Mother Africa (greetings from paradise)

that's right! we've landed in paradise!

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as phuong and i sat on some storage boxes on the bow of a ferry travelling at high speed over the calm east african sea coast from dar es salaam to zanzibar town, tropical islands with white sandy beaches and palm trees passing by, phuong said "since getting off the plane i've felt like we've been swimming through a warm, viscous soup that nurtures and nourishes all life on mother africa". i felt that it was a rather romantic interpretation of experiencing 35 degree heat and 150% humidity on a background of 48 hour sleep deprivation and doxycycline induced sun-stroke, but i didn't want to spoil the moment. in any case, we realised that we had landed in paradise.

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there was only a minor hiccup in our flight - fog was so dense in

nairobi that our plane was diverted to mombasa temporarily. but the thick fog had a thick silver lining, as we got to fly straight over mt kilimanjaro and see the snow-covered crater in the morning sunlight. our hearts raced and cameras snappety-snapped.

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6 hours later, exhausted, we emerged from dar es salaam airport like two fat rich lambs who had stumbled into the wrong part of wolf-town slumsville. we practically bleated

'eat me!', and a few merciful local cons came and gave us the screwing we deserved.

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zanzibar is a mix of the african, asian and arabic - an important trading post for the portuguese and british, and later an omani sultanate. we spent our first day stumbling through the labyrinthine stone town, the heart of old zanzibar: a cobbled maze of streets that intersect at bizarre angles and spin one's sense of direction off to a better place (we had

to pay someone to find our way back to our guest house at one stage). i am an unashamed fan of streets and lanes, and was blissed out.

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at night, the seafront is crowded with seafood vendors who skewer fresh fish, lobster, shark, octopus and anything else you might fail to recognise and bbq it right in front of your eyes, to be devoured with a cold drink sitting on the beachfront in the 30 degree night. phuong gave the meal 6 stars out of 5, claiming that it had hit the sweet spot on almost every level. i gave it 2 stars and felt nauseated.

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despite using sleeping nets, at night we have been ravaged by malaria-bearing mosquitoes, and phuong in particular looks a mess. i have been panicking, with every bead of sweat or wrong thought providing ample evidence of the first stages of disease, but phuong doesn't seem to care, and describes his attitude regarding our inevitable journey towards cerebral malaria and death as 'a dutiful acceptance'.

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yesterday morning we clamboured into the back of an old truck for a two-hour ride to a beach paradise on the east coast of zanzibar island. the water is 30 degrees (can you believe it!?), and it feels like you're swimming through a warm broth. we discovered that there's nothing to do in paradise but get a full body massage and seek alternate forms of analgesia.

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we missed a truck back to stone town and decided to snooze for a few hours in a nice field full of grass and funny stones. we got a few dagger stares. only later did we realise that we were lolling about in the town's graveyard.

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we had an interesting tour of some spice plantations, but zanzibar (however lovely) was never going to be more than a filler - a prelude to a hike up the awesome mt kilimanjaro. and tomorrow we climb! so far we've heard of people going blind, developing hypothermia, becoming psychotic with mountain sickness-induced swelling of the brain, and even one group whose guide had the cheek to die half way up the mountain (said group then had to carry the corpse back down), but we feel equal to such adventure.

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good luck to us on our hike! (woohoo!) hakuna matata :)

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pic 1 - P+O in a lush field

pic 2 - P in paradise
pic 3 - kili from the window of our plane! (heart racing!)
pics 4, 5 + 6 - people around zanzibar
pic 7 - boats floating on a 30 degree soup
pic 8 - chowing down during a spice tour