Our snorkeling guy was supposed to meet us at the breakfast place at 8:30am and we waited till 8:45...then started talking about how we must of been scammed by a "beach boy" who was fat with a family. The scam wasn't so bad since it was only $10. To avoid not getting to go snorkeling, we decided to go to our hotel and book a trip there. The hotel charged us $20, not bad for a boat ride on a dhow, snorkeling, and lunch. Of coarse the guy we originally booked it from showed up 5 mins later. Chaos. After some negotiation, we got him to charge us $20 too and just followed him. We were all really sketched out and felt a little bit uneasy after the dolphin experience.
We followed the man to the beach, and surprisingly there's a snorkeling hut which made all this seem more legitimate. We got our gear, sizing our flippers and masks, the walked onto our dhow. The beach and water was beautiful. It starts off greenish turquoise, then blue, then dark deep blue. The sand was white and fine. It is one of the most beautiful beaches I've been to.
The dhow was really nice. We sat on the roof of the dhow and enjoyed the scenery while sailing to Mnemba atoll. On the way, we saw dolphins. One guy told us we can swim with them, so Steph, Tina, and Jess got their gear on to do it. Alan was a bit weary and traumatized from the dolphins. I stayed back too...but they weren't able to jump in after all. We did see the dolphins swim next to our boat.
It took us 2 hours to arrive at Mnemba island. Our cook went to the shore where he was going to cook our meal. He stored this huge king fish on the bottom of the dhow, which no one knew he did, and yanked it out to bring it to shore. We snorkeled around the island, but the coral was pretty dead. We still saw some cool fish like trumpet fish, parrot fish, tangs, eels, and puffer fish. You should be glad to hear I overcame the fear of the snorkeling in deep water...was able to do it on my own.
After some time, we all regrouped in the water but noticed Vicky was missing. We looked and looked and couldn't find her. We got a bit worried since she didn't have flippers on. So we decided to go back on the dhow to get a better look. After some time, she popped up....amazing how long she swam all that time.
When we were all safe and sound on the boat, we sailed back to shore. We ate a huge king fish on the beach and it was delicious, the best meal we had so far. It was spiced and wrapped in foil to bbq. Seriously so yummy, with chapati too!
When our bellies were full of yummy, we decided to do some jumping exercise...for photos that is. We made Alan the photographer while the 6 girls jumped non stop for the perfect shot. I also did one with Alan and jess. Alan must feel so lucky being with six girls!
Our ride back was nice. We actually put up the sail to go back to where we started. It rocked me like a baby, so I took a nap. Very nice.
Now we are eating our dinner, and relaxing with some Kilimanjaro beer overlooking the beach. So nice :-)
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1 comment:
RE: louis's comment, Priscilla toook notes..obviously louis skipped a few lines in reading alan's blog. Anyhooo, good bloggin alan, you definitely deserve a cone for the spices! seems like alot of people are out for your money...ylang ylang smells really good..i had the opportunity to get a whiff it in Puerto Rico. Pris, i hope you're taking some cool pictures so that you can print me one
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