ZANZIBAR! Dive it Right! Zanzibar Archipelago, Tanzania |
Zanzibar Archipelago, Tanzania
OK, so I’m catching up on some back blogs here.
Zanzibar.. what a place.. I left Dar early in the morning to get to the Ferry with my new friends “G” and “Picasso” They helped me navigate through the shark infested port that is the ferry terminal without being accosted too badly and onto the Ferry to Zanzibar I went. Fortunately for me, Ingrids boyfriend James hooked me up with his friend Dullah in Stone town and I had an escort waiting there as well.
So Dullah, being the good rasta that he is, took me to get some lunch.. OUTSTANDING barracuda curry overlooking the harbor. The he took me to get a refil for my new Tanzania phone number credits and some money from the ATM hooked me up with a taxi and off I went to the north end of the island.. Nungwi to be exact.. and I may be butchering the spelling there. Well I was supposed to go to Kendwa but every hotel there was booked so onward I went. I spent more than I wanted to on the room I had but it was nice and very clean and had a good restaurant and bar..
Where of course I met a trio of Brits who were watching football (soccer) and we had a grand time making fun of the Swedish team the Young Boys.. yes.. you can imagine the three year old humor there! I called it in early as I was diving the next morning.
Fast forward to 8am the next day, show up at my dive operator and they said as expected they were running behind and I had 30 minutes and should go and eat breakfast.. which I did.. BAD IDEA! I came back and they were all bent out of shape telling me that I couldn’t dive becuase the boat had left due to the massive tides they had. Well in a moment of quick thinking one of the locals working there knew a guy who knew a guy and I find myself in 19ft Zodiak inflatable being motored around the end of the island, out running a storm in 8′ seas.. quite a beating.. As we get around the corner of the island we find.. the main boat is NOT there waiting and he is running low on gas. Lucky for me the neighboring dive company was coming by in their boat and I hopped there.. road out to the dive site and waiting fro my dive company to arrive.
After all of that . the dives were AWESOME. MASSIVE schools of fish .. on the order of 100K swimming right around me.. colors unbelievable… eel.. scorpionfish.. you name it.. really quite special!
That night I had dinner with the Britts and my dive master and a bunch of others we met up with .. and well.. lets just say too many beers were had and I got a slow start the next day.. but thats another blog!