Prison Island and Slave Market Zanzibar

A long time ago some parts of Zanzibar were major slave trading areas.  We went to the old Slave market and to Prison Island.  Prison Island was where they sent the strongest and potential trouble makers .

throughout the years the building began to crumble so they planted this plant.

the door way from the prison to the stairs leading directly into the ocean where boats would wait to take the prisoners to far away places as slaves

this is were the slaves gathered to be sorted so say there was a family of 4 

 dad goes to Italy , mom goes to Spain, brother goes to England and sister goes to France. 


The tortoises are now the only prisoners on prison Island

Best part of the tour

After Prison Island we did a walking tour in Stonetown of the actual old Slave Market.  It got you thinking about what actually happened and how aweful it would have been.

Our guide Hans shows us the chains slaves wore

Up to 70 people in this tiny cell with only two small windows for air.  Many suffocated and starved here before being bought and taken off of Zanzibar to other places

It seems a ghost intercepted our camera. Honestly didn't alter this photo of me at the Slave monument

Eid and Spice tour

Stone was an arabic town and is still now mostly Muslim.  We were here during Eid.  Eid is the end of fasting called Ramadan.  It is for a month and they fast all day until nightfall.  Eid celebrated the end of the month long fasting.

Eid

So many people

Beautiful landscape

Lots of families

Street venders

The next day we went to a farm for a Spice tour.  We saw many spices we recognized such as cinnamon, cardamon, turmeric, ginger, vanilla, pepper, nutmeg and many more. 

turmeric

turmeric left and banana right

Henna

pepper

nutmeg

At the end of the tour a man named Butterfly climbed a tall coconut tree and got two coconuts for us.  While he was climbing he was singing a song that we learned called Jambo Bwana.

Butterfly

Crazy tricks

The spice tour was an amazing experience!

ZANZIBAR!

Alleyway near our hotel

Our room in Stonetown

We arrived in Zanzibar !
Our hotel was called Al Minar. It was in a stone alley way.  All of Stonetown is a stone labrynth.
That night it was really hard to find food because we got lost many times in the maze.
It took four days to figure out where we were going.  If you get lost and you keep walking you just end up going in a circle, or find the beach.
Every building looks like it's from the past.

Elaborately hand carved doors all over

Beautiful water

This is what we see when we have breakfast

Another hotel

Yoshi goes Back to Moshi

We got to Moshi after a few hours in a car from Arusha.  We settled in at at our hotel at Mountain Inn and went swimming. 

swimming ya!

 The next morning after swimming for 2 hours, mom decided to go swimming too and I started cleaning the pool with the net.  I was talking to mom while she was swimming and I fell into a hole in the ground.  The cement scraped my shin and I got a pretty bad injury. (Don't worry it's healing fine)

Hanging in there

  After that we had to rest my leg for a while so no camel safari this time.  We hung around and played cards, read,  and watched a couple of movies instead.  We also went to Mwereni School for the Blind which is actually a public school that integrates blind, albino kids, orphans and disabled kids into the regular classes.  We donated a few books and pencils to the kids.

Good spirits

The staff outdid themselves with our room

Took patience

I only needed 3 more cards...

Even though I was injured we still made it to Mwereni.

Some younger kids who live at the school

Handing out pencils

Unfortunately our return to Moshi was not completely flawless.  The day after I injured my leg, the hotel sprayed poison to get rid of the bats in the roof.  The bat poison got into our room and it stunk so bad, it smelled really toxic so we had to sleep in a different room.  It sucked.  All of our clothes smelled like poison so we let them hang in the bathroom all night to air them out.  We left that hotel the next morning and went back to Hibiscus B&B.

My leg is getting much better now on day 5 and next two days to Zanzibar!

Serena Lodge and Lions at Ngorongoro

The Ngorongoro Crater is a National Park where Maasi people used to live with the animals in the Crater.  They were kicked out in 1961 when the Crater was made a National Park.  We stayed right on the rim of the Crater.

me and mom at the crater edge

Balcony in our room

our guide Fadhili with me and mom at the crater

This is what we saw there:

Wildebeast

God created the Wildebeast last.  He ran out of ideas so mixed the animals together into one.
1.  Stripes of a zebra
2. Tail of a horse
3. Head of a grasshopper
4. Main of a lion
5. Horns of a buffalo

King of the Ngorongoro

 These two lions are brothers

Snapper

Trapper

Hard to see but lioness of left hunting wildebeast right

 We watched for over two hours this lioness along with her fellow lionesses, hunt this wildebeast with strategic skill.  They didn't end up catching the wildebeast but almost took on a full grow buffalo.  They didn't get that one either.  They are the most patient creatures.  I told mom she wouldn't be a good lioness because she is too impatient.

Elephant with hippos!

Mom was scared of falling into the elephant footprint!

Bad bad Baboons!

me and Fadhili near the hippo pool

It was an amazing experience.  I'll never forget.
Big 5  Elephant , Rhino,  Buffalo,  Lion, Leopard - We only didn't see Rhino and Leopard
Small 5  Elephant Shrew, Rhino Beetle, Buffalo weaver,  Lion Ant, Leopard Tortoise (only saw lion ant and buffalo weaver)
Ugly 5  Warthog, Vulture, Hyena, wildebeast, marabou stork  (We saw all of them!)

We made our own Beautiful 5:  ZEBRA, GIRAFFE, ELEPHANT, LION,SADDLE BILLED STORK
We saw all of them!

Goodbye Ngorongoro