Zanzibar Island

Thur, Mar 11, 2010

If I hadn’t misplaced my dive log someplace, it would now show that I’ve been SCUBA diving in Australia and Zanzibar. How cool is that?

Yesterday Jeff and I went diving along with two others in our group, who each had done some diving years ago, but nothing recently. They were able to do checkout dives with the dive master while we poked around the coral reef, then we all set off to explore. The coral here isn’t nearly as colorful or varied as the Great Barrier Reef, but I have never in my life seen so many fish. Several time it felt as if I had been dropped into an aquarium. I would just drift into huge schools of fish, and let myself be surrounded. If it were possible to have your jaw gaping while keeping a regulater in your mouth, that would have been me… chin on chest. They were all sizes and colors, and several times I was in the midst of masses of tiny little fish, like what you would buy at the pet store. It was so fun. I also saw a decent sized brown octopus, which was very cool. The divemaster spotted him, and I happened to be the closest, so I got to see him before he got spooked and retreated into his rocks. We also saw a really brightly striped, very tiny nudibranch (very hard to describe – you may need to Google that one). I don’t how the divemaster spotted it because it was no more than 3” long, but there it was, attached to a bit of coral and fluttering in the current. On the second dive we saw tons of gorgeous deep blue trigger fish. Now the trigger fish is the cool dude of the ocean, in my opinion. The shape, the coloring – it just has that sports car look to it. I’ve seen several types of trigger fish before, but never like this. These were such a deep blue they almost looked black, and they looked almost like they had been cut from velvet. Their tail fin was also very different, and reminded me of a spoiler on the back of a fast car.

Quite a few of our group were snorkeling, and we all went in the same boat. The first dive site, they were snorkeling above us, and they commented on how cool it was to look down and see us swimming under them. They also discovered how fun it is to catch the bubbles as they hit the surface. It’s a weird feeling to have the bubbles coming up right under you, and trying to catch them in your hands is a little like feeling sand running through your fingers, except upside down.

It was a long day on the water and several people came back with nasty sunburns. It’s easy to burn your back and the back of your legs when snorkeling because you’re laying on the surface of the water with the sun beating straight down on you, but the water keeps you cool, so you don’t know you’re burnt until it’s too late. I managed to stay under the shade most of the time we were out of water, so I did ok. My fingers were pretty pruny though. I burned myself twice already on this Africa trip – once going on a village walk before I had a chance to apply sunscreen and once while standing in the ocean too long trying to cool off (the sunscreen I bought in Egypt, it turns out, is not waterproof). Jeff and I are both being careful with the sun, but sometimes you just get more than you planned for. We are both the most tanned we’ve ever been – this African sun just bakes your skin. Jeff says we should be sure to get a photo because we’ll probably never have this much color again. Especially me… within a week of coming home, I’ll be back to my pale freckly self. And that’s ok with me. I’ll be home.