Zanzibar - part 2

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..and the fauna. This old guy sleeping is one of a colony of rare Colobus monkeys which only live in Zanzibar. They are endangered, and the forest conservation society have worked out a deal with local farmers so that they get compensated for the damage the monkeys do to the crops.

Walking through the mangrove swamps, we learned all about the trade in mangrove trees (did you know that the wood is highly prized for house building because it is resistant to termites?)

After a week of attempting to put my feet in the Indian Ocean, I finally got to a beach, only to find the ocean had disappeared! Only temporarily though - but it was fun watching this guy fishing, and women harvesting the seaweed.

We were quite happy that we were in a rental car when driving through these beach villages. It seems the local rock is coral which is jagged and juts up all over the place and i imagine is deadly on tires! 

We were looking for somewhere to have a drink (coke!) and these guys led us here to this "Rock Restaurant". There seemed to be only one problem... the tide was fast coming in, and already we would have had to wade out there. But what a place!

This is the type of coral that it appears the entire country of Tanzania is built on....

A beach at sunset with a dugout outrigger canoe, which are used widely here for fishing.

And so we ended out little sojourn in romantic Zanzibar. Our trip home was a little exciting - a sickmaking ferry ride followed by a wild taxi ride through rush hour Dar es Salaam. The thing we hadn't quite realized is that Dar is a city of about 3 million people, and has infrastructure for about 300,000.... There is one 2 lane road leading north out of central Dar, and everyone was on it. Our taxi driver was bound by no known rules of the road, and pulled some amazing stunts, for which I should be grateful, but which made my hair stand on end! The really astounding thing is how good natured everyone is; the lack of horns blasting and rude gestures was remarkable. As it was, it took us about 1 1/2 hours to get home from the ferry terminal - but when we did, it felt like home!