Zanzibar Archipelago

As well as being known as the spice island, Zanzibar is world renowned for the richness of the marine life in and around the reefs and islands that surround this archipeligo.

We decided to take one of the snorkeling trips from the Zanzibar Dive Centre next to our hotel. After confirming and reconfirming the number of passengers in our boat, we headed out to sea on a beautiful morning with our friends, Stig and Merja, from the dive centre. We met along the way a couple from Amsterdam and another from Prague. The language of Tanzania is Swahili and English and all of our fellow travels spoke very good English. This makes for a lively conversation at lunch.

We were able to see scorpion fish, zebra striped fish with sunny yellow spots, electric blue, and virtually every colour of the rainbow. The coral was also very beautiful.

We moored for lunch was served on the boat at a deserted sandy island. Oona and I were glad we didn't eat the pasta portion of the lunch because one in our group who did was sick that night. We both find you have to look the food over very carefully and use your nose. There is a different standard for food preparation and service here. It may not be served at the right temperature and this is a good signal to give a pass to the food served.

We encountered some rough waves on our trip back, but it was without incident. We all had a lot of sun and looked forward to a Kilimanjaro beer before dinner. We said goodbye to our Swedish friends the next morning and headed in a taxi for Dar es Salaam.