I'm HOME!!!! We did it. After about 42 hours of traveling, I'm back in Boise for the week!! :) Thank you for following my blog for this experience.

So we said goodbye to Zimbabwe!

But while in Zimbabwe, this will be shocking for some, I ate a worm... It was chewy. And disgusting. And almost came back up...

And now we're in the countdown of our last few days. We are in Lusaka, Zambia and staying at an honest-to-goodness hotel. We haven't seen much of the city yet but tonight we're headed out to explore and get some dinner. Then we take off Thursday morning and I travel (for about 37 hours) back to Boise!  

Just a few moments to share

Victoria Falls!! It was breathtaking. Beautiful and massive. 

At our hostel, these are the feet cleaning fish! Definitely tickles.

Our room:

Goodbye Zanzibar

We're leaving Zanzibar today. It was a little slice of paradise here- unlike anything I've ever seen. Today we're taking a ferry back to Dar es Salaam and then flying to Harare, Zimbabwe just for the night. I think we're there less than 12 hours. Then tomorrow morning on to Victoria Falls. Lots of traveling the next week!

Last night we had dinner and wandered around Stone Town. Well, first we saw giant tortoises and went snorkeling (amazing!) then we went to Stone Town. Ramadan is ending so there are huge celebrations on the street. It's filled with food and music and laughter and men, women and children in their most beautiful clothes, scarves and head wraps. The colors are amazing. I got to thinking last night how wonderful it would be if Muslims in America could celebrate like this. Celebrate freely and openly. And share the joy and love of their religion and of their beliefs. If we could see that and see a new perspective other than what we see of Islam on the news our whole world would open. And the fear and hate would have to stop, because we allow ourselves to be afraid of what we don't understand. And we allow ourselves to not understand far too much.

Anyway. It was a beautiful thing to see and hear and experience.  

Some moments in Zanzibar

Some safari pictures

Okay, these aren't the greatest because they're from my phone, but here's just a little sampling of the safari!

Here's the big Land Cruiser and our driver, Eli. He was super amazing and knew a lot about the park and the animals. 

There's an elephant back there, but I don't think you can see it 

Zebras!

I felt a little like I was in Jurassic Park

This is a view of the crater 

Monkeys! But again, hard to see with this camera 

So. Many. Baboons. 

View of Mount Meru

We got so close to giraffes!!

Flamingoes!!! 

Right when I was taking this picture the car started to roll forward toward the lake. I calmly said "um excuse me Eli but the car seems to be rolling away" which he thought was pretty funny. Probably not if the car went in the lake, but we luckily avoided that :)

Our on-foot ranger. Sort of an odd fellow... Walked very slowly and kept giving us quizzes about animals and trees which we obviously knew nothing about... Which is why we were on the safari in the first place.. 

Acacia tree

Mount Kilimanjaro 

Mount Kilimanjaro again. For John Wayne fans- this is where Hatari was filmed 

All in all we had a really fun day and got to see and experience a lot of new things! We leave for Zanzibar tomorrow evening! We have a private room at our next hostel and we may have a chance to eat at this restaurant that's on a rock in the middle of the ocean. Pretty cool!