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Zanzibar, 2016
The Tanzania, 2016 gallery has photos from a trip we took to Tanzania in 2016. After the safari adventures that you can see in that gallery, we spent a couple of days in Zanzibar, an island off the coast of mainland Tanzania. It's an interesting place, with historical ties to the Portuguese, the British, and the Sultanate of Oman. The latter history provides a distinctive Islamic touch to a lot of the architecture and art; it was also quite an ugly period, as Zanzibar was a hub of the worldwide slave trade at the time.
Photos here have been adjusted for brightness/contrast/levels, and a few have been manipulated a bit more, but with a light touch overall, I hope. "Original" photos linked here include those manipulations, and are at 1/2 of the original resolution. These are pretty much just tourist shots; I wasn't really in photography mode, but I wanted to have photos to remember Zanzibar by.
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| Zanzibar City |
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Most of these photos are from Zanzibar city, the main city on the island. It's quite charming, with lots of old colonial architecture, beautiful sailboats in the harbor, bustling street markets, and gorgeous sunsets. It's also very touristy, but not really obnoxiously so, most of the time.
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One of Zanzibar's claims to fame, besides spices and slavery, is that it was the birthplace of Freddie Mercury, the frontman of Queen. His house is now a tourist destination, seen in the middle photo below.
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Partway through our visit, we hired a bird guide and drove to Jozani Forest, a national park, for some birding. The weather was rather hazy — not ideal for photography — but we saw quite a few birds, and a few other critters as well.
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After birding, our guide took us to a local butterfly house, where a variety of species lived inside a very large netted enclosure. These are not wild butterflies, then; they may not even be native. I think I had more information on the butterfly house at the time, but since I'm writing this almost five years later, I'm afraid all that has been lost.
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Finally, here are some parting photos of the gorgeous beaches.
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After Zanzibar, we flew back to the U.S., but en route we stopped off in the U.K. for a couple of days, where we connected with some old friends. Photos from that leg are posted as a separate gallery, UK, 2016.
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