Life as you know it...Around the World-1

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Mambo Everyone!
Hello everyone, Hope you guys are doing well back home. This will be my first Blog entry from my travels on my Around the World trip! So far I have taken 5 flights, a few trains, dala dala’s and taxi’s to get to where I am going. I am now writing from the island of Zanzibar in Tanzania. I have already completed one of my stops on my around the world trip, that stop was England.
I did just a quick stop for a few days in London, England. I was very lucky to meet up with my friend Natalie and made a new friend with Jo. Nat and I walked alllll over Downtown London and saw all of the main sights. It was pretty good weather for 2 of the days the third day it just poured haha London style. Definitely walked down Oxford Street and then headed up more and went into Harrods. Other sites I saw were the Thames, Big Ben, Parliament and a lot of squares! I had some good ol’ English breakfasts at Jo’s: fried eggs, baked beans, toast, and amazing bacon. All around great experience and very thankful for Jo and Nat for housing me and showing me around!!
After London I took 2 long, sleepless flights to Dar Es Saalam in Tanzania. Dar was hot and had nzuri(nice) weather but I only stayed on mainland for 2 hours. I immediately headed to the local airport with Ollie my friend from Zanzibar and used Coastal air (14 person plane) to fly 20 mins to Stone Town, Zanzibar!! Stone town is where we caught a taxi for 1.5 hours and headed up the west coast to Nungwi/Kendwa where I am now living for a month. Lots of travelling!!
I have to say now that I love Zanzibar with a passion; it is a beautiful, minimally touched island in the Indian Sea. The locals are extremely nice and mainly Muslim. The beaches are white and the waters are turquoise. I have spent my time so far enjoying the beaches, doing a lot of walking between village, enjoying cheap massages and eating great food. My favourite thing from Tanzania is Chapatti and I have being eating this every day. It is like a thick crepe mostly flour, egg and oil. You can buy a chapatti for breakfast in the village for .15 cents Canadian, two would fill you up! There are also a lot of curry’s and spiced food here because Zanzibar is known as the spice island and has many different spice plantations on it from the old trade days from India! One thing that is happening a lot lately is the power being out, i think the power is being cut 4-6 times a day lately my first night was spent without any power and a kerosene lamp, good times.
I have being able to go diving but only once so far. I went on a night dive to a local reef and it was so much fun. This was my first ever night dive and it was during a full moon so it was not completely dark. We used the anchor rope from the boat to get down and then stayed around the bottom for 38 mins. I saw a lot of sleeping fishies, some nemo’s, moray eels, angle fish, puffer, squid, shrimps, parrot, star fish and so on. At one point in the dive we turned off our torches and moved our arms around in the darkness, all you could see were lil glowing spec’s of plankton. Apparently when you move your arms quickly in the water these microscopic plankton die and illuminate. It was one of the kewlest things I have seen, was like a starry sky under the water.
The other night we went into Stone town which is the major city of Zanzibar. It is a very old town that looks almost medieval at times, lots of castle like architecture. We went to Mercury's a bar named after Freddy Mercury from Queen, who was actually born on Zanzibar in Stone town and then when he was older moved to Bombay. After drinks we went and walked around the night market where you can get great cheap food/seafood caught by local fisherman. We ended up eating at Pagoda this Chinese restaurant by the Africa House Hotel (famous hotel). You have to take Dala dala's or taxi's to get to stone town takes around 1.5 hours travel time but definitely worth it for the food!

Now for the sad news, as many of you are probably aware from the international news stations back home, Zanzibar and the village I live in had a huge disaster happen Sept 10th at 1:30 am. One of the large ferry’s from Stone town going to an island near by called Pemba capsized. I can’t even begin to explain how upsetting this was. Now the thing that makes these situations worse is one you are in Africa where nothing is communicated well, two most locals cannot swim, and three there had just being a big Muslim event so this boat was double its capacity. All over the island the different dive centres and hotels all started sending out boats at 3 am to get survivors. Some people were found but not many and mostly men. This ferry had around 800-1000 on board, this is a number you will never hear since the government is covering this up. Just over 200 people were rescued so around 600 people drowned that night. The government has decided to cover that number up as well and picked around 167 people dead. This was so tragic and now I am seeing first hand the workings of a severely corrupt government, and it is not enjoyable. I won’t go into details but the seas surrounding north Zanzibar after this tragedy were littered with bodies; men, women and young children. The Republic of Tanzania is now in a state of mourning which will last a few more days. Also since Zanzibar is Muslim the bodies were buried that night so none of the families were allowed to see the bodies before they were put into mass graves. This has being a very sad tragedy for the island’s and has become even more frustrating since the full extent of this event is being hidden.
Now back to happy stuff, I am going to spend the next few days organizing the next 3 weeks of my trip. I am planning on doing a few more dives and kite surfing. On Thursday I will be participating in Dive against Debris, an ecologically friendly event held by Padi and Watersports where we will go diving in the reefs to clean up trash or fishing garbage left behind. Well time for me to go back to the island life . Until next time!
Miss you all
Alicia

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