Local Maasai (possibly not the real deal) waiting for tourists they can make some money off of.

Harvesting seaweed brought in by the tide.

During the day, the ocean in Zanzibar recedes far away and you can walk for a long time from the shore in water up to your knees. Actually, the island isn't the best place for regular swimming: it's full of sea urchins and seaweed. They advertise snorkeling and diving, but it doesn't seem like it's in high demand.

Most people just stay in their hotels and never leave.

Cows are relaxing on the local beach.

Africa has plenty of insects that dream of biting tourists (and locals too). Some hotels come with mosquito nets on the beds.

At every hotel I've stayed at, around 7-8 PM, a specially trained person comes to the room and treats it with repellent.

And I also spray myself with all sorts of chemicals once a day so that bugs don't bother me when I'm outside.

I made it to Zanzibar by ferry. Everything would've been fine, but getting on that ferry was no walk in the park.

As soon as the taxi was pulling up to the terminal, about 7 self-proclaimed "helpers" swarmed the car and literally sprinted the last 50 meters or so to keep up with us.

The most pushy guys grabbed my suitcases straight from the driver's hands and started dragging them toward the ferry, but I managed to fight back and haul my stuff myself.

Then there was another "absolutely essential" service—someone insisting on escorting me to the ticket counter where I needed to pick up my pre-booked online ticket. I couldn't really shake off this "help."

Of course, any "help" they provide comes with an expectation of payment. So if you don't feel like paying, it's best to nip it in the bud right away if you can. But sometimes you have to say no more than once.

Spent an hour and a half buying a local SIM card. Not an Indian-style ordeal (though even in India these days you can avoid such hassle), but it took forever.

There was a SIM card shop right across from where I was staying. It seemed logical to buy there. The seller honestly tried to follow all the rules and submit my data to the regulatory authority (that's the law). Except the internet on the regulator's end wasn't cooperating.

After the fifth attempt to submit the application (each taking about 15 minutes), I gave up and went looking for another shop. Just around the corner, in 10 minutes they sold me a SIM registered to a local person (technically not allowed, but apparently if you really want it, you can make it happen). Why didn't I just go there in the first place?

PS. The connection is mediocre: sometimes the signal just disappears. A couple years ago the local regulator even fined all the major operators for terrible service quality. They say it's gotten better :)

Dar es Salaam is a very colorful city. There's not much to do here (I covered all the interesting spots in half a day), but the atmosphere is really cool. It reminded me of the Indian countryside, except the Indians are replaced by Black people and there's less litter.

A separate story about my taxi experience.

At the airport exit, they offer to get you to the city center for $35. Supposedly official taxi. Seems like they have a special rate for white people.

Taking Uber costs just $5. That's a 7 times difference! Though, Uber isn't allowed to stop right at the terminal exit. There's a special parking lot a hundred meters away (:

But the drive was really weird: high beams were on (!), the parking brake wasn't released (!!), and the empty tank warning light was flashing like crazy (!!!). I was honestly already preparing to push the car to the nearest gas station, but it worked out.

Made it to Dar es Salaam! 🎉 You can get your visa on arrival (they let in visitors from almost everywhere). But first you've gotta fill out a form. Nothing complicated about it, except you need to use a pen to fill it out.

The local border guards apparently decided that by 2020, nobody travels without their own pen anymore, so they just put the blank forms on the tables with nothing else.

Meanwhile, airport staff refuse to share pens with arriving passengers. So people are basically borrowing pens from each other left and right. Big shoutout to some Spanish travelers who came to my rescue. Otherwise I'd have been hanging around the airport until my return flight! :)

At least now I'll know what the store is actually called in Russian :)

PS. The new Istanbul airport is basically this massive shopping center that somehow also has planes flying out of it. The scale is absolutely mind-blowing.

Внезапно подумалось, что куда ни приедешь, на радио в основном крутят местные и англоязычные произведения. А другие языки (за редким исключением) обходят стороной, хотя там тоже немало интересного.

Исправляю эту несправедливость небольшой подборкой по следам пары предыдущих поездок того, что меня зацепило на радио или просто в интернетах. Послушайте её прямо сейчас на Я.Музыке или по ссылкам ниже:

🇫🇷🇪🇸ZAZ – Qué vendrá

🇪🇸Sergio Mendes & Brasil 66 - Mas que nada
🇪🇸Alvaro Soler - Sofia
🇪🇸Play-N-Skillz, Daddy Yankee - Not a Crime (No Es Ilegal)
🇪🇸Soda stereo - De musica Ligera

🇪🇸👼Pepo Lamberti - Mi Burrito Sabanero

🇫🇷Les Rois du Monde - Romeo et Juliette
🇫🇷Noir Désir - Le Vent Nous Portera
🇫🇷ZAZ - Je veux
🇫🇷Vanessa Paradis & -M- "La seine"
🇫🇷Calogero - Face à la mer

I'm back. What really stands out is the incredibly high concentration of drivers who think turn signals aren't necessary. I guess everyone's just supposed to magically know what maneuver is coming (spoiler: they don't).

Even the way people use signals is different though. Here, people love turning on their blinker at the same time they're already changing lanes or like a second before. There, they usually signal well in advance. Sure, you get weird drivers on the roads there too, but noticeably less often.

But they definitely don't have the whole "thanks" hazard light thing down. They use it to warn about traffic jams where you need to seriously brake or even come to a complete stop.

Driving through downtown Madrid at night was really not my thing, even with zero traffic. Nights are when the city does maintenance: garbage trucks collect trash from bins near buildings, they wash sidewalks in the city center (!), and do all sorts of other useful (and not so useful) stuff.

The catch is that they block off some roads and alleys while you're trying to navigate, and your GPS stubbornly insists you need to go down the temporarily closed lane. And when you skip a turn because there's a fence blocking it, that smart car lovingly reroutes you a couple kilometers out of the way, only to send you right back to the blocked alley you missed.

So to cover 650 meters, I ended up driving for like 20 minutes with a million detours.

Outside the city though, the roads are really nice. And driving is comfortable.

Finding a place to stay in Spain during winter is really tricky: it's around 50-59°F during the day, but temperatures can drop to freezing at night (or even lower). There's no central heating, so everyone figures out their own solutions.

Some people install a boiler for their house, some rely on air conditioners with heating function, and others think that's good enough for tourists anyway (:

I once ended up in a place from that last category, and man, it was freezing. The owners just shrugged and said they couldn't help. Since I'd booked for almost a week, I had to do something about it. Escalating the issue on Booking surprisingly motivated the owners to buy a heater so we wouldn't suffer.

Most guests visit Spain during the warm season, which doesn't make it any easier to judge accommodations based on reviews.

Even Don Quixote celebrates New Year's :)

People told me that parking in Spain is tough, but I had no idea it was that bad :)

On my way out of Madrid, I decided to stop at a shopping mall to grab some groceries and pick up a local SIM card. It was right on the way, so why not? Ended up wasting 40 minutes stuck in traffic getting there and hunting for a parking spot. It's January 2nd, technically a work day, but the place was absolutely packed with crowds everywhere.

PS. I could've gotten a SIM card at the airport, but the prices there are three times higher than in the city.

The flight on the first of the month wasn't exactly lucky: we landed 2 hours and 40 minutes behind schedule. A really frustrating delay. Just 20 more minutes late and the airline would've compensated me with 250€ (that's European law for you). But instead, I got to suffer for free.

I actually found the reason for the delay pretty amusing — an expired Russian visa belonging to one of the crew members. According to the airline rep, everything would've been fine if the guy hadn't left the plane, but he stepped out to check something on the outside. That's when the zealous border guards caught him 😅 (Do they really stand guard at every gate?)

airBaltic spent two hours negotiating to free their employee from the hands of these valiant guardians of the border. In the end, they let the guy go — it was just a fine, nobody went to jail. So hey, could've been worse.

Yay, New Year's coming! That means a few days off work and a chance to escape somewhere a bit warmer (if the forecast is to be believed).

Flying out on the first is awesome: the roads to the airport are empty, there's barely anyone at departure, and all the checks go super fast. Beautiful! :)

Lufthansa planes don't have a row 13! Well, okay. A lot of people don't like that number. But they also don't have row 17 (!!), because it's considered unlucky in Italy (and Brazil). It's weird that they didn't remove row 4 for the Chinese.

PS. Yet they park at gate 13 without any problems :)

I was really surprised to see barriers at the entrance to the pedestrian zone. There was nothing like that in Frankfurt before.

It seems terrorist attacks with vehicle rammings are making themselves known.