I woke up early but let Mona sleep until 09 before waking her up for breakfast. I was quite hungry and was quite happy with the timing since it would be quite sub-optimal to be sick while traveling. Mona however, didn’t feel that well and did not finish her breakfast. Not a great sign and while we were packing Mona not so surprisingly also lost what little breakfast she had eaten as well.

The plan was to head into Stone town but this made things a bit more complicated, so we fell back to tried methods – we slacked and evaluated Mona’s wellness. After an hour or so we concluded that she at least had some minor version of what I had so we finalized packing, settled our bills and got a taxi into Stone town.

We had another lunch at 6 Degrees, and a lighter meal for Mona that went almost OK but not quite. Feeling better again we took a stroll again to see if we had missed some shopping or photo opportunities. The trick to find a street seems to be to keep going, and take left or right at times – we found both Emerson hotels and some lovely alleys, kids and other characters.Time was ticking however so we met up with the driver who took us to the airport and wished us a safe journey.

Checking in for a domestic flight in Zanzibar was a study in organization – or the lack thereof, four low cost carries were sharing one desk and seemingly trying to conduct their business in parallel, while weighting luggage and having security in the same 6 or so square meters dedicated for the purpose. Yours truly did of course not have to weigh the luggage this time either, we got manually written boarding cards and finally our flight was called out.

The Cessnas was small, I had to walk hunchbacked in the plane but I secured two front seats and able to put our hand luggage under our seats. I would get a good view into the cockpit from this seat atlas and perhaps stretch my legs if I avoid hitting any controls. One of the 12 or so passengers where a bit confused as where to sit since all seats were taken – well not the 2nd pilot seat one got to on a separate foldable two-step ladder from the ground. Once all were seated the pilot turned back back us and gave the briefest and to the point safety message I’ve heard on an airplane before – “We’re on a short trip to Dar Es Salaam, fasten your seat belts, it’s for your own safety – and have a good flight”.

I’m not entirely sure it was pure coincidence that the blonde and good-looking girl was the one who got to have this spot – the pilot took considerable amount of time to talk with her and she gave him her e-mail adress after we landed so she might be studying for pilot back home. Not sure that would explain the giggling from her three friends though.

We got our bags from the little trolley one guy was dragging along us as we left the plane and now had four hours to kill before leaving Tanzania. We took a taxi to the right terminal, did some more paperwork and check-in procedures (did not have to weigh hand-luggage here either) before we come to a place with chairs and wifi. Mona had some banana-cake and a soda but that lasted shortly in her stomach – however so far she was feeling “quite OK” despite the throwing up and intense neck and shoulder pain.

As we finally boarded I ended up next to a mother with a small child and an infant (Mona got the aisle seat for obvious reasons) but was so tired I never saw the food option but woke up 5 hours later for the first time. Mona had not been able to get any decent sleep, and not been able to keep much if any of the food either so her batteries were running low as we landed in Amsterdam. The last leg went smooth and a sandwich from 7-eleven and the thought of fresh toothbrushes, high quality schampoo in a nice shower kept us going the last bit from Gardemoen until we got home.

After a quick consideration of our options we could saw that we could change our scheduled bus to Göteborg in the afternoon for a morning one instead, allowing Mona a full sleep in our bed – so that concluded the blogging for this trip, tomorrow we head to Way Out West though – but that’s another story…

I ate very little for breakfast but forced some before walking like a sleep-deprived zombie to the beach for some sleeping in the fresh air. Julia also had two tablets of rehydration (mental note, bring those next trip as a combo with the dimor) which I drank together with water.

The weekend had piled up some new podcasts as well – if I have to pick one place to recover from illness this might come to mind. Being Monday there were also groups of kids going to school – something I’ve missed seeing from the pool (or sleeping in).

Mona tucked me in and I think I slept a good couple of hours and started feeling better and regained some but not all appetite. For late afternoon we had another movie and saw Jack Ryan – Shadow Recruit, which I for some reason though had received good ratings. It wasn’t that bad (Mona even ranked it higher than Chappie) but the CIA/USA action-thrillers with zero plot twists only doesn’t score that high – on the other hand it was perhaps want my brain could manage. I had drunk around 3 liters of water during the day which my body happily absorbed so I guess I managed to get pretty dehydrated. I was told next morning that I fell asleep just after 21.

We started the day with nice pancakes and then surprise, reading by the pool – it was more temperate today and even a brief shower which I managed to catch with the iPad (I do not think I was spotted wielding the iPad as a camera luckily though).

Mona wanted a massage to see if that could rectify her neck pains and who were I to not take the chance for a massage just for pleasure? It was 40 USD for an hour which wasn’t a bargain but still good price and although not the best I’d had it was really nice and I felt rejuvenated after that hour.

It was now time for lunch and we had pasta pesto and I started feeling a bit queasy an hour or so afterwards but since I’d read about some Ving hotel in Bulgaria having an outbreak I thought I was imagining things. Also I sometimes feel a bit weird after a massage so didn’t think much of it until we had dinner.

By dinner I felt less than great and quickly went to the room after we finished, I kept that dinner for about 3-4 minutes I believe – well spent money! Mona felt great and since this was the first time we had something different during the day that was the dinner was the prime candidate. It didn’t take much long until I could re-taste everything I had during the day (including Panda licorice, which didn’t feel that bad on the way up) and of course water started leaking from the other end as well. I quickly had two Dimor and drank water, but obviously too fast since that came up during the night as well. It truly sucks to try to sleep when feeling bad and I of course woke Mona up every time I went to the bathroom as well. Glad this happened now and not just before we were flying back to Oslo though.