Zanzibar is beautiful- turquoise water and white beaches its heaven but its crazily hot! As soon as we arrived we were blown away by the heat! Our guide, Daniel was great really nice and helpful. The first day we were in stone town and he took us for a wander around.The streets are really narrow and theres lots of mosques around and its so little that the majority is overlooking the coast.He took us to our hotel, it was called Safari Lodge- apparently Africans aren't greatly imaginative with their names as lots of hotels are called Safari Lodge! The rooms were basic, but you find after living in a tent anything with real walls is pleasant!

Stone Town

In the evening we went to a night market and bought fresh food which they cooked for you- I think it was the nicest food yet and it only cost me £1.25! I had chips, salad, chicken and beef.Jiohn went all out and spent 4 quid- he got spiced lobster, shrimp, tuna steak, chipati and chips…. Not bad really! Oh and then we shared a Zanzibar pizza which is chocolate and bannana with hersheys chocolate syrup it was so good! That evening John came dashing out of the toilet grabbed the camera and went back in. I was a little concerned when he came back out he told me we had a squatter for the night- a big bloody cockroach! We took sensible precautions and barricaded the bathroom door with towels to trap him in! He had disappeared by morning but when I was packing he appeared behind me on the wall I had to leave the room so I went for brekky on the roof with everyone while John finished packing- poor John, he is a true gent!

We then went for a tour around Stone town, it started with the history of slavery, that was really interesting but pretty upsetting. You got to go in the dungeons they were stored in so it was quite eerie. There is a church built on top of the old slave cells now, the alter is place where the old whipping posts were. They used to whip the slaves to see how strong they were, the longer they could take it and not cry out the better price they would be sold for.After that we were took to the local fish and meat market, it was abit gruesome to say the least. Fish and meat were being gutted and chopped all over, there was blood everywhere. We even saw a cows head lying on one of the benches.

On somewhat of a lighter note we then went for a spice tour on a huge spice farm, they walk around this jungle type place picking spices and letting you smell and eat them- it was really good! The people who worked there were making us jewellery and stuff out of bannana tree leaves- by the time I left I had a watch, bracelet, 2 rings, necklace, a frog and a basket- I was blinged up in leaves! I was serenaded by this 17 year old, I think he thought I was Simon Cowell because he kept telling me it was much easier to make it big in the UK than in Africa. He was sweet though! They have huge coconut trees (about 40-50m tall) there and they had this guy who climbs them in seconds and cuts the coconuts down. He kept on stopping on his way up and down to get the coconuts and singing this crazy song and swinging about and stuff, it was really good. He then opened the coconuts for us to drink and eat.Then we went to this little village and in this families home for our dinner, we all sat on the floor and they brought us this delicious curry and fresh fruit, it was made with lots of the spices wed just been trying. There was loads of kids there so we were all playing with them for a while, they were adorable and we gave them all our leaf jewellery they were really chuffed with it so it was nice. There were lots of ants- the bitey kind so we surrendered to them, and jumped back on the van to go to the North of the island- Nungwi. We got that full day including transport up the entire island for £10 each- we can't complain!

Nungwi

Nungwi is a lush little beach resort at the North of the island. It has white sand, turquoise water and loads of funky beach bars and restaurants, its an amazing place. We were staying right on the beach in these little beach bungalows! The bungalows were nice, the electricity goes off all of the time its quite funny!We adopted these 2 tiny cats near our bungalow, I've named them Zanzibar tubs 1 and 2, I love them. Nobody else wants to stroke them but I'm always playing with them, I even stole an ashtray and washed it out and filled it with nice water for them.Roy loved them too and walked into the town to buy some tuna for them!You can tell the ones who have left cats at home.The mam cat scratched me so I spent the next few days seeing whether it looked like I was going to develop rabies- so far so good! On our first night we went out for a meal in this fun bar that had a live acrobatic show which we were front row for.John got asked to go up, but he didn't have to do acrobatics they just fed him chips- I think he must have looked hungry!He should have made the most of it actually as our tea was horrible!We stayed out and went to this club called Challos on the beach that had lots of bonfires in the sand and really good music- we ended up here every night we were in Zanzibar.Zanzibar was so beautiful like a little paradise, so we spent the majority of the time just lazing on the beach.One day we were productive and went snorkeling.You were on the boat for about an hour, they caught a tuna and me and Jo helped marinate in garlic and ginger then they lit a fire and cooked it on the boat. We all jumped off the boat at Memba island and put our snorkels on. The coral and fishes were amazing, very pretty! They weren't scared of humans so you could swim really close to them!

What… we have to leave Zanzibar?

On our last day we traveled back down to Stone town and then back on the ferry, which was much quicker this time!We were gutted that Sniper wasn't on, this time I legend was on with the poorest interpreted subtitles ever!We then headed back to Macardi Beach and had another fun night.We had to make the most of it as we had 2 long days of driving on the truck until we got to Malawi!