We arrived at the airport in the dark and managed to locate the departure lounge, as denoted by the hand painted sign attached to the weatherboard of the unique little airport. We waited until the sun was up, illuminating the piles of dehydrated fish in the surrounding stalls, and headed through check in. We emerged with our handwritten boarding cards and settled into the departure lounge which resembled somebody's living room, filled with faded armchairs in every style of fabric imaginable.

The plane was disappointingly large but the inflight coffee and muffin softened the blow. Much to our surprise it was raining in Dar when we landed and as we headed to the ferry terminal our taxi had to ford through floods which swamped the road network. Charlie organised the ferry tickets and we were soon following a guide through the busy ferry terminal and onto the 'experienced' catamaran which would carry us to Zanzibar.

The rain continued to fall as we settled into the VIP (mizungo) lounge, nestled in the random assortment of previously comfortable chairs. The journey was meant to take 90 minutes but after 3 hours we were still out of sight of land. Eventually we slid into a berth at Zanzibar's port and joined the throng keen to disembark the sluggish ferry. Immigration was a very serious interview and the customs team patted down our belongings, apparently looking for plastic bags which are banned on the island.

With numbers chalked on our bags we struggled through the gates and out into the arrivals enclosure where taxi drivers and flycatchers were everywhere. For some unknown reason our taxi driver kept his sign well hidden, only showing it to us after Hattie had been rather rude to him... Putting this behind us we piled into the minivan and having established that none of the towns ATM's contained cash we pushed on out to the coast.

The rain came in dark squalls as we travelled along the good roads through lush vegetation and after an hour we were bumping down a rutted track overhung with strikingly red hibiscus flowers. The taxi stopped and we made a dash through the rain to get to the shelter of the bar where the view was awesome. The beach truly was white and the cold beer tasted fantastic as we watched the rain splashing in the pool. We ordered food straight away and unloaded our bags into the somewhat open plan 2 tier Banda. Whilst waiting for the food we explored the deserted beach whilst dodging rain showers. Fortunately the clouds looked less ominous and we hopped between the coral down to the warm waters edge as scuttling crabs darted back and forth.

Despite the brisk wind which started up clouds of mosquitos were present as we tucked into our sea food heavy supper and we finally felt that we were eating quality cooking with the freshest of fresh ingredients. We chatted to the owner for a while with the sound of the waves crashing onto the off shore reefs audible as a background drone before retiring to our beach front Banda.

The idea of its 2 open plan bedrooms had sounded good but in reality it left neither couple with any privacy and as the wind sang in the mosquito net we fell asleep looking forward to sunrise.