Hotel International Stone Town

... and, in these conditions, no air co.<br><br>So, I got it pretty good actually. To be honest, more bearable in the dark :)<br><br>The flight back? The horrors of KLM long haul economy (truly) were made all better with me second Danish Pastry, Thomas, the hot surgeon who's shoulder my head ended up in as we sort of slept back to Amsterdam. Umm...and he knew Claes. Small world. Or perhaps just small Denmark. Landed at 5.30am, said goodbye to Thomas, picked up my ruck sack ...

... low strung lights, people calling out their food like wares. We were also entranced by the local boys who were wholeheartedly flinging themselves off the wall and into the water below. As we watched a dozen boys went off in a matter of minutes, getting a running start and then throwing themselves into the air so that when they hit the air it could be head first, back first or in any other strange contortion. They were having a blast, and ...

... each, one furnished in with carved ebony seats and woven cushions, the other half with a green and pink three piece suite from DFS. A sign of how faded all this was, the sultans' burial place was next door, and the graves were seriously overgrown and badly tended &#8211; can't imagine this happening to Queen Victoria.<br><br>Underneath Africa House's balcony was the night food market &#8211; an atmospheric garden of stalls ...

... the constant fine dust but how flat the Serengeti was. No wonder it means "Endless Plains" by the local Masai tribe. It stretched in a 360 degree with hills away in the far distance. It is as big as Northern Ireland or USA state of Connecticut, some 14,763 sq kms. The flat landscape was broken by kopjes or rocks outcrops where we saw lions doing what lions do ... not much except lazing about in the sun.<br><br>The vastness was also broken by watering creeks where the many different ...

... people could get on! The journey to Stone Town took about 1 hour 30mins and I have definitely had better experiences. When we arrived we were all fairly tired and disorientated to be arriving in a new place; we now faced running the gauntlet of finding somewhere to stay. This was never going to be easy: the 4 of us all had different priorities (mine was to go somewhere really cheap and never mind how nice it is!). On top of this we were constantly hassled by touts trying to ...

... fuel. We later found out that the tank only holds 6 liters. Anyway, we were in the middle of some farms when we ran out of fuel. We started pushing the bike along the road and there were lots of locals stopping to help. One showed us a trick to lay the bike on its side to get the last drops of fuel into the line. That worked for another couple of kilometers. Then we just pushed. Several kids tried to sell us fuel from water bottles for 10 times ...

... in a wine glass and we sat together watching the final light of day disappear into night. After dinner my mum and dad went straight back to their room, me and John went to the sunset bar, a bar out on a pier type thing in the sea. We ordered a non-alcoholic cocktail each - called a banana seduction, which was absolutely delicious. A man called Hussein asked if he could join us and we ended up chatting to him for a while. Originally we were only going to stay for one drink, but we ...

From the campsite at Dar, we took a barge to the city and then a ferry to Zanzibar. The ferry was a little bit rough, but we all slept so were fine. We arrived in Stone Town and went straight onto the Spice Tour. The first stop was the site of the last African Slave Trade, quite a reminder of the past. Then we were off to a farm to see where all the spices come from. Very elightening! They had us tasting/ smelling ...

... I ran back to my dorm room, put on my swim trunks, and returned to the boat load of people waiting for me. There was some mix up on who should get the commission for getting me on the boat. A beach tout wanted the money while my receptionist argues she deserved it. Truth is none of them did as it was my decision. I let them sort it out. Everybody here tries to get commission even when they don't do any leg work. It is quite funny how it ...

... en posters, geweldig. Wel <br> heel compleet verder, en hoera: warm water! Na dagen koud water en zelfs <br> een dag GEEN water, is dat heerlijk. <br><br> <br><br> En Stone Town is ook superleuk! Echt helemaal zoals ik gehoopt had na <br> de verhalen uit de gids en van andere reizigers. Allemaal kleine kronkelstraatjes, <br> mooie gebouwen met Arabische, Aziatische en Portugese invloeden, veel <br> lekker eten ...