Another ‘copy and paste’ post from my notes, hopefully WordPress won’t helpfully spellcheck so many words this time. Also apologies for the photo quality. In order to upload more than one and hour I’ve made them very low resolution.

Zanzibar, Day 5.

I shall stop complaining about our accommodation because there are certainly good things about it. The deck has a great view and comfy chairs, our rooms open onto sand and it’s mostly very peaceful and quiet, despite the fact that there’s a big resort being built next door. No heavy machinery – one of the benefits of developing countries. You can feel the serenity! And no screams, as yet, from bare-headed, unharnessed workmen falling from un-scaffolded roofs.

I managed to take a photo of breakfast this morning as I was not so ravenously hungry. So here’s a photo of pretty much exactly what’s on the table each day.

In all fairness, it tastes better than it looks as the crepes are quite good, particularly with jam. Just a shame the whole thing is cold before it gets to us.

I’d set aside Sunday as wiffy day (that’s how they pronounce ‘wifi’ here) so after breakfast Luke and I walked up the beach and tried a couple of hotels. Strangely the reception of the first hotel was better when we accessed it from the second hotel. I paid $1 for the first hotel’s access then we went to the second place and asked if we could use the wireless.

“Sure, it’s free”.

“Great!” we replied. “What’s the password?”

“Ten dollar,” said the manager.

“Ten dollars? That’s a lot for internet access,”

“Password is ten dollar,”

“You said wifi was free?”

“Password is ‘ten dollar'” he said, writing it down.

“Ahh, the password is ‘ten dollar’?”

“Yes!”

How delightfully obfuscatory and completely African.

We went back up to our cabins and told the gang we had found free wifi so everyone went down for lunch with their phones and devices. Lunch took the standard decade to appear and wasn’t quite what most people had ordered. Still, it was filling and quite tasty and the chips were awful. Pretty much what we’d come to expect. We sat around for a while reading and waiting for the tide to go down so we could get back down the beach.

Currently I’m in the middle of 3 books, none of which are very good. 2000 Leagues Under the Sea started off ok but the technical bits are dull, Wizard’s First Rule by Terry Goodkind (which I’ve been meaning to read for ages) is woeful and could’ve been written by a teenager, and another one about a witch… it’s so bad I can’t even recall the title. It’s the sad thing about fantasy and sic fi – there’s probably 10 dreadful books for every good one in the genre and trying new authors is fraught with disappointment. The day’s best reading, in fact, was an email from Luke mum, Lea. She always writes very lovely emails to us and says the nicest things. So thanks Lea!

We headed up to the other end of the beach for dinner that evening but couldn’t find Teddy’s Bar. We kept walking and walking and eventually found quite a lovely bar and restaurant and we sat at a table on the sand and had cocktails and pizzas. I fed some bits to a dog that sat next to us the whole time and it followed us back to the hotel. The moon was so bright we had noticeable moon shadows as we walked back.

Zanzibar, day 6.

Our last full day at Jaribu before we join the tour tomorrow. Breakfast was a more meagre affair than previously – a small chunk of banana, no jam, half a piece of untoasted bread. We theorised that either they’d slacked off (even further) because we’d paid the day before or they were trying to make us lose weight.

Luke has been complaining that his hair is getting too long so, after much hesitation, I had a go at cutting it after breakfast. I left the top but shortened the sides and, miraculously, he thought it was fine. I was bit afraid that no matter what I did he wouldn’t like it since he nearly always comes back from the hairdresser complaining about what they’ve done.

The rest of today will consist of using the internet, washing hair and having a swim at the fancy resort up the road then packing everything before we meet the tour tomorrow on the other side of the island. Kat said that last time she went on one of these tours they had interest about once a week so hopefully we’ll manage that again. I’m up to 90 posts on the blog now, so I’m keen to make 100 before we finish the tour.

Here’s some photos from day 4 when we went to the Rock and then watched the sunset.