Zanzibar Coffee House Stone Town

... truck delivering sand to the village - either way you end up having sand in every pore of your body by the end of the day. It's worth the trip though, Livingstonia is an interesting (if slightly bizarre, as so so sleepy) kind of place!

Then it was time to pack our bags and leave Malawi, not without feeling somehow sorry that our time in this wonderful country was up already. But Tanzania was waiting and we were heading to Dar Es Salaam to meet our friend Alex there in a few days ...

... off to a flying start, that shower head and I. As fate would have it when I actually needed a cold shower, only hot water would spurt out.

And then it didn't spurt out at all.

SO guess who ended up with her head in a sink under a tap again? Not a bad system though.

But, having "roughed it" so again, it was time for my height of post-colonialism. See...Echalotte was right. He had predicted if I found somewhere for a manicure and pedicure, I'd try to ...

... actually just yells really loud. His favorite word is nipa (give me) and he love to scream my name (which he thinks is habari for some reason) as loud as he can until I look at whatever he is doing. He is cute though, and the entire family is teaching me a lot. Shyene has become my new little swahili teacher, and love to correct my incredibly basic and shaky kiswahili. I am learning though, slowly but surely.
They live in a traditional swahili home, it is three levels. I live on ...

... and yet supports such a wide variety of life.

Bush surgery was the evening's entertainment as the small unassuming cut on my knee had become and full blown pus filled biohazard. 4 can's of Tusker (east africa's favoured brew) and the A-team of a pharmacist, sports physiotherapist and a qualified first aider became digging under the infected scab and attempted to clean out the wound. Much stinging ensued but soon enough the operation was complete and my knee began its ...

... eating fruit. We had oranges, pineapple, passion fruit, this white custard plant that I thought was amazing, and more litchis. It was so cool to have such good, fresh fruit. After the tour we took our sweaty, rained on bodies back to the hotel to shower and get ready for dinner. We went for drinks again at the African House, then went to eat at this awesome restaurant over looking the water. I had shrimp in coconut milk and it was amazing. (Do you see a trend ...

... also saw cotton, sugar cane, bananas and other crops suited to this climate. For a few km we even drove through real jungle. Staying in Kampala (a safe city compared to Nairobi) for New Year we then traveled on to Jinja on New Years Day with half of the group while the other half went trekking Mountain Gorillas in Western Uganda, close to the border with Democratic Republic of Congo. In Jinja we stayed at a beautiful campsite, Nile High, situated about 30m ...

... or the safari driver slows on a remote dirt road in the bush to answer a call or a traditional kitchen party wedding speech is interrupted by a cell phone ringing with the "We wish you a merry Christmas" ring tone! Much good comes from this ability to connect, but I find myself saddened in some ways. It's harder to find solitude now. Both are needed - connection and solitude. It's just with cell phones and the internet, more effort is required to carve out time for ...

... into the game as she is half Italian. Things didn't work out for her (or me but I didnt really care that much) as Italy lost in shootouts. The one thing that shocked me though was the reaction of the locals after Spain clinched the game. There were many Italians in the restauirant watching the game. It was obvious most of the people were going for Italy. Because our restaurant had a huge projector screen, there were about 50-60 local men from the ...

... We had lunch at Mercury's right by the port. Not only is it an excellent restaurant looking out over the islands just off the shore but it's also a mine of information about Freddie. Our final week soon came to an end and on the Thursday morning we headed for the capital Stone Town where we were to spend our last night before flying out early Friday morning. We had lunch ...