trip report 1

We decided on Zanzibar a couple of months ago when we really needed a holiday and looking for a hot place to do some diving and laze. Egypt was the first choice as it's the closest place with decent diving (i.e. not wreck diving) but flights were pricey. So we thought of Africa and surprisingly, we found cheap flights to Zanzibar which is an autonomous island of Tanzania. This is on the east side of Africa and somewhere in the middle (latitude-wise), just above Madagascar if you know where that is.

It took almost a day to get from home to the resort at Kendwa Beach but it sure was worth it. The beaches were wide and white as promised. It was painful to look at the beach during the day because of the glare from the sand. The place was quiet-ish as it was the pre-peak season, just the way we liked it. The plan was to spend five days at Kendwa and then five days at Stone Town (the capital of Zanzibar). Now this beach, though a popular backpacker area, was a good hour and a half away from the airport and the final stretch of road (if you call it that!) was extremely bumpy and uncomfortable. I was glad we only had to go along that road twice. Our accommodation at Sunset Bungalows (which was where the diving centre Scuba-Do was affiliated to) was simple with a huge four-poster bed and air-con (what a luxury!). We spent the first couple of days sun-lounging, reading, sleeping lots and drinking African lager. I have to say that African beer isn't very nice, maybe because it gets warm quickly. Breakfast was fruits, bread and eggs (with little yolk I think cause the omelette/scrambled eggs are almost all white). It was great coming to a place with lots of tropical fruit and seafood - two things I love to eat but so expensive in the UK.

We did five dives over the next three days. Scuba-Do is run by Chris and Tammy, and they had lots of interns/divemasters-in-training (DiT) from England. Before the trip, we'd been told that Zanzibar was great for macro life, not so much for the pelagics. That was accurate, but of course we were still hoping to catch a sight of a big one. First couple of dives were easy, shallow, 50 minute dives to get us back into the groove, as our last dive in Cyprus was over a year ago. Our dive computers were watertight despite our recent battery change. We then did an "exclusive" third dive at Leven bank (an underwater hill) which is a half hour ride on a high speed RIB. This reef is surrounded by extremely deep waters and because they don't get many experienced divers, they don't do this dive so often. Tammy also mentioned that it's possible to see big fish at this place. Nine of us backflipped into the middle of sea, with no land in sight, down to 25m. We then started finning, following the leader (I hope he had a compass!), in the middle of blue nothingness. Soon, sand emerged and suddenly there was life about. Tammy disturbed the sand and several blue-spotted rays flew apart under our noses - that was a sight! Pete got narced (above 30m!) and thought he was low on air when he still had 130bar. He signalled to Tammy but she waved him off and I think he got to his senses as we decreased depth. We didn't see any big ones but it was a splendid drift dive with just experienced divers, no one knocking into anyone and us taking time to delight in the underwater world. I got sea-sick during our ride out and I managed to keep it down until our deco-stop. Lucky it was an early dive and I hadn't had breakfast yet =P. On our way back on the RIB we met a big pod of dolphins and a couple were performing for us even!

We did our last couple of dives at Mnemba which was supposedly the best spot for diving at Zanzibar. I'd taken my anti-travel-sickness tablet this time and in top form for the day. Pete was ecstatic to see turtles and managed to get a good video of one. Saw a lobster guarding his cave and there were some big (about a metre) puffers and groupers about as well. And triggerfish (I'm not so afraid of them anymore), snapper, wrasse, blenny, pipefish and stingray.... So in all, we had a fantastic time trying out our new camera.