Time to grab a cappuccino in the rising heat of the early morning in Stone Town and then we are off to the northern shores, where plenty of people are enjoying the fantastic weather of Zanzibar. It’s a rather long drive on dusty roads passing through small villages, but the predominant color around us is green from the palm forest and the banana trees.  Despite being packed with luxurious resorts and all-inclusive hotels there is space for the down-to-earth budget ones like ours. The sea is the same for all wallets 🙂

Sure, we are in a small room, with crappy shared bathrooms, no air-conditioning, smelly mosquito nets and broken fan, but all is forgotten when you can swim into one of the most beautiful settings ever.

We’ll spend the whole day just enjoying the sun, under the shade of course, and the atmosphere and wait for tomorrow for a snorkeling trip on the reef. It looks like there should be the chance to see plenty of colorful fish not far from here. The day goes very quickly and the rest of the group is coming back from their excursion to see water turtles. Up here is really full of Italians-only resorts, where you can hear Italian music, Italian DJs, you get to choose between pizza and pasta at every meal and probably feel normal about the fact that Masaai guards are actually talking Italian to you…a parallel universe! At the end though we all want the same, which is having a good time wherever we are. So we are all happy with that! Dinner is at the restaurant/bar of the hotel, and it’s not the best meal we could hope for, but nothing that a Ndovu beer can’t fix.

After a not so good sleep, we get up ready for breakfast, order at the table and wait for 20 minutes, nothing comes, we reorder and nothing comes, as we start feeling in a hurry we just grab the first wrong order which they bring to our table, a good cup of spiced tea and we are ready for the boat trip with Nathan and Jenny. We don’t really know where we should meet for the trip, we actually even register in the wrong boat (and nobody noticed)! but at the end we manage to meet the people along the beach and we are ready to board. On the way to the reef we see flying fish on the side of the boat, it’s a great show! Dolphins as well, first in front of us and later more in the distance. It’s hard to think of a better place to be! As we reach the reef the color of the water becomes darker, we can clearly see the corals from the boat. We put on mask and snorkel and jump in. It’s full of beauty down there, red and blue corals, long yellow fish, blue and white, powerful purple!

After swimming back and forth for a long time we get to the shore where we have some delicious lunch in the white silky sand. Some relax together and then we go back to the boat, unpack the sail and start sailing back to the hotel. It’s almost sunset when we arrive. Perfect time for the last swim, a shower and dinner together with the group. We are getting ready for the ultimate Eastern Africa experience: all safari, animals and national parks!