Zanzibar Island

While in Tanzania visiting my friends from college, Bethany and Laura Lee, we spent a couple days on Zanzibar island. Zanzibar is about 40km off the coast of Tanzania and has some of the most beautiful beaches I have ever seen. It was so nice to get away and relax for while. While the sun was very intense there, it was much different than being out on the beach in Florida. There was such a nice breeze in the shade and I was able to sleep for like 2 hours under a little banda (pictured with the palm tree). We got up early to see the sunrise and went for a little jog....it was so nice! These fishing boats you see in the sunrise picture are left tied up all day long.

The interesting thing about the Indian Ocean (well at least where we were) was that the tide went out really far every day from about 10-3pm. In fact you can see below the boats that were floating in the water at sunrise were lying on the ocean floor at about noon. We were able to walk out like a mile and still only be to water waist deep...it was crazy! In fact I couldn't even see where the ocean finally began...we could have probably walked out another mile! There are many seaweed farms out in the ocean that local women work each day when the tide goes out. The nice thing about this ocean is that we didn't have to worried about being stung by jelly fish every 2 seconds like in the Gulf of Mexico. There were hammocks around the little place to sit in and enjoy. I definitely reccommend Zanzibar if you ever get to come to East Africa.