Back Again/Bongoyo Island

Here I am back in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania for the 7th time, believe it or not. I arrived on Sunday morning after leaving for Boston Thursday afternoon. A night in a Boston hotel, a night in a London hotel, and a night on the plane from London to Dar, and we actually arrived 45 minutes early. This trip, I travelled with a co-worker from our research study and another colleague from Dartmouth who is doing some training in the library here.
January is the hottest time of year, so it has been at least 90 every day - quite the contrast to those of you in New England who are having snow and below 0 temps now!
On Sunday after arriving and checking into our hotel, we went to one of my favorite places called Bongoyo Island. It is about a 20-30 minute boat ride off the coast of Tanzania. It is an uninhabited island with incredibly soft, white sand and thatched roof huts for shade. The Indian Ocean is a blue/green color, very warm, and has so much salt that you can just float without moving a muscle.
For lunch, we are served fish fresh out of the ocean, cooked over an open fire, and served with the head and tail still attached. We eat it with our fingers. I saw them throwing the 'innards' to the eels off to the side of the island. A great place to relax on my first day despite the bit of sunburn I got. Being a Mzungu (Swahili for white person), its hard not to get a little burn from this blazing hot sun.
After returning from the island, I stopped at the outdoor market and bartered for a wonderful tablecloth and 6 cloth napkins with elephants on them- all for $13.00!
Since I didn't sleep at all on the overnight flight from London, I called it a night at 7:00 pm and slept straight through to 7:00 the next morning.