2013: Week 6

Saturday 2 February

Today our driver took us to Arusha Airport for our flight to Zanzibar and a week at Breezes Beach Resort. Welcome cocktails awaited us on the first evening :).

Sunday 3 February

Today we booked a dinner in a private 'room' next to the beach with our own chef and waiter. We loved it! The food was fabulous and our waiter, Josephat, became a good friend over the course of the week.

Monday 4 February

There was a bottle of bubbly waiting for us in our room when we arrived, and we drank it on our terrace before dinner this evening. You wouldn't believe how long it took us to set up this shot, and how many 'practice' shots we took before we were happy with the result :).

Tuesday 5 February

I actually took this photo on Wednesday on our trip to Prison Island but I already have a shot for that day and I wanted to put this one in somewhere. I spotted the potential for a great photo while we were waiting for our man to bring his boat round to the dock so we could go back to Stone Town after the tour of the island, so while he was doing that I ran round to see if the photograph would live up to the image I had of it in my head. I think it does, even though I forgot to check that the F number was low enough so that I got the anchor in focus and the boat a bit blurry in the background. Turns out the F number was at 7, which is quite low but I could probably have set it a bit lower so the background was even more blurry. Nevertheless, I like it :).

Wednesday 6 February

This was the main reason for our trip to Prison Island (whose building was never actually used as a prison, as immigration took off in a big way after it was built so it became a quarantine station). There's a Giant Tortoise Sanctuary here, whose inhabitants are second in size only to the Galapagos Tortoises. The one in the photo is the oldest here, and their ages are all written on their shells. Yep, that's 189 years old!

Thursday 7 February

Drinks and nibbles on our terrace, courtesy of the resort. This honeymoon lark is great!

Friday 8 February

Today we did by far the most rewarding thing of our trip: we went to the two schools (one charity, one government) in the local village and gave them each some money. This is me with some of the kids in the first school, which was the charity one and was significantly better off than the government-run one. One of the restaurant supervisors, Mufti, lives in the village and drove us there on his day off so we could make our donations. He told us the following day that the headteacher of the charity school, who wasn't there when we visited, and also the village chief, asked him to pass on their thanks to us. We gave them $150 each and the principal of the government school said they would use the money to build a new classroom, which humbled us a lot. For the rest of the day, everything we did was measured in school fees - a Coke, for example, cost the equivalent of one month's school fees. Wow.