Hello all, We arrived safe in Tanzania yesterday and got the ferry over to Zanzibar this morning. It's hard to describe how tired we are after the 4.30am start this morning, 8 hour flight to Doha, 1 hour transfer and the 5 and a half hour flight from Doha to Dar Es Salaam. We slept very little on the plane because Qatar airline was fantastic and provided around 1000 entertainment options, FREE alcohol (as much as we wanted throughout the flight), films, music, games and TV options as well as regular meals which were really tasty but kept waking us up. [View Full Entry]

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I felt it was time to write a new blog entry now, its been awhile. We e still on Zanzibar and frankly, we haven done too much the last couple of weeks. Well, we did go on a little adventure the last few days, but first things first. As I mentioned in an earlier blog entry, we met some locals who helped us with everything from accomodation to swahili lessons; Arif gave us lessons for a couple of hours every day for a week, which made us sort of "stuck" in Stonetown for that time. So we developed a very relaxed [View Full Entry]

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Natural tidal turtle pool During our stay in Nungwi we took a stroll along the beach past the boat builders and came accross a sign advertising a natural aquarium. Our interest was peeked and after paying a small fee we entered an enclosure where 17 turtles of all sizes up to 100kg had been resqued from nets where they had been entangled and put into this tidal pool where they are kept safe and fed. We were able to swim with teh which was an awesome experience, you can even hold onto their shells and be towed along the surface. Masks [View Full Entry]

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I can’t believe that I started climbing the mountain almost 3 weeks ago! Things started out great. I met 2 of my team mates in the Amsterdam Airport and immediately we hit it off. Don from Cornwall Ontario is everything you would expect from a Construction Working, French Canadian Nurse. He had tons of energy and was always in good spirits. Michael James became like a little brother - he established the sibling relationship right off the bat! We were the young ones and made it our role to be the entertainment. After landing in Arusha we met the other 4 [View Full Entry]

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So Alice and I have been here in Zanzibar on the north-west coast since wednesday and it's absolutely brilliant! It's pure paradise. I love it ! The sea is so blue/green and the sand is so white, it's like flour. The days we've had here have been amazing.. We live in a small hut with 2 double beds and a bathroom with flushing toilet and a shower! The shower is amazing after only using buckets for the past 6 weeks unfortunatly there was only luke warm water the first night so it's been freezing cold showers ever since. We've spent a [View Full Entry]

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Langi Langi We arrived at Langi Langi, our waterfront resort in the north west of the island early afternoon where we were to spend the next seven night of our dive holiday. The water was crystal clear and came right under the restaurant deck. Dhows with sunset cruises were intermingled with the fishing boats at anchor in the water at high tide. As the sun slowly sank into the distant horizon the orange light of the sunset painted the scene the exotic pictures that I had imagined before this trip. The water was like glass and the gentle lapping of the [View Full Entry]

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Zanzibar here we come Having previously joined a number of exotic diving holidays with Pro Dive in Port Elizabeth, South Africa it was with excitement that our trip to Zanzibar loomed. This time I was going with my family, Julie my wife and Emma, my thirteen year old daughter to experience the fun of the spice island off Tanzania. Leaving Port Elizabeth on Friday we were obliged to stay in a friendly B&B overnight in J’berg due to our early morning flight to Zanzibar. 1-Time flight was not the most confident building exercise one would want especially for nervous air passengers. [View Full Entry]

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9/9 - 18/9 Our 7 hour bus trip from Arusha to the coast was going relatively smoothly (well, as much as is possible in Tanzania …lots of unsurfaced roads, driving on the other side for no apparent reason and hair raising overtaking) until just outside Tanga when the bus gave up the ghost. We waited for a while but lost faith in the guy wielding a rusty looking wrench so decided to jump on a dala dala - a kind of mini-bus that drives even more crazily than the main buses and takes anything that breathes - ie people, chicken, goats… [View Full Entry]

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Hi, here are some pics so you can see what we have been up to... [View Full Entry]

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After a couple more days of long driving, we arrived on the coast of Tanzania in Dar Es Salaam in order to get the ferry over to Zanzibar. Zanzibar was amaaaaaazing. We spent a night in Stonetown, which is the main town on the island. It is full of narrow streets lined with touristy shops, with people trying to drag you into them - "looking is free" "I give you good price" "hakuna matata"... We had dinner at a food market right by the sea, which was incredible - around 50 food stalls selling lots of different foods. We tried these [View Full Entry]

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