We have now left behind our luxury hotel and moved to the other side of the island to the capital of Zanzibar, Stone Town which is a world heritage site. We are continually getting lost because of the crazy winding streets. With some of them you can touch both walls with your out stretched hands and sometimes feels a bit claustrophobic because of the constant barrage of locals trying to sell you everything under the sun. We are both getting very good at saying "no thank you" but with every passing tout we are getting less and less polite. Obviously they are only trying to make a living so we will try and keep our cool. Helen has developed a very good strategy of dealing with them and that is let me walk in front so I get all the grief and Helen ignores them. It seems to be working for her so I say stick with it!

Since we have been here the food has been amazing and I am surprised that there is such an Indian influence in their cooking. Helen has been indulging in the seafood side of things to the extent where I felt like I needed to join in. We went to the market last night and had an assortment of seafood which included Red Snapper, tuna, very large crab claws, prawns, calamari and other things. It was all extremely fresh and didn't taste of fish and so I am proud to say that I have enjoyed my first seafood buffet!

Yesterday we hired a local boat and a guide who took us out to Prison Island which was well worth a visit. The prison wasn't the main attraction though as there was a colony of land turtles on the island that were huge. The largest one was said to be 175 yrs old and had an interesting habit of farting every time he reached out to eat some of the grass we were feeding! I found this hilarious until it wafted my way and then I walked away very quickly. After this we did a bit of sun bathing and some snorkelling. Leon you will be proud of some of the pictures I took underwater, I almost drowned a couple of times getting them but it was worth it.

We are leaving the Island today heading for Dar es Salaam which is a much larger city and then onto Moshi to do a bit of trekking in the foot hills of Kilimanjaro.

Good bye for now, James and Helen x