Talking of the truck though (whose name was Rafiki, which means friend in Swahili) we sadly parted ways and said goodbye before boarding the ferry to the magical island of Zanzibar - even the name sounds facinating, I think.
Well we'd only been away from the truck ten minutes before I remembered that I'd left my sleeping bag in the luggage compartment! Oh well, I wouldn't be needing it in Zanzibar anyway! My sleeping bag, and camping, days were behind me!
We waved goodbye to Tanzania as we headed across the sea, then I started feeling sea sick, so I fell asleep in a seat and woke up to find us docking. Goodbye Tanzania:
We're home, this is where we belong! What a waste of time all that camping was :) I'm kidding of course, we loved it really, but what a way to relax now!
Here we are getting ferried over to Zanzibar:
So we rock up in Stone Town on the island for two nights. Stone Town is the Muslim part of the island, which means plenty of covering up in crazy high temperatures. I've never been anywhere like it before, and totally packed the wrong type of clothes! Within minutes I was sweating and carrying my heavy rucksack in desperate need of a beer in a Muslim quarter...hmmm.
Rucksack dumped at the hotel, we hit the shops for some girl time! Most of the others went on a spice tour, but we wanted our own time to do our own thing...buying pretty things! I purchased this marvellous dress:
Not sure when I'll be airing it in the UK though but who cares?
Stone Town was hot but beautiful, all the buildings were stained and shabby, just how I like them. It had a really laid back vibe to it and it was a great place to just wander and get lost in, in fact all the guide books tell you to get lost, so we did.
Later that day we all reconvened at the Africa House Hotel - the best place in Stone Town to watch the sun set:
Beautiful! Playing cards, drinking cold beer, sunset and good company...
We had dinner on the beach that night and treated ourselves to a fairly early night.
The next morning most of the group went on a scuba dive trip, but Nayani and I decided to hang back and do our own thing as we're not big divers. We laid in bed watching MTV until 9am - amazing! We had a TV and air con, we weren't moving anywhere!
After a lazy breakfast, we went for a wander around Stone Town again and bought more presents we didn't need, but we liked to think we were helping the local economy.
We got totally lost in the maze of tiny streets in Stone Town, just wandering aimlessly and taking everything in, and trying to stay in the shade! After a lazy lunch (spotting a pattern?) we headed back to the fan in the hotel reception to play cards, the only thing you can do when it's hot and there's no beach to lay on.
Once again we headed to the Africa House Hotel for another beautiful sunset and game of cards:
Then we went off to dinner at a restaurant where you sat on cushions on the floor, we'd probably had too much beer to fully appreciate it, but it was fun to experience it and I realised that I'm quite fond of chairs and tables when eating!
Later that night we played drinking games from around the world and went off to a traditional nightclub! We danced, we drank, we danced some more and we drank some more. At 3am we were dragged out of there as we had to get up at 8am for another bus journey to another part of Zanzibar. We'd regret this in the morning, but right then, we were having the time of our lives!
Stunning hey?
