Town.

As you can see, Coca-Cola is a proud sponsor of Africa.

In Arusha, we arranged for a three night safari trip, whose pictures take up pages 2 and 3.

The House of Lubricants is actually a franchise.  We saw at least three such places across Tanzania.

Zanzibar Town

The main town on the island of Zanzibar is called... Zanzibar.  The central old district is called Stone Town.  After our safari, we took a flight out to the coast and stayed in Stone Town.

Stone Town is a maze of narrow twisting roads.  The architecture is more Arabic than African.  Zanzibar has historically been controlled by Arabic slave traders.

It is chic in Stone Town to front your house with a massive set of wooden doors.

Some of these doors are quite old.  The carving is quite intricate.  Cool doors.

We dove in the channel just off of Stone Town.  We don't recommened it.

The better diving is on the other side of the island.

dhow

The dhow is still a common rig for local fishing.

Later in our journey, we took a trip on a little boat like this.

The Old Fort in Stone Town.

Originally built by Omani Arabs in the 1700s.

Spice Tour

Azim lead our tour through a working spice plantation.  Zanzibar used to be famous for spices and slaves. 

Jack-fruit

You can see on the stem where the bark has been punctured, white goop comes out.  That white goop is latex.

However, the latex yield on a jack-fruit tree proves only about one tenth the yield of a rubber tree.

Jack-fruit are huge.  This sucker weighs close to 20 pounds.

Nutmeg

The brown nut is the nutmeg.  The red veinous pulp wrapped around it is the spice called mace.

We took a ferry from Zanzibar to Dar-es Salaam.

The boat was about an hour late.  Although everybody had a ticket and the boat was not full, a near-riot broke out when the boat finally docked.

Everybody wanted to claim a seat (or five) in the main cabin.

We sat on the floor, on the top deck.

I did my best to take sneaky pictures of our co-passengers.

After a long bus ride from Dar-es Salaam, we made it back to Nairobi.

We were in dire need of some potatoes.

Carnivore Restaurant

Just outside of Nairobi is a world-famous restaurant called Carnivore.  This is the massive pit where they cook the meats.

They served beef, pork, crocodile, ostrich, turkey.
The Kenyan government banned the sale of zebra, but the restaurant is trying to import zebra again from South Africa.

The restaurant had two of the biggest, most muscular cats I have ever seen.

We tried to feed them.  They would only eat turkey.  No beef, no ostrich, no pig.  Only turkey.

At the very end of our trip, we stopped in Bangkok for a day, where we purchased a Thai lounge chair.

Sarah's henna tattoo.

We know that it wasn't real henna, because it washed off in two or three days.