Zanzibar....

Thought i should start to catch up on the blogs i missed due to lack of internet access!

Zanzibar started with a 9 hour coach journey to Dar es Salaam on a surprisingly good coach (we expected to stand of a cramemd bus thing!). We even got served free soda, water and sweets. The best bit of the journey has to be watching the dodgy african films that they were showing on the TV - dancing hearts 1 & 2, probably the worst films I have ever watched with no plot or storyline! Ahh it made the journey go faster though!

When we arrived in Dar we got a 4 hour ferry to Zanzibar. This was an interesting ride as here we were all crammed in (i was sat on the floor and got pins and needles from my waist down for pretty much the whole journey - not good!) Also there was a coffin on board (apparently a singer from Zanzibar) which was pretty awkward as the lady accompanying the coffin proceeded to wail for the entire 4 hours whilst we sat there and tried not to look.

We spent the first night (Monday) on Zanzibar in the Stone Town - the old part of Zanzibar. This was a really nice area where we went to a local night market and tried various things such as zanzibar pizza (it's sooo good!) Tuesday morning was spent wandering around the streets of stone town and shopping :-) Tuesday afternoon we went to Kendwa rocks - the beach that we stayed at. Our accomodation was pretty basic huts on the edge of the beach - needless to say the view from them was gorgeous and we were more than happy despite the fact that they were made out of wood, had no filling between the pieces of wood and the inside walls were covered with scrappy bits of cloth to try and disguise this fact.

The beach was incredible, the sand was pure white and the water was so so warm. We spent the afternooon lazing on the beach and i had my first beach massage - i was addicted!! The evening was spent in the beach bar eating gorgeous food and just chilling out.

Wednesday was Hannah's birthday so we spent the day lazing on the beach havign massages, henna and I got by hair braided which was interesting! It took forever and hurt like hell but i think it looked pretty cool once finished!! anyway for 1.00 it was worth it!! (for some bizarre reason the PC's in Tanzania and singapore dont have pound signs on them!!)

Thursday was our snorkelling trip to a local island. We travelled by Dow boat, a traditional fishing boat which took 4 hours to get to the island as we sailed along at what can only be described as a 'leisurely' pace! I fell asleep on this journey and, despite being smothered in sun cream, got ridiculously sunburned and didnt realise until the next day when i couldnt walk, stand, lie down, sit - basically i couldnt move!! Snorkelling was cool though - saw soem really random fish and shells that were as big as a computer screen and bigger!

Afetr the snorkelling trip we completeed our last night in Zanzibar in style by staying up until 4am dancing on the bach and everyone else drinking FAR too much. At Approx 1am we all stripped to our underwear and went swinmming in the sea where mikey proceeded to be sick (i sat him at the edge as he was too drunk to swim!) The girls however all got their tops stolen while we were int he water which was HIGHLY annoying as it was one of my favourite tops!! Thjis didnt spoil the mood though and everyone continued to have a great time and get far far too drunk!

Friday was the start of our journey back to Arusha which left everyone regretting the night before! We left 2 girls in Zanzibar to do a scuba diving course, one of the boys went to join his family who has flown out to Zanzibar the night before for a family holiday and the scientist also stayed in zanzibar for a holiday. The rest of us piled back onto the ferry for a very very rough journey back to dar which resulted in severeal people being sick!

Saturday morning was the deathly bus journey back to Arusha - the coach wasnt as nice thisd time and the journey took about 2 hours longer for some reason!! Saturday night was just spent in Arusha before we all split up on Sunday to get our various fights.....