On the third day, I finally need the scooter for more than just withdrawing more money. I drive to the north of the island. Zanzibar is really tropical and green here. I realise how much I was depressed by the monotonous flat forestlessness in Paje. The route leads through sugar cane fields and spice plantations in the steaming jungle. A tour of a spice farm with tastings of fresh ginger, cinnamon, nutmeg, pepper, cloves, passion fruit, star fruit and vanilla cheers me up further.
The Zanzibaris in the north seem happier than those in the arid poorhouse of southern Zanzibar. Smurfy schoolchildren in blue and white uniforms wander along the streets of the poorest villages. In one of them, I hit an easily overlooked high braking hill at 80 kilometres per hour. I manage to avoid a spin. But not another puncture five kilometres further on in the deepest jungle.
I push the scooter for two kilometres until a schoolchild shows me the local tyre master. This time the inner tube is beyond repair. A replacement is only available two villages further on. The last of my money goes on the repair while I dance with the village youth to La Brass Banda. Once again, I don’t reach the northern tip of Zanzibar.
On the way back via the east coast with its empty luxury resorts in the middle of nowhere, two policemen try to rip me off at checkpoints. Wrong day. I chat the first one down in a friendly manner about the supposedly missing passport photo on the local driving licence until he looks for easier victims after 20 minutes. I tell the second one about the average life expectancy of corrupt Honduran police officers in Spanish. He quickly gives up.
The next morning, I wake up to the lovely smell of rubbish burning directly behind my beach hut. The green stuff up to hour three just stinks, the black smoke from plastic bottles within the next three stings my lungs and eyes.
The complete lack of any understanding of service and quality for what is simply on offer is increasingly getting on my nerves, as are the dung flies and dyslexic style flowers of the Zanzibaris, dry showers, power cuts and being perma-offline when there is no wind. Actually, the whole of Zanzibar is getting on my nerves. I want to go home.
Frank Woelky, born in 1973. Kitesurfer since 1998. Since 2006, I have been combining kitesurfing and web design on trips lasting several months off the beaten track.