Awoken by strong winds and heavy rain at 6.15 -- didn't dare check the state of the clothes on the line. When we got up at 7.45 the rain and wind had died down and the clothes were strewn on the porch. Oh dear. Breakfast was interrupted by bursts of wind and rain so we extended it a bit by playing a little more bao, including the advanced version (which I won!).
By 11am the sun was bursting through and the black clouds had cleared away. It looks a lot better for diving. Lunch's chicken sandwich turns out to be a toasted sandwich with what tastes like chicken pie filling.
We head up the road to the dive centre, get fitted out and head out to sea on a slightly larger, fibreglass but otherwise the same as our snorkelling boat. We were a bit nervous about getting in -- lack of experience and it's seven or eight weeks since our last dive. However, we roll in and splash against the waves to the anchor rope. When everybody's ready we drop a mere 4m to the bottom and head off. The land drops away gradually and before we know it we've passed 20m! Officially, that's a bit naughty as we should stick to 18m but nobody's perfect. We didn't really see a great deal -- well I didn't, my mask kept fogging up -- but we did see a couple of 4in angel fish. Helen and I both went low on air at about the same time (after only half an hour), the dive master has disappeared so we thought we'd best go up. Then he called us down and then we went up again -- something about being more coordinated [as a group]. It turned out the two Heikos were low on air so it was a good thing.
The bad thing was that the swell had increased to 1 - 1.5m which made clambouring back into the boat and the hour surface interval a bit entertaining. Whilst the rest of us scoffed papaya, oranges, bananas and biscuits little Heiko insisted on staring at the horizon.
The second dive was much better though my mask fogged up repeatedly. I tried filling and clearing it but that just made my eyes water until it fogged again. Obviously my spittal isn't up to much in the way of mask cleansing. However, we saw some best described as variegated and ballooned starfish. When I first stopped to de-fog my mask I stood on the bottom so that I was vertical. At that point everyone else had stopped to look at a light brown spotted sea snake which chose to swim across my fin. Only when we got out did someone say that all sea snakes are poisonous! We saw two or three more of the same. We had a moray eel in under a bit of coral pointed out (though by that time I was peering with one eye out of a small patch of mask so I didn't see much) -- apparently its body was 3 or 4 inches across, quite big. Helen knocked a lump of fan shaped coral off with her fin -- probably only 40 years worth...
A good day out, especially as the weather had remained overcast and intermittently raining amongst the wind [ie. it could have been worse]. The Zanzibar weather has been hit and miss. I guess it is their winter so we'll have to let them off. On the other hand, compared to Dar, the humidity is much higher and so nothing dries despite the warm termperatures and wind. Helen's has to borrow some clothes for tonight just to be dry. I'll trust that the stench of my rotting clothes will overpower my man-stink...
As it happens, the efforts of diving have made the four of us [divers] knackered so it's an early night.
Gomani Inn S6.34104 E39.55651 Elev. 17m!
Copyright 2002 Ian Fitchet. All rights reserved.