Tuesday, November 22, 2005

Stone Town, Zanzibar Island, Tanzania

JP and I are now on the "relaxing" part of our trips. We flew into Zanzibar Island yesterday, and got a hotel on Matemwe Beach, about an hour from Stone Town on the northeast side of the island.

We wanted to stay at a resort that is affiliated with a 5-star PADI Dive Centre, but the hotel was full. However, they recommended a new place (not even in the Lonely Planet yet), and it's really nice. It's the nicest bed I've slept in on this trip, and the food is the best I've had in east Africa. It's run by Patricia, an italian ex-pat, and it's very well done. Everything is quite simple, but it all works. Yesterday for lunch, JP had the best calamari I've ever tasted (I'm going to have that today). We're sticking with seafood for the rest of the trip here.

Unfortunately the Dive Centre is booked up today and possibly tomorrow, so we may only get diving in on Thursday.

The place we're staying at is very nice to relax and read. I traded one of the books I finished for a Dostoevsky (sp?) book, which will be some nice light reading for the long trip back.

Today we took a day trip into Stone Town, bought some souvenirs, took lotsa pictures, and have access to the web. The place we're at is so remote, the taxi driver had to continually ask people where it was, and there's no real roads around the place, just random sand roads.

The beach is amazing, very very fine white sand. The water's only 25C (lower than the 28C I'm used to diving in in the Caribbean). But there should be lots of little fishies to see.

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