oh Zanzibar oh Zanzibar....

This past weekend was definitely a great way to end our last couple weeks in Tanzania. We spend 3 nights in the nearby Island of Zanzibar, quite a touristy place.
White sandy beaches, along with ancient old stone buildings.. Zanzibar Stone Town is another UNESCO World Heritage Site that was once the centre of the Slave Trade in the 18-19 hundreds. All slaves that were collected at Eastern part of Africa went through the Slave market located in town.

One of my favorite things that we did was the Spice Tour! Zanzibar is known for is abundance of spices, and you can simply book a tour and they will show you many different spices and smell and taste some as well. Seeing all the spices made me realize how much I miss cooking. Can’t to go back and try out some new recipes  While doing the spice tour, these local kids followed us around making us “jewelry” and lil nick naks out of coconut leaves. Some things like ties, rings, bracelets and such. They were Pretty cute.

We had a city tour of ancient buildings, that was really interesting… on one of the other days we went to see a slave cave as well. It was massive and incredible to think that hundreds of slaves were once hiding in it… weird feeling goes over you thinking about what that area was once used for.

In the evening we went to the waterfront where there were a bunch of locals setting up theirs stands of food. It was quite the experience and a lot of fun order food. My favorite was this thing called Zanzibar Pizza. Super good. You could get Banana Chocolate or with Mango. Or have veggies and chicken…It was soo good. I’ll probably try to make it when I get home.

The others took park in visiting a Mangrove forest and saw some Monkeys… But I chose not to take part. I needed some “Sally Time” so I stayed in Stone Town and wandered and sipped some Cafes Lattes. It was really nice to just have time alone for once and sort of just gather up my thoughts. While wandering the streets I met this cute lil old man and his daughter. Ended up chatting up a storm and his daughter was possibly coming to Canada in a couple years for school. So I explained generally about entrance requirements for school and such to her. Her dad was just a jolly old man, Indian man who spoke English very well, with a slight British Accent. He let me wander up to the rooftop of his building. From there you could see the entire Stone Town and even across the Indian Ocean. The building that he owns is this Internet Café and Restaurant and he plans to renovate the rest of the building into a hotel. I think it will look amazing once it is all finished. The rooms were nice and big with windows, great views. The owner even said to me that if I can back in a couple years he would give me a deal for staying at his new hotel. I would definitely take him up on that. It would be really neat to see what he does with the place.

Time is just ticking away now, we had our final EAD. There’s this lady from CIDA coming to visit us this week.. and the rest is just resting time…

It’s surreal to think that the past 6 months has gone by so fast, but it makes me realize that in the grand scheme of things to take a couple months out of your life to do something different isn’t such a big deal. Yes ultimately I have to think of my future and figure out what I want to do with my life. But for now, I still have lots of time for that and realistically I already have so many other experiences so I’m not necessarily falling behind the norm. I’m excited to see what I get myself into next year, I have a couple plans in the works or still debating about… Such as getting into 21Inc, possibly doing some schooling to get my CHRP… it’s all up in the air… but for now.. that’s perfectly fine.. I still have lots of time to decide.