Zanzibar

Well, we made it to Zanzibar!  We took the 9:30 ferry on Thursday and ended up arriving around noon.  We checked into the hotel and then ate lunch at a cute little restaurant down the street.  I had vegetable biriani, Lara had Pilau, and mom had chicken and chips.  Then, we headed off for a guided walking city tour around Stone Town.  I had already been on this tour, but it was cool to hear everything again.  I caught so much more this time around since we weren’t in a huge group.  The tour showed us the old slave chambers, the church, Tippu Tip’s house, Zanzibar doors, and much more.  We all returned to the hotel, hot and sweaty, for a nice shower.  We ate at the seafood market that night and I had a tuna shishkabob and chapatti while mom had a prawn skewer.  We also tried Zanzibarian pizza-a fried pizza with laughing cow cheese, tomato, and egg.  We also had passionfruit juice and fresh pineapple.  By that night, we were all exhausted, so we went to sleep on our lovely air conditioned rooms J. 

Yesterday we got up early and had a breakfast of  fruit, toast, cereal, eggs, and kitumbua.  We met Karen’s family down in the hotel lobby for a dolphin tour.  The drive was quite long (over an hour) but we finally made it to the dolphin beach where we got masks and flippers and headed out in a boat to find dolphins.  After about 30 minutes we spotted a pod of dolphins and got ready to jump.  And just like that, we were swimming with the dolphins!  I LOVE swimming with the dolphins!  This pod was a group of 6 dolphins, and they were quite fast so it was hard to keep up with them.  We snorkeled for a while afterwords and got to see starfish, sea cucumbers, needlefish, parrot fish, angel fish, and lots of coral.  We ate lunch at the lodge and had rice, chips, chapatti, tuna, spinach, and coconut sauce.  It was delicious!  After lunch we drove to the Jozani forest and got to see the red colobus monkeys which live only on Zanzibar.  We returned to the hotel around mid afternoon and I went off to the market while the others showered and rested.  I ended up buying a kanga and some spices.  I got lost a few times in Stone Town, but eventually found my way back.  Last night we ate dinner at the Radha Food House, a wonderful little Indian Restaurant. 

Today we are just going to hang around Stone Town. We don’t have a ton planned but we want to go to the shops and do some shopping and then perhaps go to the beach.