Zanzibar

Friday (Jan 21) was non-stop woke up to pack, went to placement, rushed home to grab some lunch, jumped on the dala-dala (a kinda van taxi that you will frequently see people hanging off the back of) to take us to Dar, bought two way tickets for the ferry, ran to catch the ferry, checked into our hotel, took a minute to breath, got ready while simultaneously looking for a place to eat dinner.  By the time we finally made it to the restaurant it was 8:15 almost two hours later than we’ve all been use to eating dinner.  The five of us (Lauren, Deirdre, Kit, Heather, and I) polished off three pizzas a sandwich, a bowl of pasta and a loaf of bread...and then all had gelati for dessert! Our meal was soooooo good!

Saturday was amazing, I went to bed not feeling the greatest but I just kept telling myself “You get to go snorkeling tomorrow...absolutely nothing can ruin your day!”  And it was so true, my first time in the Indian Ocean and I went snorkeling!!  Checked off one of things on my life list “Go Snorkeling” and got one step closer to another “Put my toes in all the oceans.” Even before we even made it to the coral reef we came up on a of dolphins and we got in and swam with them!!  So cool!  And honestly nothing can compare to real live snorkeling...Not Finding Nemo, not The Little Mermaid, not even the three different aquariums I’ve been to in my life.  It was gorgeous!!  The colors are unreal, if you swan too close to an anemone a clown fish would come out and attack your mask to keep you away.  There were four different colored star fish, we saw a sting ray and a scorpion fish, these crazy black tentacle looking things so many different types of coral and tons of fish that I could never learn all the names of...BEST DAY EVER!!

Clown fish protecting it's home!

Lauren and I with our snorkel masks on :)

                                                                                                       We kept it very low key on Sunday because we were all exhausted and finished out trip with a spice tour.  We walked through the jungle like forest while a guide pointed out the different kinds of trees and plants that certain spices and fruits come from...On our tour we saw a cinnamon tree and got to smell it’s barked which smelled exactly like big red, smelled the nut that contain nutmeg, saw a cardamom plant, looked at the pods on the plants that vanilla come from, saw star fruit and jackfruit trees, and saw this really cool fruit that had a soft but porcupine looking exterior but the fruit inside tasted exactly like a grape.

The grape like fruit.