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Day thirty five (continued)
We arrived at Zanzibar Island to be greeted by hordes of local guys wanting to take us to their guest house. After trying to find accommodation in town, we ended up in a guesthouse just out of town at a small coastal village called Bububu.
In the evening we went back into town for dinner. We went to a place called The Maharaj, an Indian restaurant. It was very pricy but the food was nice.After that we had a wander round the Old Town and found a few drinking holes to wet our whistle.
Day thirty six
The day was spent chilling out on the beach which was about 100m walk from our guesthouse. In the evening we went to the Africa House which was supposed to be a great spot to catch Zanzibar's famous sunsets. We actually found a better spot at another restaurant and got some good photos.
We returned to the guesthouse at Bububu and walked along the beach to a nearby restaurant for dinner. They mucked up our orders completely, so drank Konyagis and Peach Schnapps all night and boogied with the locals on the dancefloor into the wee hours. Konjagi is a spirit made up of gin and vodka and is quite tasty.
Day thirty seven
There were a few people in the group who wanted to do some deepsea diving and there was a good place to hire equipment and dive in the north of Zanzibar called Nungwi. It was also reputed to have cheap accommodation on the beach and a good beach at that, so most of the group decided to go up to Nungwi as well. A couple of the guys hired motorbikes to tour around Zanzibar, but would meet up with us all at Nungwi.
We hired a minibus and drove up to Nungwi. It was a good drive with lots of palm trees everywhere. Nungwi has a beautiful beach with warm water. The Indian Ocean is undoubtedly the warmest ocean that I have swum in.
There were a whole lot of bungalos next to the beach which we rented out at about USD$5 a night. Dinner was groper and coconut rice.
Day thirty eight
I got up early to hire some snorkelling gear, only for the weather to rough the water up and make snorkelling more difficult. Everyone was lined up on the beach sunbathing, when the clouds opened and there was a mad dash for cover. It cleared up after a while and everyone had Kingfish for lunch. The beach was ideal to walk along with lots of little inlets and bays to wade through.
After coming back from an afternoon swim, I went into the village looking for a sarong (when in Rome). There were some kids playing soccer so I played goalkeeper while they tried to get the ball past me. It was good fun. I found a sarong that I liked and then returned for dinner. It was freshly caught Groper again but it was nice. Everyone had a few beers and some wine with dinner. It had been a couple of nice, relaxing days.
Day thirty nine
It was an early start to the day and there was some drama in the morning as we heard about Jess finding a rat in the toilet in the middle of the night. We returned back to the Zanzibar Town and stayed at Bububu again. A few of us went on an organised trip to Prison Island which was just off the coast. It was about a 45 minute ride on a rough old boat with an outboard motor. We saw some giant turtles there which were supposed to be over a 100 years old. After a look around the island, some sunbathing and lunch, we went back to the main island.
Late in the afternoon we all went into town to Africa House to meet up with everybody else and hear about the day's activities. A few of the others had decided to go on a Spice tour (Zanzibar is known as the spice island) but it had turned into an unmitigated disaster. The guide didn't know anything about the deal that Raj (local guy who had found us accommodation at Bububu) had made with our guys, and they ended up quitting the "tour" after half an hour.
We all had a few beers at the Africa House and then went to a place called the Clove, which was quite a nice italian restaurant, but didn't really fill anybody up, with sizes of the dishes being quite small. In the end we all went down to the Harbour and bought pizza and icecream, before frequenting a few bars to finish the night off.
Day forty
We had to get up at 5am to catch our plane back to Dar. It was a cruisy flight only taking about 15 minutes.
Click here for Tanzania 3.
