Sun, sea, sand and...

... SCUBA of course!!

The long road down

The journey from Arusha to Dar es Salaam was a bit of a white knuckle ride at times. The bus was hot and the air flying in through the window was hotter. Some of the overtaking manouvres our driver pulled off bordered on the insane and we were thankful to arrive in one piece that evening in Dar.

The beautiful Zanzibar

The ferry over to Zanzibar was quick. We arrived at the ferry port on the west side of the island and immediately jumped into a taxi for our trip across the island to Paje on the east coast.

Our lodge, Paje by Night, was run by an Italian couple and was simply stunning. Our room had a hot shower!!! Oh how we've missed a good shower! The beach was about 50 metres from our room and was the palm fringed idyll we'd been hoping for. Our five days in Paje mainly consisted of sunning ourselves (although not for long as it is so hot), reading and drinking beer and cocktails. The local shack restaurants all offered freshly caught fish and were incredibly good value.

The 1st Dives

We also did our first dives of the trip. We headed out early on a small boat to a reef about 20 minutes offshore. The coral was incredible and the fish came in all colours and sizes. We had a short break between our dives and the seas were unfortunately very choppy. Elliott (with his famous weak stomach inherited from his mother) tried hard not to throw up whilst watching a poor Canadian girl giving in to the urge, while Gem just stared at the horizon. We were both thankful to get back into the water for our second dive. We really enjoyed it and can't wait for the cage diving with sharks in South Africa (hmm...maybe not!!).

Stone Town

After our relaxing few days we headed back to Stone Town on the west coast. We had spent far too much money over the past few days so decided it was time to tighten the purse strings. We opted for the local transport, a small pickup truck with benches along each side. When it finally arrived after an hour's wait, it was already packed. We threw our bags onto the roof and prayed that they would be there when we got off. There was room for one butt cheek each and the journey lasted about 1 1/4 hours. But for a quid each we weren't complaining. And our bags arrived too. Bargain!!

That day we took a guided tour around the town with a local tout called Hakim. He was a very nice man and very knowledgable about the place. We saw the spice market, the old slave chambers (not nice!!) and a few other things. We drank a beer watching the sunset, thinking about all the snow back home then headed for dinner. We ate at a small place across from our guest house, and to Elliott's (but not Gemma's) delight, his first live football match for 5 weeks!! Not Man Utd, but Chelsea drawing with Hull!! A great night in Africa!!

Back to Dar

With our renewed feeling that we needed to travel more cheaply we opted for the overnight slow ferry. It's half the price of the faster day ferries and we saved on a night's accommodation!! We arrived at the ferry terminal after watching the sun set from a nearby restaurant and found that we were the only whites there!

Having paid the "Mzungu price" (inflated rate that white people have to pay for everything) we were sent into the nice air conditioned area and even got a mattress each. We fell asleep before the boat had left Zanzibar and woke up around 6am in the port of Dar es Salaam.

Off to South Africa

We are now spending the day looking around Dar and our flight to Johannesburg leaves tomorrow morning at 7:25am. We've really enjoyed our time in Tanzania and would recommend it to anyone as a holiday destination. We know we will definitely be coming back at some point in the future.

Love Ells and Gem xx