Here's me on the beach at Bagamoyo.
We only swam in the ocean one time during our whole vacation. Unlike Zanzibar, the beach on the mainland is a bit dirty (lots of seaweed and regular ocean dirt) and the tide goes out forever. I'd had no idea it would be like that. In the mornings, the tide would be out the length of a football field. We could literally walk on an empty ocean floor. We found lots of beautiful shells that way. The tide would fully come in about 3 or 4 in the afternoon and by that time we would often be sleeping by the pool or swimming there. The beach was slightly cleaner in Dar. In Bagamoyo there were lots of fishing boats and large mangroves, which also made swimming hard.
Walking along the beach when the fishermen came in with their catch was really amazing, though. One guy brought this:
There was a big group of women bidding on it and the winner let me take a picture.
Here are a couple of pictures of boats in the water and fishermen pulling their boats to shore when the tide is high.
There was also something on the beach that was clearly not seaworthy anymore, and I thought it looked like a boat skeleton
Bagamoyo was once a major hub for the slave trade run by Arabs. There are ruins of the old Customs House attached to the current Customs House that is still in use and right on the beach.
There are also some interesting ruins from the 1400's of old Arab settlements. The major structures are graves, which were built around the burial spot, and ruins from a mosque.
There was a museum at the ruins site that showed some old art depicting common images from the slave trade times:
One more thing that was really cool to see in Bagamoyo was a tree on the way to our hotel that is literally called a Christmas tree - it's a poinsettia (the whole tree)!
In Dar, we stayed just outside of town in a compound-like hotel (almost like an all-inclusive). We couldn't really walk along the beach since each hotel had blocked off their own section. There were some perks though - we got to watch TV and movies, had good air conditioning and a free shuttle ride into town everyday. We probably spent half the time roaming around Dar and most of the rest of the time (that we weren't lying on the beach or in the pool) watching movies and TV. In town, we went to the national museum, the botanical gardens, and near our hotel we saw more ruins and went to a small island about 15 minutes away by boat.
Here are a few selections from the National Museum:
The museum had an old part and a new part. In between they had a couple of exhibitions, including a shattered window and a completely mangled motorcycle that were recovered from the bombing of the US Embassy in Dar in 1998:
The botanical gardens are described in the Lonely Planet guide as "languishing" and it is true. But there were some beautiful peacocks making their presence known with their loud calls. Here is a great picture of one of them in a tree:
The ruins that we went to see were similar to the ones in Bagamoyo with the exception that for some reason they weren't protected as a cultural site. There were more graves and in better condition and less destruction to the mosque. I have no idea why the Tanzanian government hasn't protected them.
It took us forever to find them because no one seemed to know they were there - except this guy:
I just have a couple more pictures to post about some enormous trees. There is a children's book here called "A Baobab is Big" and are they ever! This first picture is from a museum at a Catholic church in Bagamoyo. There was a sign that said it was last measured in 2000 with a circumference of 12 meters. It was planted in the early 50's. I can only imagine how big it is now. The second picture is at the ruins near Dar and is WAY bigger than the first tree.
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