From Arusha we got the bus down to Dar Es Salaam on the coast. We'd heard you could get cheap boats to Zanzibar from a little town north of Dar Es Salaam called Bagamoyo. So we had our first and slightly confusing journey using Dalla Dallas (the little mini buses everyone uses here) to get there. We didn't really know where we were going or where any of the many many mini buses were going. but it all worked out well in the end. On the way we past a bus which had crashed onto it's side at the edge of the road. It was completely burnt out and still on fire but lots of people were trying to push it back up the right way. As we past they succeeded, nearly crushing the people stood on the other side of it. I'm not really sure what the purpose was as there was no way they'd be able to get back on, but it showed their strength I suppose and was interesting to watch.

In Bagamoyo we found a very cheap place to stay, which after a night there, we think perhaps may have been a brothel. Our light bulb was red and even with it switched off, outside our room were lots of noisy men and we had quite a few knocks on the door. Naomi wisely pushed the one chair in the room against the door and we went to sleep in our bed feeling glad one of us wasn't there alone.



Apart from that though it was quite a nice little town. In the afternoon we walked up the beach in search of a boat, passed lots of fishermen with their catches of fish and ladies scraping off the fish's scales onto the beach. We discovered that we could probably get a dhow over to Zanzibar but they left in the middle of the night and it wasn't an advisable way to get there if you wanted to live. So we returned to Dar Es Salaam and after quite a bit of hassle from the ferry men we managed to get a ferry to Zanzibar the same day.



We spent just over a week on Zanzibar, which is such a lovely Island. For a few days we stayed in Stone Town where there's hundreds of tiny alleys running off each other with little shops and peoples homes on either side and lots of amazing doors. All the alleys look very similar, especially at first, and you can just spend hours walking around being endlessly lost just turning down any alley that looks like a nice one. In the evenings there's a street food market where they sell delicious pizzas. They're not quite like the pizzas we have though - they use a kind of pancake base, then put a filling on top, fold over the edges, add a raw egg, then cook on a hot plate type thing. As the sun sets loads of the local people do very impressive jumps off the harbour wall which was funny to watch.



From Stone Town we went on a spice tour and learnt how all sorts of different spices and fruits grow and we got to taste lots of them too. I found out that pepper corns grow on vines which climb up other trees, cinnamon tree leaves smell like cloves, their bark smells like cinnamon and is what cinnamon sticks are made from, and their roots small like vicks and is used when people have colds. I learnt that you should never put a whole fresh clove in your mouth and chew it, and that some Tanzanian ladies eat nutmeg porridge to enlarge their pupils and make them more attractive to men.

We spent a few days in the North of the Island and stayed on one of the most beautiful beaches I've ever seen. The sand was so white and the sea perfectly turquoise. It couldn't have been nicer. I spent a day diving where there were some lovely hard and soft corals but sadly not a huge amount of fish, as I think over fishing has been a problem there. We did see a huge turtle sitting on the bottom though and when we were back on the boat we found we were of interest to a group of about 20 dolphins. We could have got in and swam with them but the sea was rough and I was scared I'd never get back to the boat if I left, so I stayed where I was and watched from the safety of the boat.

The place where we stayed put on beach parties each Saturday and so we were able to join in with one of those. It was a very fun evening although that was at least partly because the party was so bad. We'd bought our own drinks with us from Stone Town and so started the evening off with them and a few games of cards outside our bungalow, before going down to the beach in good spirits. It seems that a lot of Tanzanian men very much like white girls and so we spent our time dancing for a couple of minutes and then having to run away from groping hands to dance somewhere else for a very short time before having to swiftly move on again. We succeeded in getting away from everyone even though some of the people we had to escape from on more than one occasion!



Unfortunately at the end of our time in the North, it turned out that if you eat at a restaurant rather than street stalls (as we'd previously been doing) then it might not necessarily be good for your insides. And so I returned to Stone Town in not the best of states. Naomi looked after me very well indeed though and it caused a lot of amusement for us both. Sadly though the return to Stone town was an ending. It not only meant I needed to leave Zanzibar, but also that my wonderful traveling buddy Noami would leave me all alone and return to England.