About 1 minute after our 4am alarm the rain came bucketing down. We were soaked to the bone taking down our tent, a miserable start to a long day. Of course the rain stopped just as we were leaving. Our early start was an attempt to get to Dar Es Salaam as early as possible, this would give us the best chance of catching the 12:30 ferry to Zanzibar. We got stuck in traffic so our tour leader jumped out and got a motorbike taxi to weave him through to buy tickets at the ferry terminal. The truck arrived with minimal time to spare but the news wasn't good. The ferry was already booked out, we considered catch the slow ferry but they have a habit of being over crowded and even sinking. Our guide decided we would wait for the 3:30 fast ferry. Being a Friday meant the ferries were busy, on top of that it was the full moon party weekend making the ferries crowded.

Getting onto the ferry was chaos. As we went through the metal detector a porter grabbed our bags and took us to some seats near the gangway. Eventually some Asian guy, who seemed to be providing comic relief but was actually a manager told everyone that the ferry was open to board. Ella was impressed with my ability to understand this Asain guy speaking Swahili. He actually could not fully speak Swahili so each sentence contained some English which would give me the gist.

Everyone crowded forward and there was a huge crush as those at the back tried to push to the front. Ella got squeezed behind myself the rest of the group. In this time some muslim ladies started pinching her for showing too much skin. Eventually Ella caught up and we formed a little wall to stop the pushing from behind. There was arguing with security and really we had no idea what was happening as everyone was yelling at each other in Swahili. The porter started to use his trolley to ram the achilles of anyone in front of us. Somehow a fight didn't break out. Things settled down once we got past security onto the gangway. People then started boarding in an orderly fashion. Although we did have an argument with the porter. We had been told to give him a few dollars worth of shillings. He wanted about 5x the going rate and got upset around when I refused to up the price a second time. I took the money off him and said he should be grateful otherwise he will get nothing. After some stomping around he did take the cash.

The trip over to Zanzibar was very pleasant as the water was perfectly smooth, much to the appreciation of those who suffer sea sickness. During the trip we figured out that the fast ferry has booked seats and we were never going to miss out in the chaos. It was the slow ferry leaving 10 minutes before us that has a first in gets a seat policy that caused the pushing. Surely our guide or porter would have known this and pulled us aside from the madness.

Once in Stone Town, Zanzibar we caught a bus that took us to Karibu (Welcome in Swahili) Inn where we stayed the night. On the bus trip it seemed like we drove in a big circle. The next say when we had our bearings it turned out we had driven in a big circle and the ferry terminal was walking distance from Karibu.