And now we come to the end. I'm in an internet cafe in Stone town, about 5 hours away from our ferry departing the island for Dar Es Salaam. It's been quite a week. The music fest was a lot of fun. I must admit I was afraid that it was going to be like three days of bad reggae music or something like that, and while there was a little of that the music was actually really good. They brought in traditional African world music type acts from all over the continent. The festival was held in a fort, and it was one of the coolest venues I've ever heard live music in. We usually would eat dinner and then get to the festival around 8 or 9 just as things were picking up steam. There were about 40 volunteers from Zambia at the festival so every night turned basically turned into our own little dance party. While world music isn't really my thing it was hard not to have a good time and I'm definitely glad I came. It's time to get out of here though. I've had a blast but this vacation has run it's course (I mean that in a good way) and it's time to get back to the village and sleep for like a week.

So at like 8 o'clock yesterday morning my companions and I got on a shuttle bus and rode down to the south west coast to spend the day swimming with dolphins and snorkeling. This was not my first time embarking on such an adventure, in 2006 I went on a dolphin swim trip, with very little success. This time around was, um, different, to say the least. We arrived at the beach at around 0930 hours, picked out neon colored masks, snorkels and flippers and walked out to a wooden motorized boat and set out dolphin hunting. the next hour was equal parts hilariously absurd and awesome. The first thing we notice as we set out is that we are not alone. There are like 5 other boats full of pasty white european tourists in speedos, just like our boat, hunting down dolphins. Each boat has about 12 people in it, all sitting on the side of the boat, facing out, flippered feet dangling in the water. We're all heading in the same general direction, looking for dorsal fins. When a dolphin was spotted, all boats would make a bee line for the animal, circle around it, the guy driving our boat would yell jump, and 50 people would fall into the water and swim towards the one dolphin who is trying to get away from all these people as fast as it can. It's a sight to behold, and the whole time watching these people and myself I couldn't help but wonder if this was really stupid.
But then once you jumped in the water, you looked down and realized you were swimming with a dolphin in the Indian Ocean. The last dolphin we found actually stayed around and swam with everybody for a while, and it was pretty amazing. At a couple of points I thought it was going to touch someone's feet. So in spite of all the absurdity of the experience it was definitely worth it. Afterward we went snorkeling by a reef for a while. I've been snorkeling a few times in a couple different place but I've never seen anything like this. Thousands of fish and coral and plants in as many different colors. Afterwards we had a local meal of fish and rice (a bit more of a novelty for the other people in the group than for us, we're used to village food), then headed back to Stone Town. I'll write about the music fest at some other time.

So let's try and recap.
On Friday morning my friends Josh, Tim, Christa and myself left Lusaka and hitched about two hours north to a town called Kapiri Mposhi, to the Tazara Railway station to catch a train leaving at 1400 hours for Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania. We rode first class, which means we were in a compartment that held 4 people, as opposed to 2nd which holds 6, or 3rd, which I don't even want to think about. The train was sparse, to say the least. Our compartment consisted of 4 benches with blankets which were our beds, and a small table. every car had a toilet and a sink. and there was a bar car that served drinks and dinner. We reached Dar 51 hours later. While the ride through Tanzania was beautiful, and it's nice to have transportation that you can walk around on, 51 hours is too long to do just about anything. We arrived in Dar on Sunday afternoon. Since it was too late to get to Zanzibar that day we got a hotel in Dar for the night. The Econo Lodge (no relation to the American chain) was pretty bare bones, but we were just happy to shower for the first time in 3 days. The next morning we got up early and went to catch the 0700 hours ferry to the island. At approximately 0900 hours, after three solid days of traveling we had reached our destination. Was it worth it? Absolutely. This island is unlike any other place I've ever seen. We arrived at Stone Town, the main port town on the island. It's an odd place. There's a mixture of African, Indian, Middle Eastern, and white tourist influences, an odd combination that gives the city a very unique feel. It sucks you in pretty quick. We spent the daygetting lost in the many alleys and walkways that comprise the city (think those scenes from like Indiana Jones movies where he's chasing some villain around Cairo or somewhere like that) and eating at Mercury's, the restaurant named for Zanzibar's most famous native son, Freddie Mercury, the late lead singer of Queen. Tuesday we decided that before the music festival started on Thursday we should head to the beach for some serious down time in the sun. We got a shuttle bus to take us to Kendwa, a popular destination on the West coast, about an hour out of Stone Town. We ended up staying at Kendwa Rocks, a nice lodge right on the beach. The beach is amazing. It looks like all those pictures of beaches you've seen on postcards or calendars or on your computer screen saver that look too perfect to be real and you can't believe those pictures were taken at a real place. They were probably taken here. The sand is incredibly fine, like flour almost. The water is almost a neon blue and is just warm enough to make it enjoyable (watch out for sea urchins, though. i watched two people get stung). We've spent the last two days here, laying around, eating good food, getting sun and swimming. Tomorrow we head back to Stone Town for the festival. More updates sometime soon.