Having now gone through thousands of photos from our stay in Africa, including many within Zanzibar alone, we have shortlisted and posted photos in the gallery: www.travelphotos.in/africa

The first four albums are dedicated to Zanzibar: Underwater; Stone Town & Spice Tour; Ocean Paradise Hotel; and Jozani Forest.

03/22/07 by bryan+elizabeth
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Our last day in Zanzibar arrived rather quickly. After a week of early rising for our excursions, we decided to have our final day be one of relaxation.

After a light breakfast, we read in our bungalow, then I went for a 10K run as part of my Kilimanjaro Marathon training, 5K on the beach northward, and 5K back - here's my Marathon blog www.kilimanjaro.cn and www.visitkilimanjaro.in

While I was torturing myself under the sun, Elizabeth was warming herself up taking lots of great macro shots of the flowers around the grounds - here are some of photos she took, along with one I took with her in the background.

The balance of the day was spent reading outside on the beach (in the shade), watching a movie on our television, and starting our packing. Towards the early evening just before dinner, the power kept going on and off across the resort, particularly annoying as the tv movie was just finishing. Seems to be a common theme here...

By the time the power got sorted out it was time for our final dinner. As always, the highlight was our interaction with Sasi, who would spot us and make a beeline with big hugs and kisses. We promised to greet him in the morning before we left.

This will be my last posting on the Zanzibar Blog for a while - when we return home, we will add more commentary, final thoughts and more photos from our stay.

But before that, here's a final photo...

Cheers!
Bryan & Elizabeth

02/26/07 by bryan+elizabeth
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Our 4-year anniversary today!

We met up with Ali, our tour guide from Wednesday, for a full day at Stone Town, aka Zanzibar Town. We started at the central church which was built to commemorate the official ending of the slave trade in Zanzibar, the last slave trading place in the world. It was great to see within the church, many images of Jesus, with Swahili written underneath - here's a great one.

After that, we learned more shocking and depressing information about the slave trade at the time, including a tour into where the slaves were kept prior to being traded (or whipped to demonstrate their strength to potential buyers). The details of their keep is best left for another, more introspective posting I think...

Next we wandered through the local market, which is divided into three areas - fish, vegetables and chicken. This was a lot of fun, the crammed corridors filled with merchants, buyers and some tourists as well. With Ali guiding us we felt very safe, but I reckon we would have felt almost as safe on our own as well.

Throughout our tour, Ali kept telling and showing us the political history of Zanzibar. After the market, our next stop was a Hindu temple. While inside was nothing particularly exciting, it was nice to note how peacefully the various religions and people co-exist in Zanzibar. Here's a photo from inside the temple courtyard.

From here we meandered some more to reach the "House of Wonder", the most technically advanced building in all of East Africa at the time, with running water, electricity and even an indoor elevator. This building was the Sultan's operational palace, as opposed to his residential palace. Again, lots historical, political and cultural info - this building was designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2000. What we enjoyed the most, however, was the hand-patched wooden scaffolding that is being used to repair the clock tower - so here's a photo from the top of the House of Wonder, along with the scaffolding used to fix it.

From there, we explored an old fort site, which has recently been updated to include an ampitheatre inside for nightly performances. Then some more casual walking through the shopping corridors of Stone Town, which was not as exciting - the vendors, while reasonably friendly, are quite persistent in trying to get you to look at their wares and enter their stores. Ali said that while they never get aggressive, had we been alone, some of the walking vendors (those carrying their goods for sale) would have been more persistent.

It was then time for a break, and we went inside a previous British club, now converted into a hotel named House of Africa. We sat on the rooftop and enjoyed the breeze while looking at the various local fishing boats and rustic dive boats. Here's one of the dive boats from Bahari Divers.

We were now quite tired from almost a full day walking and/or in the sun, so it was time to go home. Another bone-rattling drive along the streets, and we bid Ali farewell. I've promised to post his info on this site, since booking an excursion directly through him will save about 25%.

Time for a late lunch, which we enjoyed on the top part of the restaurant/bar; sorry, we can't help but post this photo...

02/24/07 by bryan+elizabeth
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After lunch (which involved a long wait and another incorrect meal order), it was again nap time. Tried reading, but kept falling asleep; the only thing not allowing me to go into a deep slumber was my sunburn - every time I move, I wake up!

I don't think we posted a photo of our room before, so here's the bed - very nice, and the mosquito netting really doesn't seem to be required.

We've had surprisingly no problems at all with mosquitos, only the odd one here or there, and they don't seem to like me as much as the ones back home.

Both of our stomachs were a bit off all day (with me bearing the worst of it), so once I finally felt a bit sorted out, I went for a brief treadmill run before dinner. Fortunately I wasn't hungry at all, since the theme of "surf n turf" is definitely not vegetarian-friendly. Had a small plate of curried okra on rice, while Elizabeth had some potatoes and creamed veggies, but mostly concentrating on her deserts of nut pie, orange cake and passion fruit cake.

Now it's time to sign off, and will do a final post from Zanzibar on our last night here in two days. And btw, tomorrow is our 4-year anniversary!!!

02/23/07 by bryan+elizabeth
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Okay, off for another day of diving. After some delays, we headed out, again with only 8 divers on board - lots of space, and more shade for me. I'm trying to stay out of the sun completely, as the burn on my shoulders is actually waking and keeping me up during the night.

The ride out was promising, with waters looking much calmer than the previous day, and our boat ride only taking about 30 minutes or so. There were some newbie divers, so a local dive guide took 5 of us down.

The very first reef we went too was fantastic! Teaming with life, we saw huge stonefish, lion fish, scorpion fish, tons of eels, giant clams and again some great corals and fans. Annoyingly, we only spent a few minutes on that first reef, then spent the next 10 minutes or so wasting air swimming against the current over boring sand. Very frustrating since there was so much to see previously. We say a few more things during the rest of the dive, but nothing compared to those first 5 minutes.

After another chiapiti surface intervals, down we went for our second dive, this time at least following the current along the corals. This time, our dive guide didn't point out anything at all, seemingly just wanting the dive to be over - we missed TJ from yesterday :-(. So we were left exploring for ourselves and mostly took photos of interesting corals and fans, and a few cute anemone fish. At the very end of the dive, our dive guide pointed out a scorpionfish and frogfish, but then it was time to end.

We came back, and this time the first thing we did was download our pictures and videos. The results were so-so; the flashes worked properly, but we both had problems with our focus and exposure. I don't remember underwater photography being so challenging! But I guess as long as we can get 1-2 good photos per dive, we're doing well. Here's a few:

02/23/07 by bryan+elizabeth
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