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Amazing, Awsome Africa
I don't know how to do the shortened link thing so appolgies if I've just sucked up everyone's friends site for pages and pages . ..

Written on Sunday 23rd Nov and over the following week:

Greetings everyone. It’s the day after I got back from three glorious weeks in Africa. I simply can’t believe how fast it’s gone. This time last week I was wandering around the world heritage listed Stone Town on the beautiful Zanzibar Island off the coast of Tanzania. Today I’m sitting in my room in London and its snowed last night.

So in order to prolong the memories and pretend I’m still there I’m doing my Africa write up now. I hope you enjoy it, and that it gives you some of a sense of the awesome and amazing trip I’ve been on.

Sat 1st November, 2008

The journey from London is largely uneventful. As the plain circles Nairobi before landing I see a thunder storm from above the clouds in the fading darkness. The lighting flashes and I feel the faint rumble of thunder through my seat. Forks of light illuminate the billowing clouds in the inky darkness. I watch for several enthralled mins, my face glued to the window before the plan turns around and we prepare for landing.

My first notable experience in Africa is just after I’ve arrived at Nairobi airport and am following my driver to the car. I am jet lagged, feeling highly paranoid and there is one heart stopping moment when I think I’ve had my purse stolen, only to find it seconds later in another pocket. It’s dark, hot and humid as we drive to the hotel and the back of the taxi smells like musty old socks. The road is so bad we keep having to slow down for ruts in the road and huge pot holes, but is none the less lined with huge, brightly light bill boards advertising every thing from mobile phones to plasma TVs. These bill boards would become a regular feature on my trip through Africa, at times the most modern and clean thing next to a sea of shanty towns with muddy alley ways and no running water.

More than anywhere else I have been to in the world so far, Africa is a land of immense contrasts. The natural beauty, stunning scenery and amazing wild life simply takes your breath away. The sense of wonder and amazement is matched only by the heart wrenching, gut wrenching, simply appalling conditions and poverty that most of the human population appear to live in. Endless shanty towns of tiny wooden shacks with tin roofs and without basic sanitation lining narrow, muddy alleyways, painted with advertisements for mobile phone companies and Coca-Cola as far as the eye can see…

My first night in the hotel is uneventful and the following morning I’m driven down to Kembu campsite in the Mau Escarpment overlooking the Rift valley, about half a days drive from Nairobi, to meet the Absolute Africa truck and the rest of my group. The views of the Rift Valley on the way down a beautiful, but my anti malaria’s aren’t agreeing with me and I spend much of the drive feeling seedy and trying not get stressed out by the culture shock of seeing the sea of shanty towns we keep driving past. In a moment of perverse coincidence I see my old housemate Dan from Hammersmith as I walk over the group to introduce myself and realise we’re on the same truck. It’s very surreal in a slightly freaky way, but nice to have someone one else in the group I already know. With me and the other guy I drove down with there are now eighteen of us on the truck. It’s made up of the usual mix of mostly Aussies with a generous handful of kiwi’s and a scattering of Europeans. The group is made up of a mix of people joining the truck for different periods of time. I’m only on a three week trip but there are a few others who joined at the start of the trip a few weeks ago and are staying on for the whole seventy two days till just before new years. The truck is named Pumba and is huge and yellow with Absolute Africa splashed along the side, storage underneath for food, the tents and our packs and the cabin where we sit high above the ground on top. The tents are quite roomy three person dome tents with two of us in each tent.

Mon 3rd Nov

After packing up camp we pile onto the truck and drive to Lake Nakuru National Park for a game drive. The others read or sleep or play cards, but journey is still novel to me and I spend the morning gazing out at the beautiful sunny scenery sliding by with a smile on my face.

Lake Nakuru is large, salty and fringed with flocks of colourful pink flamingos. The afternoon’s game drive is remarkable and I rapidly start ticking things off my list of wildlife I wanted to see in Africa. We see families of zebra’s grazing together and herds of water buffalos, impalas and other gazelle. We see fat wart hogs with cute piglets trotting away and families of black and white colobos monkeys scampering through trees. Despite their Disney reputation (think Pumba in the Lion King) in real life wart hogs are incredibly ugly, but look really cute when they are trotting along with their legs pumping and their tails held high in the air.

We are lucky enough to see a black rhino browsing in amongst the bushes. Black rhinos are much more elusive than their more common white relatives and are part of ‘the big five’. The major distinguishing feature between the two is the shape of the mouth. Black rhinos browse in scrubby areas on bushes and have a narrow, beak shaped mouth. In contrast white rhinos graze in open grasslands and have a much wider mouth. At the time of colonisation the European’s misinterpreted ‘wide rhino’ as ‘white rhino’, leading to the naming of black versus white rhinos which confusingly has little to do with colour. The big five is made up of the black rhino, elephant, water buffalo, lion and leopard. Back in the good old days these five animals were considered the hardest and most dangerous to hunt and many a white hunter ventured into the African bush to prove their prowess by shooting the big five. These days shooting the big five is a tourist term referring to capturing the big five on camera. The big five misses out on several of the animals I wanted to see in Africa and I instead put together a list of Sarah’s special seven or so, which also includes hippos, giraffes, zebras, cheetahs, flamingos and monkeys.

That night we wild camped in the park with nothing but a fire and thin tent walls to keep the animals at bay.


The following morning it’s up early for another game drive. I get see my first giraffes which are even more impressive in real life than any picture in a book can do justice to. They are immense creatures that remind me of some vast, mammalian diplodocus with their long necks stretching though the tree tops. We see a large family of around eight individuals feeding close by and are thrilled when they walk up to truck and cross the road not five metres in front of us. They are so tall they would have to stoop their heads to look into the high windows of truck. A short while later a water buffalo takes issues with the truck and charges us. Impact is avoided by pothole that throw’s him off course, narrowing avoiding a collusion much to the disappointment of everyone poised with cameras as he started charging. There are pairs of white rhinos grazing in the open and a large individual lying close to the truck who obligingly sits still for photos. As we drive back into the trees everyone is looking intently for leopards and we see groups of baboons in the distance. That morning we see our first lions on the trip, about forty meters away from the truck. It’s a small family group with a female on top of a large dead tree trunk with a couple of youngsters on the broken, leaning trunk and a couple of other females lying low in the grass.

In the afternoon we drive to our campsite on Lake Narivasha. After a night’s bush camping I am desperate for a shower and brave the cold water to wash my hair. I have only been on safari for a few days and have already gotten used to flushing toilets and hot showers being a luxury rather than the norm. It’s amazing how quickly the truck starts to feel like your whole world. You spend the day driving around in the truck and doing stuff with the group, before arriving in the evening and setting up camp. Pitch tents, make dinner if you’re on dinner duty or maybe clean the truck before sitting around on camp stools in a circle eating dinner with the group. Have a few drinks and chat to people before going to bed and waking up the next day, packing up camp, getting back in the truck and doing it all over again.

Despite feeling poorly the next morning I am determined to see the hippos and take a fist full of drugs and make it to today’s excursion out to the lake. As we don life vests and the boast sinks lower into the water I begin to wonder about the wiseness of brining my good camera, but it’s to late now as we push off and head off to a large island in the lake with a crater lake in the centre. On the boat ride out we see our first hippos much to my delight. They sit low in the water and all you can see of their vast bulk is the top of their heads and their eyes and ears peaking above the water line. On the island we go on a walking safari and are able to get within meters of giraffes, zebras and gazelle. It’s a totally different experience being at ground level with these creatures, gazing up at the long necks of the giraffes and being at eye level of zebras, rather than peering out at them from the safety of the truck windows. There is nothing between us by air and the graceful nature of these remarkable animals. The walk up and over the edge of crater is hot but worth it as we descend into a lush green oasis with a small village of thatched buildings on the edge of the lake. The main building turns out to be a bar and we sit and catch our breath looking out over the small lake, drinking cold beers and soda. Coke, Sprit and Fanta is every where here and comes in tall glass bottles that are recycled and refilled over and over again.

I am photographing some small, brightly coloured birds splashing in a near by bird bath when one of the bar guys starts chatting to me. He asks if I’ve seen the black and white colobos monkeys that live in the area and offers to show them to me when I admit I haven’t seen any that day. With a quick ‘I’m off to see the monkeys’ thrown over my shoulder I follow the guy out of the bar and up a path around the side. Other guy joins us and the two of them talk in Swahili up ahead of me. The second guy is carrying a large jungle knife and I begin to wonder if it was a good idea to go off on my own like this. We turn off the steps onto a narrow path in the bushes and the second guy continues up the steps. I breath a private sigh of relief but decide if the guy with the knife comes up behind me I’ll make up an excuse to go back to the others. After a few mins walking we suddenly come across a family of colobos monkeys not five meters above us in the trees. I look around and the guy points out a mother with a young baby less than two meters above me in on a branch, almost close enough to reach out a touch. My camera is in full swing and I get an excellent shot of the mother looking straight at me as I stare up at them in delighted fascination.

On the boat ride back to camp we stop to pick up fish from some local fishermen to entice the fish eagles living around the lake. The fishermen are waste to neck deep in the water with wild hippos wallowing close by. They are throwing nets into the water and their ebony skill gleams and glistens with water from the lake. In a moment of surealness I see one of them has a mobile phone carefully wrapped up in a plastic bag hanging from the back of his baseball cap just above the water line. . .

Thursday 6th November

After a days driving through the rain we arrive at the second highest town in Kenya and end up camping on the grounds of a hotel because the campsite we were going to go to is to wet. Upgrades are available but a very expensive because the hotel is allegedly ‘high end’ accommodation despite the large numbers of hookers in the bar that evening and everyone elects to pitch tents on the wet ground. I thought it was meant to be the end of the dry season before I left but our guide and cook have said it’s the beginning of rainy season. This is reinforced by the frequent deluges at a night when you lay their in the tent thinking the rain will never end and convincing yourself you don’t need to go to the bathroom.

Our next game drive is at Sweetwater Reserve, a private reserve located below Mount Kenya with a large chimpanzee sanctuary. For this drive we are picked up by a smaller vehicle better able to handle the wet conditions. The truck is a more traditional safari vehicle with open sides, dusty bucket seats, rusty window sills, see through pvc windows that roll up to allow better viewing and sits lower to the ground that our huge yellow Absolute Africa truck. Not long after starting our drive we see our first elephants of the trip, a family group with a gorgeous baby elephant amongst them. As with giraffes, pictures in books or even seeing them in zoo’s simply doesn’t do justice to seeing these vast animals roaming in the wild with their large leathery grey hides, huge feet, prehensile trunks and white tusks gleaming in the sunshine wandering through the near by bushes. Next we saw what for me was one of the highlights of my trip. Near by the track up head was a male and female lion. As the truck approached they got up and moved off a short distance, before sitting themselves down again in the near by bushes in almost full view not five meters away from the truck. We spent five or ten incredible minutes watching and eyeballing and taking photos of the two lions watching us and looking at us. I was hoping to at least see some lions while on this trip, but to sit their practically eye to eye with a male and female and have them looking straight at me what more than I could have hoped for. Simply amazing.

The days entertainment was far from over however as the chimp sanctuary was next. The sanctuary includes a number of rescued individuals and covers a sizable area with two groups of chimps. It’s surrounded by a high, electrified wire fence for both their and our protection. Chimps are natural entertainers and some individuals were obviously happy to have an audience. One in particular ran along fence line a number of times grabbing handfuls of mud and flinging it at a group of us huddled beneath the viewing platform during a downpour, much to the delighted screams and peels of laughter from everyone. As he approached we would all try to hide behind one another then peer over everyone’s shoulders at the people left standing at the front who would frequently cope a handful of wet mud! The chimps were simply fascinating to watch and I got the distinct impression they found us just as interesting. The sanctuary covers a large area and the chimps could easily disappear into the bushes rather than sitting and walking near the viewing area where we were.

Sat 8th November

The day of my 30th Birthday we packed up camp early and where on the road by 5am. We needed to reach Sheldrick’s Elephant Orphanage in Nairobi in time for the morning feeding session. After a long drive during which we passed the second largest shanty town in Africa on the outskirts of Nairobi we arrived at the orphanage. The baby elephants have all been rescued from the wild and are in process of being rehabilitated. The babies were lead out to a roped off areas with their keepers and feed with huge bottles the size of soft drink bottles. The really young ones are less than a year old, barely come up to my waste and are incredibly cute! They are unsteady on their feet and slip and side in the thick, gluey red mud and are covered in blankets to keep them warm. Some of the babies walk over to us and much to my delight I’m able to pat some of them. Their skin is think, leathery, dimpled and surprisingly warm. Next was the slightly older babies, a bit bigger but still cute and very entertaining!

Next we were off to a giraffe reserve. We’d already seen loads of wild giraffes by the point and weren’t to impressed by the idea of seeing captive ones. What they didn’t tell us was at this reserve you actually got to feed and pat the giraffes. So after a morning spent watching and patting baby elephants on my 30th Birthday I then got to feed and pat a number of giraffes and I have the photos to prove it! Patting the baby elephants and feeding and patting the giraffes was defiantly another highlight of my trip. Giraffes are lovely creatures with long blue tongues and surprisingly sticky spit!

At camp that afternoon everyone upgraded to rooms or dorms and I elected to treat myself to my own room with a big bed for my birthday. The room was basic, but the bed was comfortable enough and was defiantly better than sleeping in a damp tent!

For dinner that night we went to a place called Carnivores of all places, allegedly one of the top 50 restaurants in the world (yes I laughed as well). As everyone else ate their way through half the Serengeti plan I sat there with a piece of fish and amused myself by trying all the different meat sauces on my fish. For desert the waiters brought out a birthday cake with Happy Birthday Sarah on it and sang Happy Birthday to me in Swahili :). Not a bad way to start my 30’s I have to say.

Sunday morning and it was up early again to pick up another ten people from the Heron Hotel. The truck is now full and there are no spare seats. We settle in for a days driving as we head out of Kenya and into Tanzania. I stare out the window as the landscape slid by, trying to read my book and taking photos of the odd rainbow out the window as the rain came down. After a long day we arrived in Arusha and camp site called Snake Pit.

Mon 10th Nov

Today we split up into smaller 4WD’s for a three day trip to the Serengeti and Ngorongoro crater. There is some selective packing as everyone tries to cram cloths, camera’s and water for three days into small day packs to take with us.

There’s about eight of us in a truck and I’m in with a bunch of new people who’ve just joined the group. It’s nice to be in a smaller vehicle for a bit – it doesn’t fell like we’re being carted around with all 28 of us for once. On the way out we stop at a small town for water and to try the local specialty, red bananas. As a tourist in Africa you really stick out like a sore thumb and there are places where we were practically mobbed as we got off the truck by people trying to sell us jewellery, hats, post cards, food, sunglasses and just about anything else you can think of. After some quick negotiations with the local street sellers we have a small bunch of red bananas. Red bananas are stubbier and sweeter than there yellow counter parts, but equally delicious.

As we get closer to the Serengeti and drive up and over hills surrounding Ngorongoro Crater the roads deteriorate and become increasingly bumpy. I give up trying to read my book and peer out the window through the curtain of rain that’s pouring down. I wonder where on earth we’ll sleep tonight if the rain doesn’t ease up or how much wildlife we’ll see, but by the time we reach the entrance to the park the rain has cleared and we begin our first game drive though the Serengeti.

The Serengeti is one of the most stunning landscapes I’ve ever had the privilege of experiencing. After living in London for so long the immense landscape, sense of space and endless horizon is simply breath taking. You finally feel like you have room to breath again. Like you can stretch and exhale and expand and sink right into the landscape. Coupled with this sense of wonder and space was my delight at seeing wild animal I’d only ever seen in books or zoo’s. We were incredibly lucky and saw heaps of animals including two leopards lazing in trees, three cheetahs slinking through the tall grass, pools of wallowing hippo and countless lions. It got to the point with the lions where it was like ‘that lion’s just lying the grass not doing anything interesting, I’m not even going to bother taking a photo. . .’.

There are times you feel like you’re in a real life version of The Lion King which was based on the Serengeti plain. Rocky out crops rise from endless grassy plains with prides of sleepy lions lazing on top. Wart hogs trot through the tall grass. Large herds of wilder beast keep a watchful eye on passers by. Zebras, impala and gazelle graze in the distance. Fat hippos wallow in muddy rivers, their vast bulk barely concealed by the murky water.

That night we wild camped in a basic but beautiful site deep in the Serengeti. As the fire burnt down to glowing embers, we are told not to use the bathrooms on the other side of the camp. Just before bed I pop behind the tent and look out into the surrounding bush with my head torch. I am greeted by three sets of eye shine, blinking and bobbing the middle distance. In the morning we find hyena prints not half a meter outside our tent and lion prints less than two metres away . . .

Another game drive in the morning. A pride of female lions who approach and pass between the trucks just meters away, then onto some near by trees where two individuals rather unsuccessfully try to climb trees, much to our amusement. Two cheetahs on grassy mounds, their tails flicking and their sleek heads peering at us above the tall grass, before slinking off into the distance. Large groups of baboons scampering towards the truck and along the road, small babies clinging to mums, adolescence play fighting and a large, dominate male keeping a watchful eye on both us and the group. Leopards lazing in tall acacia trees, their paws hanging down and the occasional flick of a spotted tail the only sign of life, a fresh kill wedged in a near by tree fork.

After a long days game driving we visit a Maasai village, possibly one of the most contrived travel experiences I’ve ever had. We are shepherded off the truck and into a clearing outside the village. After ten minutes during which the chief, wrapped in brightly coloured blanket, walks around counting and recounting and making dam sure everyone has paid their 10,000 Tanzanian Shillings (about $10 USD), they rest of the village come out and do a ‘dance’ for us. We are told we can take photos and everyone starts snapping away. We are led inside the prickly outer walls and shown a display of traditional jumping. The guys are invited to join in and some of the girls are handed colourful beaded necklaces and encouraged to take part in the surrounding shoulder bouncing. I know we have been given permission to take photos, that we’ve even paid for the privilege to do so, but I still feel weird shoving my camera in people’s faces. As the others are shown how to throw a spear, I stand back, use my zoom to try and get some more candid shoots. The worst by far was the ‘school’, a small hut full of village children who then ‘count’ and ‘read’ from a blackboard that’s obviously not been re-written in weeks, if not longer. Some of the others from the truck try to get the kids to smile for photos but I’m feeling deeply uncomfortable about what feels like the village parading their kids for the rich western tourists. After we are shown inside the small mud huts we are strongly encouraged to buy some of the multitude of hand made jewellery displayed around the centre of the village in a long, continuous circle.

I tell myself this is the only way I would have been able to experience anything resembling an African village. That the money we paid is going towards positive things like cows and food and maybe vaccinations for the kids. That it’s a way of the village earning an income and they are just responding to demand. At the same time however much of the experience felt like a disneyfied, caricatured, clichéd show for the tourists. I couldn’t help wondering if there was a more ‘real’ village somewhere in the area with goats and chickens running around and where you were not pressured to buy something from craft market. I wanted to go off on my own with a car and find one of Those villages. But then I guess that’s what everyone wants. Everyone wants to have a unique and ‘authentic’ encounter with the local culture or indigenous people of a country. No one wants to feel they are getting a contrived, made for tourists experience to feel like a cash cow. As a traveller though I am probably one of tens, hundreds or even thousands of other travellers seeking a more ‘authentic’ experience. Is it right that each and everyone of us should go out and find a new village with which to have our own authentic experience, bringing with us the trappings of the modern world and paving the way for others to follow? Or is it better to take us all to a village like they did and at least contain the effects of well meaning but essentially voyeuristic travellers to a few small villages and leave the rest in peace? Is it possible for travellers to get off the beaten track and discover new places without paving the way for more and more travellers, and thus the potential for modern, ugly, inappropriate tourist infrastructure that mushrooms like a fungus and destroys what ever tranquil and authentic qualities the place had in the first place?

But I digress, back to Africa . . .

The night is spent at a campsite on top of the crater which gets considerably colder that the previous evening on the Serengeti plain. We are under strict instructions not to leave any food in our tents as it will attract the wild boar and they will break into our tents if they smell food inside. The following morning its back into the trucks for a drive into the crater. There is less wildlife but the landscape is one again stunning, surrounded on all sides by the vast walls of the crater. We see a lake fringed with flamingos, and a pool full of hippos with babies I was mesmerised by and could have sat their watching all day. There are lots of hyenas and a few more wart hogs. The baby hyenas are cute by the adults are scraggily looking and move in an ungainly way. I take a few photos but after two days of wild camping I am trying to save my battery power for elephants. I am soon rewarded by some huge bull elephants who walk up to trucks and cross track in front of us, their huge ears flapping in breeze and gleaming long white tusks glinting in the sunlight.

Not packing up the tents in the morning turns out to be a bad idea as it’s absolutely bucketing when we get back. Almost everything and everyone gets soaked as we dash around packing up in the monsoonal deluge. As we drive up to park entrance a few hours later rain has fortunately stopped and we all scrabble to find dry cloths for drive back to Arusha. Back to the Snake Pit campsite and there’s no choice other than to pitch the soaking wet tents. To everyone’s relive the rain holds off and we are able to dry out our tents tent before night falls.

Thursday 13th November

When we leave Snake Pit campsite we have two driving days ahead of us to reach Dar Es Salaam. The novelty of the truck is wearing off and I’m very glade I brought a sports bra with me. I decided it’s my turn to sit up the back for a bit where it’s know to be more bumpy and by the end of the day I’m defiantly shaken, not stirred. At some points it’s to bumpy to even read my book, let alone contemplate writing in my travel journal. When we stop for lunch I decide I’m sick of crackers and cheese from supermarkets and opt for ready made food. I wonder away from the others and find a modern café which serves me up possibly the best sandwich I’ve had in ages, a toasted affair with avocado, mayo and tuna. Delicious.

We make camp at a half way point somewhere along the road. The camp site has a slightly green looking pool, bright red soil, lush green grass and an army of crickets and other creepy crawlies. The air is hotter and more humid and we’re told to put plenty of deet on because of the mozzies. Up early and another day’s driving. It’s my last day on the truck so I sit up front and curl up to try and catch up on some sleep.

After another long days drive we finally arrive at Silver Sands camp site located right on the beach outside Dar Es Salaam. We’re all exhausted from two days in the truck so after pitching the tents we hit the beach for a swim and a well earned rest. I finally get to break in my new swimmers from New York that have been languishing in my wardrobe in London since Easter. It’s only the second time I’ve swam in the Indian Ocean (the first was off the coast of Western Australia some years ago). The water is so warm it’s like walking into a vast, salty bath tub. The moon is full and we build a big bonfire on the beach and sit around chatting and watching the moon sparkling over the inky ocean.

Fri 14th Nov

It’s with a tinge of regret that I gather up my things from the truck and prepare to leave it behind. The last two weeks have been amazing and the truck and the people on it have been the centre of my world. As our packs are hefted up and we board the ferry I take one last lingering look at the mainland before turning my eyes towards the open ocean and Zanzibar Island beyond.

Our first port of call on Zanzibar is Stone Town, a world heritage listed site with a distinctly Arabic feel. Zanzibar Island was the major port for the Arab slave traders back in the day and the vast majority of the slaves exported out of east Africa would have come through here. The island still maintains is Arabic roots with most the population being Muslim. The town is reminiscent of Marrakesh, with its ornately carved wooded doors and bustling, narrow market streets. In addition to slaves the island was, and still is, know for spices which account for about 70% of the agriculture grown on the island. We are taken on a fascinating tour of a local spice farm and shown and get to taste all manor of fresh spices including pepper corns, cardamom, nutmeg, almonds, lemon grass and my personal favourites ginger, cinnamon and cloves. The taste of the freshly picked spices is incomparable to the standard supermarket brought ones I’m used to. Like watching black and white TV and suddenly switching to bright, lurid technicolour. The flavours are fresh and intense and the aromas waft through your senses and inspire you to cook something. The freshly dug ginger was just amazing, its spicy, pungent flavour tingling the tongue and warming your insides and the coconut juice from a freshly picked coconut sweet and refreshing.

Before the spice tour we have lunch at our temporary tour leader’s house, a local guide with a cockney London accent of all things. His English teacher is from London and has taught him to speak v-e-r-y s-l-o-w-l-y and c-l-e-a-r-l-y and to use cockney slag of all things. His English is very good but he keeps pausing in weird places and you find yourself holding your breath and waiting for him to continue. We are driven up in our mini bus then get out too walk the rest of the way. The narrow alleys between the houses are lined with sand and lush green vegetation fringes the concrete brick houses. There are chickens scratching in the sand and local kids running between houses playing games. The quality of life of the local people here defiantly seems better than much of the rest of Africa, where the endless shanty towns and muddy streets have almost made me feel sick to my stomach.

Lunch is served by our guide’s wife and family on large rug in his back yard. We are handed mismatched plates and cutlery to eat off and served a simple but delicious home cooked meal of salad, rice with cloves and potatoes and some sort of meat (for the others), all washed down with yummy orange and pineapple juice. A little girl from the house, cute as a button with braded hair and henna tattoos wanders over to say hello and the household cat keeps a watchful, lazy eye on us. I’m sure our guide and his family are getting paid well for this but all in all it feels like a much more genuine experience and I feel I have had a rare opportunity to glimpse into the everyday lives of the locals living on the island.

For my stay on Zanzibar I have paid extra for my own room for the last part of my trip. I am expecting a small room with a single bed and am amazed and delighted when I open the door to my room in Stone Town and find a huge bed that’s bigger than the tent I was staying in And my own bathroom. Heaven and bliss.

In the evening it’s off to the night market, a much talked up spectacle that turns out to be a single street with mostly food stalls. I’m expecting something to rival the night markets I’ve been to in Melbourne or the Northern Territory and am slightly disappointed by the small size of it. The food is excellent however and I chow down on a ‘pizza’, a delicious pastry type thing with cheese, egg and vegetables whisked up in front of you then grilled on a sizzling, flat wok type thing. I sip on a cane sugar drink with fresh ginger, a local specialty, before heading to a Reggie bar with the others to dance the night away.

Sat 15th Nov

A few hours for some last min market shopping the next morning and it’s off to Kendwa Beach to the North of the Island for several sun filled days of swimming, lying in the sun, reading books and diving. There’s some confusion when we arrive and my rooms not ready. I’m hot and sweaty and just want to hit the beach and our tour leader Kenyo kindly offers me his room. The bed is a lovely wooded four poster affair that’s actually bigger than the one in my room in Stone Town, quite and achievement under the circumstances and I have my own bathroom again, this time with hot water. I put down my heavy pack and flop down diagonally on the massive bed for a few mins before changing into my swimmers and hitting the beach.

Kendwa beach it like paradise. It has beautiful, clean beaches of fine white sand fringed with palm trees, sparkling turquoise water and small, thatched shady huts dotted along the beach. The rooms are just a few mins walk from the beach and all our meals are eaten in one of the bars and restaurants on the beach front, often with our toes wriggling in the sand, munching on amazing fresh local seafood or sipping a cool beer after a long days relaxing or diving. There are local women with huts on the beach who offer hour long full body massages for a little as $8 US and I find myself availing myself of their services on an almost daily basis.

The diving my school next to our accommodation is excellent and with a few minor setbacks due being a bit poorly from my anti malarias I finish my course and am now a fully qualified PADI open water diver. On the first few dives I’m mostly concentrating on my equipment; mask clearing, buoyancy, equalising, where the hell is my bloody BCD air release, have I lost my buddy, remember to breath continuously etc. By the end of second dive I’m feeling more comfortable and on the third and fourth dives I am starting to really enjoy myself. I see a bunch of turtles, garden eels and shawls of brightly coloured fish. If the Serengeti plan was like being in The Lion King, diving off Zanzibar is like being in Finding Nemo with cute clown fish, brightly stripped dory, chilling turtles and intricate coral.

Tuesday night comes way too soon and it’s the last night on the island for everyone else on the truck. We have one last meal together then spend the night dancing away to a local DJ. The next morning I wake up early to see everyone off and wave good bye to my friends. It’s a bit strange being by myself a first but there’s plenty to distract me and I make friends with the other divers and end up having dinner with them the next two nights.

Fri 21st Nov

My last day on the island. I have lunch on the beach and go for one last swim before catching my taxi to the airport. There’s some confusion when I arrive as my later flights been cancelled and they shove me on earlier flight leaving immediately. A six hour stop in Nairobi, another long plan journey and I’m back in London where is sun is just rising. I am pleasantly surprised my backpack has made it back safely with me and with practiced ease I have my harness out, my backpacks on, then on the tube and home.

Its weird being back in London and I can’t believe I was gone for three weeks and it’s over already. This morning when I woke up it snowed last night. Three days ago I was lying on a beach in Zanzibar, hanging out in my swimmers and a sarong and eating my meals sitting on a beach front restaurant with my toes in the sand.

London feels big, crowed, dirty, dark and cold. I’m sure I’ll settle back in soon but right now I just wanna be back in Africa and the sunshine. I’m very, very glade I have Russia to look forward to for Christmas.

Cheers
S.