Escape!

I did it! I did it!  I walked out of the compound on Saturday, I walked! It was probably less than a mile one way but can't tell. If I walk a 15 minute mile, and although I did walk faster than some folks, it was slower for me. Anyway, that's not the point. the point is....I got out!  First I prepared...since the landlady told me it isn't safe, I put my cargo pants on. Then removed unnecessary cards and funds from the wallet and put various bills in various pockets and just a little in the wallet.  Hmm now I've told my secrets. Ok, so I took a bottle of water and the guard opened the gate for me. And I was free! I walked over to a small restaurant called the Black Tomato. I had been told this was a really good place to hang out, even has wifi.  It also provides space for outdoor booths for folks selling arts and crafts.  All of the items are fair trade, mostly done by a group called womencrafts. A little bit of heaven for me---food and shopping! I brought my Kindle so I was able to sit outside for several hours after eating my sandwich just reading then I did some shopping. I had a ciabatta sandwich with cheddar cheese, red onion "marmalade", and lettuce and tomato that I removed - got to be careful of those raw/fresh fruits and veggies. And scraped off the mayo as usual.  Pretty good, great for a place to hang out for hours. They also serve fresh fruit smoothies, dinner and breakfast and drinks-the alcoholic kind. Some of these looked very interesting-the special on Sat. was a mango mojito, then I saw a watermelon martini. mmm. Better since they do use real fruit juice in most of these places so there would actually be mangoes and watermelon. yum. I may go later this weekend or next weekend and try one of those. maybe both :-). That 3 or 4 hours made a world of difference in how I felt even today. yay! 
Speaking of food, a favorite hobby of mine, I am just sending 1 photo today.  Zanzibar, I've talked about, was disappointing in several ways. One was that I did not get to partake in some of the higher rated restaurants even though I could have on the per diem I was given. Here is my last meal. I sat at the sunset bar reading, had a drink and decided I can bring back something to my room for dinner since we were leaving early on Sat. Sooo I ordered the "spicy guacamole" to go.  It took close to an hour-I thought I was ordering something quick. I knew trouble was coming when the wait person came over and said they were making it fresh. uh-oh. So an hour later she returns with two packages wrapped in aluminum foil, a medium sized one and a small one on top that was cold. Silly me. I figured it was a dollop of sour cream and was glad since I'm avoiding most dairy too and I could toss this. Well, back at my room, packed up, ready to relax. I sit down, pour some of the wine I bought at the store I found a couple of days before. I open the chips which are triangles of crispy dough, an Indian thing, kind of the dough used in Samosas (very popular here). There is no guacamole in the middle of the chips or underneath them. I open the little package. And there it is! not quite a dollop of greenish brownish guac. Brownish = avocado left out awhile. I pretty much had to scrape the guac off of the foil where I could.  I took this photo to show what I thought was unbelievable (but maybe I should have thought first--guac? Mexican? in Zanzibar? Silly.  I laid the pen next to my guac serving to show the size.  I also laid a tube of lip gloss that's even shorter. Learning by food ordering.

a little dark, I was trying to capture the brown overtone that did not show up on the next photo. This is the guac when I opened the little package. Pen on the left, lip gloss container on the right for size.