Zanzibar (a place with lots of other white tourists)

Sorry for the quick last post.
I have a whole 22 minutes for this one so it should be a little bit longer.

Right now we're in Zanzibar, which is an island off the mainland of Tanzania.
But, before I describe the scene here I'll backtrack a little bit to give more details about the end of our experience in Kenya.

The last major thing that Hillary and I did in Kenya was a 3 day safari in Maasai Mara national park (probably the most famous park in Kenya).
We were booked to go with a company called Planet Safari (and, in fact, we were booked to go with someone named "Avi"), but when we arrived in the morning, the nice people at Planet told there there is "a problem".
Avi and his friend did not show up, and Planet certainly was not going take only the 2 of us, so they decided to book us with a different company (that we hadn't heard of).
We weren't so pleased with the prospect, but we went along with it (what choice did we have?)

We were scurried off to a gas station about 20 minutes out of Nairobi where a van of 5 people who were on a safari with "Jocky Tours" awaited our arrival.

Safari is difficult to describe. It basically looks like all those pictures that you see (except this time, you're in the pictures).

We saw a ton of wildlife (duh). I think that my favourite were the lions and elephants.
Seeing lions in Africa was a little bit different than seeing them at African Lion Safari near Niagara Falls. (As a note, I really liked Africa Lion Safari when I went when I was around 7. The coolest part was when the monkeys jumped on our van and ripped off the weather stripping).

Anyway, I took about 500 pictures and it will take me forever to sort through them.
perhaps a project for when I get home.

As I think I already wrote, after Nairobi we took a VERY long bus ride to Dar Es Salaam in Tanzania.

The border was funny.

When we got there, the "conductor" of the bus just yelled "BORDER!" and everybody filed off.
No instructions were given and it was somewhat of a zoo.
We had to first find the Kenya immigration office and get stamped to leave and then walk about a half kilometre to the Tanzania office (neither of which were particularly well marked).
We asked the nice lady at the Tanzania office where we could exchange money (we weren't fond of the idea of exchanging with all the people on the street who were offering) and she said "back on the Kenyan side".
So I ran back to kenya, found an exchange office and ran back to Tanzania in time to catch the bus.

We spent a night in Dar (with Jon!) and then headed about an hour and a half away for our third shabbat which we spent in Pugu Hills.
We decided to camp again, which was a huge success.
We are now 3 for 3.
Pugu was an amazing place (getting there was insane, but I'll have to describe that later).

Sunday was dedicated to getting to Zanzibar. We took the "slow" ferry which was 3 hours (of nausea).
It wasn't too bad.
I followed the locals and laid down on the floor to try and sleep a little.

This is now our second night on Zanzibar.
We're staying in stone town which is the main town here.
Its old and amazing.
Lots of dark alleys.
I really really like it here.

Today we took a spice tour.
I learned the cinamon comes from the bark of a tree (who knew? - If you knew, then don't think that I'm stupid).

We're planning to head to the beaches tomorrow.
Apparently they're beautiful here.

I personally can't really stand sitting on a beach.
In fact, its one of my least favourite activities. I'll have to figure out something to keep my occupied (something that doesn't involved baking in the hot sun).

There is also the International Zanzibar Film festival going on now.
We saw a couple of cool movies and heard some pretty good live music.

I want to come back next year.

More stories later