Day 16 & 17: Zanzibar

When we woke up on Thursday morning on Zanzibar we found the weather looked a little stormy.

We had breakfast at the hotel and then headed out for a stroll along the beach.

There's a really long beach here, with endless sand stretching in both directions from our hotel. There is quite a lot of seaweed on this particular bit, though.

The sea was a beautiful shade of turquoise, although the clouds were starting to look rather dark.

We felt the first raindrops beginning to fall, so decided we'd better start walking back towards the hotel.

We hadn't really noticed that the tide had been coming in as we'd walked, and so as we neared the corner before our hotel we realised that we'd got cut off.

Luckily we were able to climb up some steps into the garden of another hotel and circumvent this bit of the beach. Within a few minutes we were back at our cabin

The rainy spell didn't last for too long and we were soon able to sit outside and read with bluer skies.

We made our way to the hotel restaurant for lunch, getting a table overlooking the beach.

I had macaroni cheese, while Tim had lasagne.

We also had some more of the peanut/chocolate/cheese combination for dessert  

Sunset was around 18.30, after which some of the hotel gardens were lit up with coloured lights.

We returned to the hotel bar in the evening to try out a few items on the cocktail menu. The blue one - made with Curaçao - was my favourite!

Friday morning got off to a much sunnier start.

We sat outside for breakfast, which is a little bit random and today included a doughnut with our scrambled egg. Tim also had a large plate of fruit.

Our plan for today was to go on a walk along the beach in the opposite direction to the one we'd chosen yesterday, then come back to relax on one of these hanging hammock beds at the hotel.

Some of us found it a bit harder climbed down the slope of sand down to the beach than others  

Initially there was quite a lot of seaweed on today's beach too (although it doesn't seem to smell the same way it does in the UK).

After a while the volume of seaweed seemed to reduce and the sand became a lot clearer.

We met the occasional Maasai walking down the beach. Historically quite a lot of Maasai moved to Zanzibar, hired as security guards for hotels. Today there are as many of them wandering the beaches trying to sell things to tourists as doing security work.

The beach seemed a bit more lively in this direction and we passed various restaurants and bars.

The colour of the water this morning was absolutely gorgeous.

Walking on a beach is never circular, so eventually we had to turn around and head back to the hotel.

The cleaners had been cleaning our room and we returned to find we had two swan towels today

We had lunch at the hotel restaurant again...

...which involved trying a local desert called kaimati. It tasted like little doughnut balls, with a sticky syrup poured over them. 

Then we finally went to try out one of the hammock beds, which turned out to be extremely comfortable.

I felt a little less relaxed once I noticed a lizard climbing on the wooden frame, though.

Next on the agenda was to go paddling in the Indian Ocean.

Some of us went further out than others.

I was actually trying not to get very wet at all, as I was wearing my normal shorts. The water felt quite shallow, so this shouldn't have been a problem. However, a surprise wave caught me off guard with this effect.

The water was incredibly warm though, so paddling in it was a lot of fun.

I just needed to go back to the hotel and dry off for a bit afterwards

We finished the day by relaxing at the hotel pool.

Zanzibar has been unlike any other holiday destination we've ever been to, but it's been a lot of fun. And a very relaxing end to what has been quite an intense couple of weeks of travel.