Jumbo Rafiki’s, as evidence that we had been traveling non-stop for two months and that I have fully adopted the principles of Africa time, I haven’t gotten around to blogging our tropical adventures.

From Lake Malawi we headed north to Tanzania’s southern highlands covering huge kilometres, some ten hours on the truck as we passed truck loads of produce crossing into Malawi which is landlocked and whom are largely dependent on imports for most food and living items. We could stand the early mornings as we slept as soon as we boarded and spent the later mornings discussing if scratches or pimples were in fact the liver cirrhosis causing bilhazia that exists solely in Lake Malawi. We had crossed an overland group who had seen one backpacker with scares from scratching at the parasite having slept the night on the Malawian beach (most likely intoxicated as was nearly the case of Fiona our resident , drunk Brit).

We spent very little time in Dar es Salam remarkable only as the first place I’d heard the call to prayer and for filling in the ferry rides playing ‘what would you prefer’ with Alice the Aussie gap year volunteer from the Mornington Peninsula. We packed light for the three hour ferry shuttle to the island of Zanzibar, now the holiday playground of east Africa. It wasn’t always this way with the major port of the island, Stone Town owing much of its wealth to Arab slave trade starting in 100AD ending in early 19th century. At that time an African tribe leader from the mainland could trade 50 young boys for a rifle or 20 for a mirror. The towns people are descendants of the Arabs and African’s of the area and we defiantly got lost more than once through the maze of narrow alleys trying to find the fruit market, souvenir laneways, tin-tin shirt sealers or Mercury’s – once owed by Freddy (Queen’s front man was a resident of Stone Town as a child – the restaurant still remains in the family). After a disappointed sunset at the Africa House, night fell and we haggle with the street vendors and I have more lobster, calamari, prawn kebabs all washed down with super sweet, freshly crushed sugar cane juice then I care to remember.

Moses hires a mini bus and we travel to the opposite side of the island stopping to try some of the local grown spice’s. If you ever thought ‘I wonder what a liquefied hot cross bun would taste like’ it’s called malsarala tea – cloves, pepper, vanilla and nutmeg. After Simon, our Kalgolie civil servant and I had more than our fair share of the local aphrodisiac – ginger, we headed for our beach side bungalows. The bungalows were ageing with the white tiles worn back to terracotta by the bare feet of thousands of traveling Brits and ANZ’s, with the bonus of a personal safe and mosquito netting. The accommodation didn’t matter we were here for the beach, and it didn’t disappoint – the water was crystal clear and the sand as white and fine as I have seen anywhere, before or since. The beach seemed to compel an obese couple, who obviously never ran a day in the last decade to take a daily morning jog up and down the beach. This was made sadder by the obvious comparison to the local fishing boys who were majorly ripped to our female travellers delight. The beach was beautiful but if it wasn’t the panting jolly joggers, it was the Germans who were still partying at 6am dancing on beachside tables to Limp Bisket. I am being a complete hypocrite however as only the night before we had all signed up for Habib’s Private Sunset ‘Booze’ Cruise – where US$30 gets you all the spirits you can drink in two hours (avid readers will recall that at Livingston some individuals very much struggled post quad shots of vodka and required being carried to bed). Needless to say that after 20 minutes we all had pirate names the best being ‘one-eyed willy’, a few captain unmentionables, wenches and bootstraps for good measure. The cruise went similarly as to be expected, we run out of mixers around the same time as we run out of pirate songs to sing, we terrorised multiple beaches and sunset cruises from the more upmarket end of the beach, someone thought it would be a good idea to get naked, a near drowning of the inebriated baby of the group James and Clive cutting his hands on falling on a box of empty coke bottles. I don’t remember seeing the sunset.

The next morning I run into Habib as he was marketing to a newly arrived group, he suggested that we were the first group to come close to drinking the bar dry. We left only 12 long neck Killi’s and Alice had stolen the last half bottle of Malabo. We all sat around the next day having a good laugh at James beach fertilisation program, Celia’s amateur plumbing and tried to decide what to do with ourselves for the next few days.

Those few days went far too quickly – poor James had a three day hangover whilst Andy suffered an unknown nausea. The rest of us indulged and enjoyed not having to pull up camp each morning. Paul one of the Aussies in the group organised a guide to go spear fishing, having only snorkelled in the pool at my sisters I hesitated, but only for a second. Having turned blue from being in the water for a few hours I head back to the beach, empty handed but happy enough not to have speared myself. On the beach I learnt that Paul hadn’t been seen for or an hour and after another hour of searching we gave up on the thought that he had survived. We were well settled in the bar when Paul rocks up spear gun and all having hitched a ride with local fishermen from the reef well offshore. In proof that his girlfriend deserves a sainthood, she didn’t left an eyelid.

We all made bookings for massages on the beachfront and haggled for a better price which still worked out to be 20,000 Tanzanian Shilling (about AU$15) for a full body massage by one of the big mamma’s. The fish and lobster were as cheap as they were fresh, the pizza the exact right size for a snack with a longneck, the weather-perfect, days of travelling bliss.

Zanzibar was a holiday from our travels. On our final evening we took photos with our newly tanned British friends with the local ?dohs crossing in front of another prefect African sunset. The next day we met up with the truck on the mainland and headed north.