Part 2

After my day as a professional cattle chaser we packed up our gear and went to Malindi. We pitched our tents less than 100 feet from the indian ocean and spent a glorious afternoon turning our white tummies a vibrant shade of red. The town was really neat and we had a bunch of lectures on conserving the costal forest, and one from this group that runs around saving sea turtles - but really it is all shadowed by the long-awaited beach time. We had to say goodbye to our Bunduz crew (they drove us all around kenya in massive trucks and cooked our meals when we were camping and were generally fabulous) which was very sad - but they actually baked us a cake! On a fire! It was totally outrageous. We detoured for the chance to stagger and crawl along the longest and sketchiest raised walkway that took us over a mangrove forest on our way to mombassa - made flycamp for the night and then started out at an absolutely ungodly hour to make our flights to Zanzibar.
We arrived on Saint Patty's Day and celebrated by a taste test of each brand of Tanzanian beer. We are still in Zanzibar now and have settled in until the end of the programme (only another 4 days!) It is actually a million degrees here (generally 32C in the morning hitting a balmy 40C by midafternoon) with the added bonus of being a highly muslim area so that you have to be covered to your knees and shoulder to elbows at all times, and occasionally a headscarf during call to prayer. I am uncovering a whole new level of sweating I would never have believed existed. The culture here is absolutely fabulous. It has been a major port here for centuries so there is a wonderful meshing of indian, arabic and african influences into this distinct 'swahili' culture. Our class spends most of the days listening to lecture from poloticians and professors from the university of Dar Saalam. Its incredibly interesting. For lunch we are given free range of stonetown so it has become a bit of a competition to see who can find the best quantity and quality of food for under $3.50. - And you would be surprised at how far that goes. On Saturday we had a spice tour of the island, which included ruins of the home of a Zanzibari princess, a massive lunch, and a tour of a spice plantation. On Sunday we got to go out in boats to see the dolphins and snorkel in the reefs of the marine conservatory. And then yesterday we were taken out on one of the large traditional sailboats called a Dhow which are absolutely fabulous - although I don't have any pictures so I'm going to have to again refer you to a google image search.