Finding our sea legs
Trip Start
Jun 11, 2011
1
17
19
Trip End
Jun 26, 2011
Where I stayed
Matemwe, Zanzibar Archipelago, Tanzania
Thursday, June 23, 2011
The first dive was really good. There were three of us and the dive master, so the dive master was my buddy. I guess he wanted to keep an eye on me since I haven't dived for a year and didn't take a refresher. On the boat I told him I felt confident but wanted to review the hand signals, which he did. However, he didn't just show the basics but also a bunch for a variety of fish. Since I was concentrating on not tossing chunks over the boat, I forgot all of them except the turtle, which I'd already learned. That turned out to be unfortunate once we were in the water. He signaled a few different fish and I had no idea what it meant, so I just looked in the general direction he pointed until I saw something interesting. We saw a sea turtle resting on the floor which was really cool. Wolfi was snorkeling and saw eight dolphins playing together! I am still jealous.
I ran out of air fairly quickly but so did another diver, so him and I surfaced together and were collected by the boat. I felt really sick during our surface interval, the boat anchored down but still being tossed around by the rough waves. I couldn't eat the fresh fruit and samosa snacks they offered us. Instead I jumped off the boat and floated along beside it to ease my sea sickness. It worked for me but not for Wolfi, who did the deed and then lay on a bench in the boat for the hour. Everyone else on the boat felt great and didn't seem to notice we were being tossed around like rag dolls out there.
We both took motion sickness tablets during the surface interval but they said it could take an hour to be effective. At least it would be useful for the ride back.
For the second dive, I again felt better as soon as I was in the water. Wolfi also recovered while he was snorkeling. My group dived a deep wall but we stayed around 18m through the dive. The sea life on the wall was beautiful. I felt very relaxed and managed to make my air last the entire 50 minutes that we had been allocated by our DM. Of course I was low by then and should have surfaced anyway. The other girl in our group still had 20-30 minutes of air left in her tank, based on her rate of consumption. Even our dive master was impressed. Apparently on the first dive she had over 100 bar left but he made her come up anyway since they had been down an hour already.
To my relief, the water was much calmer on surfacing. The boat ride back to shore was fine and I snacked on the remnants of fruit from our break. The boat took us to the tip of the main island, where we had to take a dala-dala back to the dive shop. The tide was out so they had no way to get us back to shore near the dive shop where we had started from. It was an incredibly bumpy ride and the dala-dala has a very low ceiling. I wanted to go to the restroom the entire time. When we finally arrived at the dive shop an hour later, it was the first thing I did and I barely made it.
We were back at the resort around 1:30pm, just in time for lunch! We spent the afternoon reading and relaxing before dinner. Of course we also enjoyed a few drinks during happy hour.
Today is our last day. We filled it with more good food, some "swimming" in the low tide and investigating tide pools for interesting sea life - incidentally there are hardly any fish around in the crystal clear waters.
We also enjoyed our last happy hour and talked with the staff, guests and owner. I also had one last beach-side massage, because at $25 I felt almost obligated to. It was a lovely, relaxing day in paradise. I don't want to leave!
Comments
Wow! Looks awesome! I'm jealous of Wolfi and the dolphins too!