Zanzibar

Another day, another perfect beach. This time in Zanzibar, an semi-autonomous archipelago off the coast of Tanzania. Some friends were renting a house on the East coast of the island, so I booked a last-minute flight to join them for a couple of days. 

Zanzibar town itself is very picturesque, an old town with a historic centre called Stone Town.

It also has a great beach-side bar called Mercury's, after Freddie Mercury, obviously, who was born on Zanzibar.

It's probably most famous for its beaches though, for good reason. They are, not for the first time in East Africa, beautiful; it's virtually impossible to take a bad photo. 

Zanzibar is also renowned for its spices, its main export industry. We had time to take a tour of a spice farm, where they grew cloves, cardamon (the entire island seems to smell of cardamon), cinnamon and a whole host of things I have no idea what they were.

There's nothing like 2 days on the beach to get you into the Christmas spirit. 2 days later, it's time to head back to Nairobi, just in time to fly past Mount Kilimanjaro at sunset. The last 24 hours have mostly been spent packing, saying goodbye, packing, more goodbye drinks, more packing... It's amazing how much stuff you accumulate over 15 months.

And with that, I think, I'm done.