The next morning we left Stone town for a few days of relaxation in a village called Nungwi, which is the most northern town on the Island of Zanzibar. I arrived to Nungwi around 10am and was ready for some food, so went down to one of the seaside restaurants and ordered some pasta with cheese sauce. I've been pretty careful about food, but this meal marked the SECOND time I ended up inadvertantly eating insects since being in Africa. The first time was a few days ago, when I discovered little bugs in a bag of dried fruit I had bought, and this time, the dinner roll that came with the pasta had a bunch of ants in it. Of course I didn't notice them until I was chewing half the roll in my mouth.... Naaaasty. That was the end of that meal.

I spent the rest of the afternoon wandering up the beach and watching the locals catching crab and octopus. Up and own the beach you could see women and children beating octopus with a stick, to tenderize them before eating. One of the restaurant workers, Ali, saw me watching and asked if I wanted to try. Of course I did. So he gave me a stick to beat my own octopus. I whacked at it for about 10 minutes and then he said to knead sand into it. Slimy octopus = gross. Not sure what the kneading was for, but it wasn't nearly fun as beating it with the stick.

After my octopus beating, I walked all the way up to the Lighthouse at the northern tip of the island and then returned to my hotel through the village of Nungwi. Not too much to see in the village, although I did stop into a little grocery mart to find myself some canned food. I figure canned food has the lowest chance of having live insects in it - oh, and I treated myself to a stale Twix bar also. That was just lovely.

Nice sunset over the water that night though.

I had planned to go snorkeling off the coast of Nungwi but I read in the Lonely planet that you can snorkel AND see the giant land tortoises on Prison Island, which is about half an hours boat ride off the coast of Stone Town. So I decided to hop the bus back down to Stone Town a day early instead of staying in Nungwi like I had originally planned. The tortoises were awesome.

Back to Dar this afternoon and then continue south through Tanzania into Malawi, land of the Putsi flies!