Zanzibar and my last days in Moshi

So it's already Thursday evening (seriously, only 2 days left? CRAZY!) and I decided I finally needed to take time to update everyone on my Zanzibar trip, so here goes:
Friday morning Stanley picked us up at home and took us to the airport. We had a quick one hour flight to Zanzibar. The view over the Indian Ocean was so pretty! Once we stepped off the plane we could not believe how hot it was! We thought Moshi was hot, but it was ridiculous! You could hardly breathe the air was so hot and humid. We immediately got a cab and initially were going to go straight to Stone Town, which is the center of the city and was the area where the original city and slave trading took place. However, the air conditioning in the cab was so nice and we had so much stuff that we decided we didn't want to lug it all around Stone Town in the middle of the day, so we had the driver take us straight to Kendwa, which is a town on the top tip of Zanzibar island where there are amazing beaches. We had an idea of where we wanted to stay from my friend Ellen who had previously been in Zanzibar for a week. We had him drop us off at Kendwa Rocks (our hotel) and hoped that they had open rooms (we didn't make any reservations because most hotels don't have phones). They had open rooms, several types and prices to choose from. We chose two Bandas, which are little two-story huts that are really cute, they are just a small room with two beds and they are made out of wood and grasses. Elle, our friend from Hostel Hoff stayed in one with me (it was on the second floor and a little rickety, kinda scary!) and Riley and Melissa stayed in one right down the path. They had shared bathrooms that were clean and pretty nice, especially for Africa. It was sooo hot in the rooms, but we hoped it would cool down and there would be a sea breeze at night. We immediately put our stuff down, got changed, and went to the beach. The sand and the water were phenomenal! Really white, soft sand and the water was the purest, bluest, clearest blue I have ever seen. It was amazing. The ocean was the perfect temperature for swimming and cooling off. We just played on the beach for awhile. Then, a man came over toward us and he had the cutest pet monkey! I kinda felt bad for the monkey being a pet, but it was so cute and friendly! We were all so happy. After, we all went and showered and got changed for dinner. They had pretty amazing food. We all got pizza for dinner and it was so good. We also had a few beachy cocktails, it was sooo nice! Eventually we went back to our Bandas for bed, which is where it all started to go wrong. It was SO hot! Even with the fan going it was unbearably hot. Elle and I didn't sleep at all and were sweating all night. Also, right now Zanzibar is experiencing some political unrest, so there isn't any power on the entire island. Any power that the hotels have comes from generators, and to save money (the power has been out since October-ish) they don't run the generators all the time. So, at 3 am the fan turned off. Elle and I were desperate! I remember thinking, "seriously, WHAT am I going to do, it is SO hot and there is NOWHERE to go to get cool!" it was bad. Also, Elle and I were super dehydrated from the drinks we had earlier and the amount we were sweating all night. We stupidly didn't buy water to bring with us to our room. We decided to go out in our t-shirts and undies to look (we were so hot and didn't want to put clothes on, we didn't even care). We walked down toward the beach which of course was pitch black. We could hear some men talking down by the water but couldn't really see anything, and then Elle made a comment about how the guards needing to be by the water all night to watch out for Pirates, because we weren't that far from Somalia (I reminded her that we weren't that close, either, and Pirates aren't coming on shore looking through resorts for money, that they only hijack big ships), but, all the same, the comment and the dark freaked us out a little bit. We were so desperate we went to Riley and Melissa's Banda to see if they had water. They weren't sleeping either, but didn't have any water. They were also super thirsty so we decided (since we now had a boy with us) to brave the beach one more time and see if we could find some, even though I don't know where we were thinking we'd get some. We walked down to the sand and immediately saw two locals standing and staring at us. It freaked me out! We both just kinda stared at each other and then Elle and I were like "umm water? maji (Swahili for water)" and they turned out to be the security guards. They basically told us the bar was closed and there was no hope of water until the morning. We were ready to cry. On the way back to our rooms Elle spotted a semi-full water bottle sitting down on the table of the Banda below us. We told her not to take it but we were so desperate that we also drank the water when she did. We vowed to buy our neighbors some more water and profusely apologize the next morning. Then we went back to our rooms and struggled through the rest of a sleepless night. The next morning we were all a bit grumpy from being so hot and getting no sleep. We decided we would figure out later what to do, go back to Stone Town or stay another night. We had scheduled Snorkeling for 9 am that morning. It turns out they got a boat just for the four of us, and the boats were so cool! They were like traditional fishing boats, long and made out of wood. It was awesome. We headed out with the Captain and a snorkeling instructor. The boat ride was about an hour, and it was beautiful. On the way we saw a lot of flying fish (so crazy to see them run across the water) and the water is so clear most of the time you can see straight to the bottom. When we got to our first spot we got our gear on and dove in. The water was perfect. We saw such beautiful coral and so many fish and sea urchins. Our instructor dove to the bottom and brought up different things. The first thing he brought up was some coral, and then he brought up a bluish-purple starfish for us to hold. It was so pretty! He also brought up a giant sea cucumber, which is super disgusting! It looks like a big yucky you-know-what. I held it and it is slimy with little bumps all over it. It also randomly squirts water out of one end. Pretty gross. We ended up going to two snorkeling spots, it was amazing. On the way back we were pretty tired and napped on the boat. Back home we washed off the sea water and had an amazing lunch (a mushroom calzone for me, so good!). After that we decided that we'd had enough sun for a bit and went to take a nap, but again, the power was off and it was just too hot to do anything. Melissa and I were ready to upgrade to a room with air conditioning, which was $85 a night. Elle and Riley weren't ready to splurge. We went back and forth and Melissa and I decided by asking ourselves, "what would our moms t