Zzzzzanzibar.

Well I've just had a couple of days holiday, here on spice island.

We have come from the 3 ½ day AIM Tanzania Conference, in Dar es Salaam. It was a fantastic time, meeting other missionaries from all over Tanzania. I can't remember being so excited about eating peas and other vegetables that we don't get in Kahunda.

The speaker was a Canadian pastor called Barton Priebe www.dhbc.ca.

So we jumped on a ferry in the morning conference finished and found a place to stay in Stone town. Did the tourist shops and found the main market which was interesting.

The next day we went over to the east side of the island and chilled on the beach, it was the kind of place you see on a postcard. I managed to get a couple more chapters of Lord of the rings 1 read too! I'm at the part where Frodo and co are at Bree.

The next day Arne and I did a spice tour, we saw and tasted some fruits as well: jackfruit, marmalade orange, custard apple (by far my favourite, maybe because the name is so good), starfruit and something fairly sour, orange in colour, forgotten it's name. The spices we saw growing were: cinnamon, lemon grass, cloves, vanilla, turmeric, ginger, pepper and cayenne pepper. Vanilla is fairly expensive here because apparently they have to pollinate it by hand! We had fresh coconut as well, one of the guys climbed a palm tree, cut off a couple of coconuts which hit the ground with a thud then just shimmied down again.

It's strange paying high prices for things, inevitable though because we're in a tourist hotspot. The 3 hour flight to Mwanza tomorrow should be much more comfortable than the 16 hour bus journey down to Dar.