Prison Island

January 10^th, 2024

A common half day tourist trip is to head to Changuu Island, more commonly known as Prison Island, which lies about 5-6 kilometres from Stone Town and takes about half an hour to get to.  I was planning to head south in the afternoon to a small town called Kizimkazi, but why not check out what this Prison Island was all about first.

 

I was joined by two other couples, one from Italy and the other from France, on the small 25’ long covered boat.  We hopped in and the young captain pulled the boat away from the shore by the rope which had an anchor lodged in the seabed about 70 feet out.  He pulled up the anchor at the bow and then ran back to the stern to try and lower the outboard motor into the water.  Well, there was some issue.  He tried again and again but meanwhile the waves were slowly pushing us broadside back towards the shore.  Our boat bumped, not quite crashed, into an anchored boat but there was a bit of damage done to the fibreglass sides of each vessel.  Nothing major, just a love tap.  Another boat came over and threw a rope over to our captain who tried to wrap it around a small post at the back of the boat but it took him a few attempts until he got it secured.  At one point, I thought our captain might get yanked right out of the boat!  Once we were pulled away from shore, our man was able to figure out whatever problem there was with lowering the engine into the water and we were on our way.

 

A stiff wind was coming at the boat from the right side, the side where I was sitting, so as we plowed through the waves, I was receiving some spray from the ocean water.  Even though it was an overcast day, luckily it was still quite warm.

Looking back at Stone Town:

This picture doesn't do it justice, but these are fishermen in a small canoe and the waves were 2-4 feet at times.

Prison Island dead ahead:

Jambo means "Hello" in Swahili:

Hopping out on a sandy beach, our guide who had been quiet in the boat, a young local guy, introduced himself to the five of us.  Since I was a last-minute addition to the group, I had to pay the admission fees, one was an entrance fee, the other for the conservation area.  The first attraction to check out were the big tortoises.

There were some peacocks walking around.  London is only 4605 miles away!

The British governor of Seychelles sent four Aldabra giant tortoises as a gift just over 100 years ago.  Well, the tortoises have definitely flourished on the island…there are probably a few hundred of them at least.  We walked along a pathway with a guardrail running along either side, but there was the odd gap that allowed the tortoises to cross from one side to the other.  There were a few “Do Not Touch” signs, but those were disregarded by the tourists…even I had a brief touch of one tortoises shell and head.  A few of the tortoises seemed to enjoy getting their neck tickled as they would extend their head up higher.

This was a pretty big guy:

I've got a new friend:

This is a "Creep of Tortoises"...had to look that up.

Hard to see, but look at the extension of the neck of the guy in the foreground:

On the move:

The juveniles and hatchlings.  The hatchlings are in the caged box in the middle.

That's a peahen in the foreground, and a peacock trying to get some action in the background...she was more interested in eating.

A peahen with her baby:

Next, we moved on to the reason that this place is commonly called Prison Island.  The British built a prison in 1894 but in the end, it was never used for that purpose.  Instead, the island became a place to quarantine people from Zanzibar who had infectious diseases, the most prevalent one being Yellow Fever.  One prison building was converted to a hospital.   We wandered into a two-room “museum” with some old photos and some information about the island’s history.

The entrance to the main prison building:

The sign above the door says: Prison Bar.

This is a picture of a picture in the museum.  Below it was the Swahili proverb: 

Some beautiful paths can't be discovered without getting lost.

Another one was:

Every vessel has its own waves.

The old entrance gate used from a no longer existent dock:

Where the dock used to be:

Back at the boats, the two couples were heading on to another island, just a sandy strip really, to relax for a few hours.  I was leaving Stone Town in the afternoon to head to the south tip of Zanzibar Island and luckily there was a boat that was heading back to the main shore.  The boat ride was much smoother and I didn’t get wet at all as we were going with the wind.  The other two tourists in the boat were on holidays from Namibia and they were nice to chat with.

I had some lunch and then grabbed a tuk tuk to take me to a market where I could get a dala dala (privately run mini-buses).  Actually, I ended up in a truck and lucked out and got a seat in the cab.  The back was covered and had bench seats around the inside perimeter of the box.  I’m pretty sure that I paid a “Mzungu Price”, not that it was an outrageous cost, and it was justified by the money collector as it was an “express” truck.  Yeah, sure, I’ve heard that before...  Sure enough, on the way out of town, we stopped to pick up chicken feed, rebar and a few other things.  Still, it wasn’t a bad ride.

 

My next three nights are going to be in a place called Kizimkazi, which is by the ocean and should be more relaxing than being in the big city.