Andrea and her PADI Open Water Diving Classmates in Zanzibar

After my first two dives, the only dives I’ve done in the last 8 years, I was really excited to do more on the second day of my PADI Advanced Open Water Course in Zanzibar.  It felt like the perfect day to do it as well – sunny skies and fluffy clouds over a turquoise ocean dotted with the handmade sails of fishing boats.

My first dive was a deep dive – classified as 100 feet (30 meters) deep or deeper.  Diving definitely changes as the water gets deeper, and for me, it felt more dangerous planning to go 100 feet deep.  That is the same as standing on top of a ten story building and looking down at the street below.  If you’ve ever done it, it looks like a long way down. [Read more →]

After two dives and a boat ride in the sun, we pulled the dhow boat back into the beach in the middle of Stone Town. “Damn, it is so hot,” I remember thinking. As I stumbled around the dive shop and then met Andrea and some new friends for lunch, I just got hotter and hotter. In hind sight, I know that my body had gone haywire. Despite the heat, I wasn’t sweating at all.

We ate lunch at an outdoor café and I drank two liters of cold water, but just started to feel more and more strange so I went back to the hotel to sit in front of the air conditioner. My face felt like it was on fire and my head started to pound. I took two Ibuprofen and wondered if it was from the diving? Did I have nitrogen sickness? Did I have malaria? [Read more →]

Traditional Dhow Boat on the Indian Ocean off the Zanzibar Coast

For Christmas, Andrea and I decided we would give each other dive lessons. She had been talking about it for years and since we are now living just a few hours from Zanzibar, it seemed like the perfect time. We researched dive companies and everyone said One Ocean was the best dive shop in Zanzibar, so we signed up. Andrea is doing the PADI Open Water Course and I am doing the advanced open water course. [Read more →]

Today I had a free day in Zanzibar and one of my favorite things to do in any new place is just wander around with my camera to capture little mental or photographic snapshots of a place. Here is what I saw in Stone Town today:

Young Girl Navigates the Alley Mazes of Stone Town, Zanzibar

In this conservative Muslim Society, 3 European teenagers walked out of the $300+ dollar a night Serena Hotel and walked down the street dressed just in tiny bikinis. Some workers yelled “Don’t go around like that!” The kids ignored them and walked down an alley to go kick it on the beach with the local kids. I guess swimming in the middle of the city where the sewers empty into the sea sounded better than the five star hotel pool.

Young girls dressed fully in black with little white headscarves rushed through the narrow alleys on their way to class. Older women, dressed fully in black, head to toe with just an eye slit to see out of, walked fast through the streets on errands. It’s true when they say that the eyes can say so much, if that is all you can see. I asked a Muslim shopkeeper what this all-covering piece of clothing was called and he said “Oh, those women are really just ninjas.” [Read more →]

Young Muslim Woman Enjoys the Sea Breezes on the Ferry to Zanzibar

In Morogoro, we were still living in a single room in the Morogoro Hotel. It’s known as the best hotel in town, but since we’ve been living in hotels, out of just our suitcases, for four months now, we had to get out for the holidays. All of Andrea’s colleagues had taken their annual leave so she was just working in a nearly empty office. I was trying to make contacts here in Africa, but everyone is out of the office for Christmas.

Even though we felt a bit guilty taking a vacation so soon after we arrived, we really couldn’t help it – we can’t sit still. Both of us always want to be out exploring. We got a ride to the Morogoro bus station, a free for all sort of place on the edge of town and bought a ticket for 6,000 Tanzanian Shillings (USD$5) for the 195 kilometer journey to Dar es Salaam. We were headed for the fabled island of Zanzibar to go SCUBA diving. [Read more →]