Sea-fari

 (i am STILL not going finish this saga. I try to keep these short to keep the attention of readers, but this one really got away from me and i had to divide it again. so part 4 will wrap it up. I PROMISE!)

After our dramatic arrival,  which caused no shortage of mayhem in our otherwise idyllic surroundings, it was time to get down to the business of relaxing on an exotic island.  First order of business: find out if the beaches are as beautiful as everyone says they are. Since we arrived in the dark and with other more pressing issues at hand, a cursory glance was all we could muster. 'Twas quite lovely to dine oceanside that first night though, listening to the roar and crash of the surf, feeling the island breeze gently knead our stress levels down to a wee bit of nothing.

One sweaty night of restless dozing later, the first morning on the beach dawned pleasant and bright. Grabbing a book and my camera, I headed out to inspect our surroundings, the Indian Ocean was beckoning. Aaahhh, here I come! And........there I go. The intensity of the African sun spares nothing and nobody-the water felt like it came from my grandmother's teakettle. Frolicking in the waves was not going to be on my list of things to do that day. Ok, well I CAN'T leave an exotic island without a tan! Mental note: must go back home in December and make everyone insanely jealous of my bronze hue. Settling in a chair with my book and a several palmfuls of SPF 15, (yes, that's right, SPF 15.. in AFRICA. way to go Claire), I feel as I am ready to live the island dream. And......ten minutes later, my fiery skin is begging for relief. With a grumpy sigh, I resign myself to the shade. No water fun, no golden sun. Let the reading commence.

Immersing myself in my book, I don't notice when the ocean disappears in front of me. I look up and ummm....wow that is some tide. The tide has receded to the line of the horizon and there are people walking and fishing in the shallows. Never in my life have I seen anything like it. Apparently, on the eastern side of the Zanzibar island, the pull of the tide is so strong that it utterly transforms the beach from one hour of the day to the next. What is left when it recedes is a miry clay that I can only describe as wet cement and gross. So gross, that it was of course,  time to start walking through it to get out to the shallows.    All the locals     appeared to be headed that way, why not us? Donning some less-than-flattering water shoes, we set out on our sea-fari. I wanted to take my camera on this little "walk," but the chances of me losing my balance, getting stuck in some sort of nastiness, or getting devoured by a man-eating coral reef, were pretty huge. I mean, sometimes I can't walk from my car to the front door without some small disaster occurring. If I lost my camera in the Indian Ocean, I would lose all of my pictures.  Then you would  be reading some hateful rants instead of humorous updates. Therefore, I elected to leave the camera behind and made sure to catalog everything in my brain.

Let me tell you, that little sea adventure was one of the coolest parts of the trip. Top 3.  With the help of a local kid who appointed himself our personal tour guide of the Indian Ocean (why are we always attracting would-be guides? Do we just always look lost?) we were able to navigate through the muck and out to the shallows, teeming with sealife.   I picked up several beautiful starfish, poked at a frightful looking sea snake, shrieked at a sea slug, saw countless brightly-colored fish previously viewed only at the aquarium,  and avoided the minefield of spiky sea urchins that littered the sandbar. Zanzibarians take full advantage of the hours that the tide is out and fish to their hearts content. I watched a woman calmly spear an octopus as if she was poking at spaghetti. Let me tell you I've never seen THAT before. This little expedition was so fascinating, that Amanda and I went out again the next day by ourselves. Thanks to our "guide" the previous day, we knew where to look for stuff. I even managed to do a little less shrieking.