The Gap Year Adventure....

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.....

helllooooo! sorry for the lack of updsates - there really hasnt been anything to update you on. We have just been continuing to teach at the school.

We move on today to manyara for 5 days. Manyara is where the new project is going to be so we are spending a few days there helping to set it up and doe\ing some of the conservation work we came to Tanzania to do! Really looking forward to it - apparently there are LOADS of elephants in the area and they just wander around camp all the time :-)

We are really out in the bush for the next week (still in tents) so no showers, toilets or intenet but lots and lots of rice and cabbage!! :-(

we come back to the snake park next saturday then its on to Zanzibar until 31st March, i fly to singapore on 1st April.

Tom and I are both great, just got itchy feet and want to move on now!!

next saturday i will have some new photos to put up so watch this space....

hope everyone is ok - missing you all!

lou

xxx

hello! sorry about the lack of updates - nothing much has changed since i last wrote.

We have been continuing to teach at the school and have prepared an environmental seminar to do on Saturday to help educate the local people on water conservation etc.

We will be leaving the snake park next week to spend a week at the new project which is in the process of being set up before going to Zanzibar for our final week which i really cant wait for!!

Happy birthday to Trish and Mags although ill have already rung you by now!

We fly to Spingapore on 1st April, i really cant wait to move on now. Tanzania ia amazing but The far east is calling!

hope everyone is ok, ill update you all once something more happens!

Thanks for the phone calls, its really nice to hear from people.

speak soon

lou

xx

hiya! all is going great at the snake park -on Saturday night (the only night we are allowed to drink) we had a HUGE night inteh bar which resulted in approximately 13 shots each - with the exception of myself of course who caputred the whole thing on camera much to the embarasment of everyone else in the group! Tom was INCREDIBLY drunk

Lessons at the learning centre are goign really well - tom and i have been put in charge of computer lessons at the learning centre and are going really really well. We have also managed to get 7 computers working now which they are really really happy with.

The science work should be starting tomorrow - hopefully we will get our permit today which willl be cool as the lessons are only once a day so the rest of the day appears to be wasted reading many many books - not that im complaining though!

anyway nothing much to update on so i'll go for now until we have done somehting more interesting!!

miss you

lou

xxx

P.S. we are now at 40oC!!

helllooooo from Mezzerani Snake Park. This is the biggest and best snake park in Tanzania and it is the place where they make all of the anti-venoms for east africa so im safe if i get bitten! They also have a HUGE zoo with crocodiles and lots of other animals, going to go check it out on Saturday. It's run by 2 crazy australians and its just so cool!

We are planning on being here for 3 weeks at the moment but it may increase dependant upon other plans. At the moment we are teaching in a local learning centre which caters for everyone from children to adults which is really cool, i have been doing coputer lessons today and yesterday and tom, Mikey and I have managed to get 3 computers working that they had written off which is ace! They tried to rope me into doing maths lessons but that wouldnt have been such a great idea seeing as the 10 year olds are all doing algebra - they are ridiculously good at maths unfortunately!!

We will be doing some science work once we get permission from Tanzanian Wildlife foundation - so much paperwork to be done but we will be doind surveys to find out what animals are living in the area!

Still eating ridiculous amounts of rice and now cabbage added to that pleasure - wonderful!! At least the snake park has a bar that serves toasties (only cheese and tomato though) so dont worry nan - i wont starve!!

we are all ok, having a great time here and looking forward to the science stuff to come (though personally i much prefer the school!)

the weather is incredibly hot now - the last 2 days have been almost unbearable heat - not that im complaining as there's always a nice cold drink to be found in the bar!

hope you liked the pictures

miss you lots

lou

xxxxxx