You don't even have to land in Dar, if you are coming from Europe or South Africa. You can land directly on the island on a charter flight, go straight to your lodgings at a Protea hotel, and sink into paradise. I set off for Zanzibar on a sturdy hydrofoil boat, operated by an enterprising Tanzanian of Indian extraction, from the old harbour of Dar es Salaam. The deep, natural harbour is breathing life again after years of stagnation, a stagnation attested to by the rusted skeletons of ships and trawlers drifting aimlessly in the placid bay, or lying abandoned on their broken sides on the white sands of the shore. Some of those shells from foreign lands now serve as homes for the homeless.
Life tumbles all over the port area, the same kind of bustling life that characterises the town.
My access to the hydrofoil that would skim me over the waves to Zanzibar was negotiated semi-informally, between Juma, who wanted me to play it straight, and a bunch of friendly harbour desperadoes who wanted me to skip under the wire, as it were, and score them to a percentage on the way. In the end, I paid full price, and lost a little extra on the unearned percentage which I was made to part with anyway, much to Juma's disgruntlement. It was all part of the adventure. It took three hours to arrive at the legendary island of slaves and spices. The hydrofoil is capable of doing the trip in 90 minutes, but when the vessel first came into operation some three years ago, the passengers, most of them ordinary commuters from the mainland, had objected to the rough buffets this kind of speed entails on the ocean, so the boat operators had instructed their captains to ease back on the throttle.