Dancing & Diving in Zanzibar

Just got back to Stone Town. Spent the past few days on the north coast beach area of the island. Really great to relax and spend some time in the sun. The night before we left, we all met up for sunset at a bar on the beach, than headed to the night market to eat and shop. Heading back to the market soon, lots of good food I haven't tried yet. After the market we went to a bar to hear live music. Really good band. Almost felt like I was in the Carribean, music was similar. Danced for hours with a local guy I met - nice guy, but really young. The next day we took a tour of the area, starting with an historic fort. Stone Town is full of historic buildings, alot of them Arabic in design. Most of the 1 million people live just outside the town. Lots of Mosques as 90% are muslum. We than went to the building that was used to house slaves before they were sold at auction. Zanzibar was a huge slave trading area. The place could not have been more grim. There was a horrible basement with a really low ceiling that had 2 rooms, one for men and one for women and children. The only air coming in was from a tiny window in each room. There the slaves were brought in from all around east Africa, in shackles. We thought we were cramped with our group of 20 in one room - they would put 70 in. They would be in there for 3-4 days with no toilet facilities, given only sugar water to drink. Many died and the bodies would be still be there. Of course there was lots of screaming from the children. The slave market area now has a church on it that was built in the late 1800's. There is a window dedicated to John Livingstone, an English explorer that helped to end slavery here. He spent many years traveling and exploring Africa and went home to give many speeches to universities and business men telling them the horrors of slavery and why it needed to stop. We were all quite quiet after that tour, absorbing what we saw and learned. We drove on to tour the spice plantations. Zanzibar is known as the spice island - as is Grenada in the Carribean. Very interesting to see things like cinnamin - it comes from bark of the tree, cloves, cocoa, vanilla, nutmeg - the pit of a fruit and mace comes from the same plant. We got to sample lots of tropical fruits after the tour, my first taste of lychee, very good. Then a man climbed a palm tree to get coconuts for us to drink the milk and to eat. We moved on to lunch at a house - spicey rice, tasted great. The ladies there also did henna tatoos - I got one on my ankle and foot, quite beautiful & don't worry mom, only lasts 3 weeks:)

Later in the afternoon we took a bus to the north side of the island. Nice hotel (only $10 each per night) with a bar overlooking to ocean. First night I went to bed early, as I was very tired from being out late the night before and the long day we had. Also needed sleep because diving the next morning. This was my first ocean dive and it was really great. We took a small boat for 1 hour 20 minutes to get to a wall and reef off an atoll. Natalie - one of the Australian women in our group, was my buddy. I felt really good about that as she is a certified rescue diver. She told me I did excellent! My air was low after 30 minutes, so had to go up. Some of the others went up too and some stayed for another 10 minutes. Saw lots of beautiful fish, coral and plants. The water was so clear. We had a snack and moved on the another dive spot. This time we also saw 2 huge turtles. A few of the people on the boat were seasick from the boatride. Glad I wasn't. We had lunch aboard and headed back. That night we had dinner on the beach. Little tables set up with gas lamps, could have been very romantic, but we had alot of fun anyway. Later I played some pool in the bar and a few of us went with a local guy to dance at a bar not full of tourists. I danced alot there - mostly with some women I met there. They seemed very interested in meeting a white woman. Today we spent as much time as we could at the beach. I got a wonderful massage for $4. The women do them and also braid hair and paint tattoos.

We had to say good-bye to some of our mates today. I'm especially going to miss Monica and Carlos, the Italian couple. We got to be really good friends the past week. I promised them I will come to visit, definately don't mind going to Italy!

Time is running out again, need to get to the market. We're taking the overnight ferry back to Dar Es Salaam tonight. Then back on the truck for a 12 hour drive tomorrow.

Until later,

Linda