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March 23, 2002 - Hello from Africa! (Tanzania)
2 sleepless night flights, 3 bad British soaps operas, 1 overfilling fish and chips pub meal, 1 cathedral, 1 palace, 5 relatives visited and lots of London tube, coach and train rides later, I eventually landed in Dar Es Salaam, the commercial capital of Tanzania.
Flying in over the coast I could already see the gorgeous waters, beaches and sandbars of the Indian ocean, and as soon as the 747's doors opened, the humid heat rushed right in. Goodbye Canadian winter! Day 1 and 2 were laughs right off the bat. I was happy to be met at the airport by my university friend Mike Wrigglesworth and off we ventured by taxi to the Econo-lodge in downtown Dar (of absolutely NO relation to the North American chain of hotels by the same name). First job of the afternoon, after a long awaited shower, was to figure out how to get from Dar to the relatively remote island of Pemba, the much less famous sister to Zanzibar island in the Zanzibar archipelago. Looking for tickets by the port was an adventure, with plenty of 'knowledgeable' travel agents who used the sidewalk as their office willing to tell us anything we wanted to hear (i.e. yes, the fast boat goes today!) and willing to take plenty of US$ off our hands. After many discussions and a couple of close calls losing our money, we called it a day and returned in the morning for the Aziza - the boat that left port at noon. After buying our tickets, we were on the boat at 11am, watching organized chaos unfold in the truest sense of the words as dozens of young men literally and physically fought for the rights to load enormous and heavy bags of fruits and vegetables, flour and maize, trays of eggs, cartons of bottled soda and water, cars, animal skins, you name it, onto the ship. It was truly unforgettable. At 12:45pm we set sail, due to arrive on Pemba at 4pm after a quick stop in Stonetown, Zanzibar island. Well... time passed quickly and on and on we sailed, arriving in Stonetown at 6pm. It was at this point Mike went on a reconassiance mission and we determined that the boat arrived in Pemba at 4am, not 4pm! So we were in for a long night. We left the ship for dinner in Stonetown, where after watching a local football match, we promptly got lost. We found ourselves eating dinner at "Baobab Pizza", which oddly enough didn't serve pizza. Instead I ordered a fish curry and had eaten half of the bone fragment filled dish, when, poking into an eyeball, I realized it was fish-HEAD curry! EEK! Back on the ship, we sailed through the night and a spectacular and lengthy lightning show to arrive in Pemba at 4am. On time! (?) The catch? We couldn't dock until 6am when the sun had come up to light our way to the jetty. Feet firmly on solid Pemba island ground at 6:15am, we caught a dalla-dalla (a.k.a. canvas covered pick up truck with benches along the sides, carrying roughly 25 men, Mike and myself) to Pemba's central town, Chake Chake. We arrived at our destination - Swahili Divers. Phew! Pemba island is an untouristed place with a very low level of development. It seems very safe, happy and friendly. The town is dusty with makeshift shacks, a couple of guesthouses and mosques, a small mud built church, a couple of grandiose looking stone buildings with bank and a government office, and a hospital. There is one main gas station (Chake Esso), some food stands, a lively market with produce and fish and men crushing sugar cane into juice, and several stores with provisions for the people (pharmacies, textiles, books, housewares, etc). People generally live outside of the town in the hilly green surroundings, in houses constructed of mud packed into lattices of mango tree branches. Mango, bongo, papaya, banana, avocado and rubber trees are abundant, with the occassional collubus or velvet monkey residing. The roads through towns are fine, dual carriageway in fact, as a throwback to colonial times, but outside of towns leading out to several villages, they are treacherous and pothole filled, but constantly being worked on and improved. The island population is about 300,000 stretched over land roughly 60km by 40km. The dive shop is like a little "muzungu" ("foreigner") haven in the town where the relatively few guests and the small number of ex-pats hang out. A very friendly atmosphere with lots of places for lounging around, great and plentiful food and gorgeous views of the valley below and of the sunset. Venturing around the island, villages are full of children who are fascinated, scared and excited by white people, and adults who are similarly curious. The majority of people here are Muslim and therefore the women cover up and are not at all in the majority of the people you see out and about. There are also relatively few old people - the life expectancy in Tanzania is only 52. The diving is spectacular. From the base in Chake Chake, we drive almost every day in the land rover to Wesha on the water where we take the dive boat away from the main island into tropical beach and water paradise. All vessels on the water (except us!) are arab dhow style sailing boats, few of which have engines so it is extremely peaceful. A few larger ones (40 to 60ft) are used for shipping to and from the mainland, while the majority are smaller ones (10 to 20ft) used for fishing. Fisherman either use nets, baskets or are spear fisherman, in which case they spend their days with mask and snorkel in the water, tied to a float and drifting around the bays. A very few use the very illegal dynamite fishing, and occassionally we hear the distant blasts underwater while diving. This destroys the gorgeous coral reefs we dive in - tragic as they are full of beautiful and abundant marine life. Millions of corals, anenomes, shells, crabs, crayfish, sea slugs, seafans, turtles, pufferfish, starfish, eels, rays, angelfish, butterflyfish, grouper, wrasse, tuna, triggerfish and countless others. On one dive we saw a massive Ocean Grouper. Just try to imagine a fish bigger than you. Mean looking guy.... and formidable at about 2m in length! A definite highlight was yesterday morning when we were heading out to our first dive site and we caught up with a pod of about 100 spinner dolphins. They (and we!) had a blast as they swam along side our boat for about half an hour, racing and jumping and putting on shows just like at "Marineland" where they jump about 10 feet out of the water and spin around 4 or 5 times before splashing back into the water! Awesome! On diving days we do a morning and an afternoon dive with a long, relaxing lunch on one of many isolated white sand beaches framed with palms and limestones formations. Fascinating Ghost crabs live all over (and under!) the beach - so called because they are well camouflaged to melt into the sand. The water is turquoise and extremely warm at about 28 to 30 degrees Celsius. Let me tell you, life here is rough!!!! :o) I am working away on my divemaster course though, spending some days with academics only. I have to become an expert on not just practical applications of diving and leading dives and rescues, but also on the physics, physiology and equipment applicable to diving. It's definitely a learning experience! I even led my first dive yesterday, and didn't lose anyone. Well, almost, but that is another story.... 'Till next time! > See photos from the whole Africa trip. > See photos from Tanzania. > See other Africa journal entries. Back to top |
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