Leaving Paradise

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Trip Start Jul 25, 2006 Previous
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  Zanzibar, Tanzania
Friday, August 18, 2006

Just had lovely few days in Zanzibar and am now waiting for the ferry back to the mainland. Mind you after the ferry out think i will quadruple the number of seasickness tablets and not eat anything. Ferry over was worst boat experience i have ever had but have been warned that it will be worse on the way back. Great fun. The ferry over was so horrible, had cockroaches, was baking hot,spent whole time wondering why no safety video but instead they played the film, 80days around the world to attempt to distract everyone from clutching their stomachs and wondering where the life jackets are. Not fun.
But fortunately Zanzibar was totally worth the horrible ferry although note to anyone else going you can fly for about the same price as the ferry!! Spent 1st 2 nights in the capital, Stone Town, sharing an 8bedroom dorm room with my truck mates. OUr dorm room looked very like an orpahange bedroom but the joy of a bed after 18days camping made it great nonetheless

Beach house...home to Bex and i

. Also discovering that we did not have to pay extra to have air con but just had to ask to turn it on also improved the room a lot! Stone Town is very interesting, is strong Muslim area so is kinda an Arabian/Africa/European feel and has interesting history - Livingstone and ending the slave trade. Did a Spice Tour which also involved eating lotsa yummy fruit which is not a phrase i can often say!
Spent the last 2 nights on a beach aka Paradise. White sands and turquoise waters and stunning sunrises-was so good didn't mind getting up at 6am the only mornings we were there! ONly slight downside of paradise was that every restaurant experience was an event, which lasted hours at a time, punctuated with '2minutes, 2minutes and 'hukana matata' which is their very convenient explanation for everything. With the girls on the truck they also try to distract you with 'you have a beautiful smile, no worries' but still the service is slow to stop to non-existent! Definately an experience!
Yesterday 5 of us decided we wanted to go snorkling on a doha- homemade wooden boat with a sail. Wind 'not good' so we got punted out to the coral which also involved 2 of us bailing out the boat to avoid us drowning. Got there, think the safety speech was missed somehow and they just watched us scrabble overboard and figure out the snorkling. Which was great, except for the fisherman with a spear who kept following me and laughing when i looked scared and didn't like his surprise hellos! At one point he goes, 'ever seen an octopus?' i was like no...he was like look, stabs one with his spear and holds it on his hand for me! Arg! An experience! Also saw massive starfish and lots of Finding Nemo fish (my fish knowledge all stems from this film). On the way back we had hoped to put the sail up, but it went up, the boat flew across the water for about 1minute before coming down and somehow ripping, much to our amusement and a lot of rapid Swahili being yelled between the boat men. Needless to say, we punted back too!
Last story from paradise, which was so stunning, can you ever have enough photos of sea like that...i think not, went to the toilet yesterday, had no roof on it, stood up and got hit on head by a coconut. No lie, was totally stunned for 1 sec then looked to see what had hit me and couldnt believe it! Crazy!

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Fish Market, Stone Town	Ladies collecting seaweed, Zanzibar	My masai friends- 'Good price' and 'Cheaper Price'	Paradise Beach, Paje, Zanzibar
Sundowners!	Sunrise in Zanzibar	Sunset in Stone Town

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