First we had to make the 2 hour drive on the ever so bumpy roads back to the Kilimanjaro airport in our less than air-conditioned van. Not so bad. We get there, rushing to the check in counter all 11 of us with our 15 bags to be checked. What's that you say, you over sold the flight. Of course. I should take this time to mention that the airport systems in Africa do not run like the well-oiled machines you are so accustomed to in the states. There is not much official about any of it, think hand written boarding passes, outdoor waiting rooms with dirt floors, you get the drift? So it turns out that 3 of us are going to have take a different flight from a different airport. They were about to close our gate so the three of us who hadn't gotten our boarding passes (of course, we all know which group I was in) were separate from the rest of the group and given all 15 of the bags to be checked, chucked into a van with the luggage and were speeding off towards the Arusha airport before you could even say Hakuna Matata! What?!?! I'm sorry, can someone please give me some more details? Am I headed off to a Kenyan brothel never to be seen or heard from again?? No, no...we were assured the Arusha airport knew we were coming and we were guaranteed to get on the plane to Zanzibar with all 15 of our groups bags. Phew, that was a close one!
So about and hour and a half later we pulled up to the Arusha Airport, which was the dirt landing strip airport that Annie got to fly the plane and I wanted to push her out of the cockpit (and the plane altogether) and fly the plane myself...remember?? What do you know, the tiny departure check in desk was crowded with tons of people trying to get to Zanzibar. It seems that over booking flights is not only a problem for the Kilimanjaro Airport. We march straight up to some official-ish looking person and tell them we have come from the Kili Aiport and have been promised to be put on the next flight to Zanzibar with all 15 bags of luggage we just unloaded. He looks at us with a mocking grin and says "of course you were, but it's Africa". Luckily, he calls up some people and identifies who we are and gives us some of those official hand written boarding passes. As for the luggage it is taken away in a little buggy and rolled to the side of the runway...that must be a good sign. We go to wait in our high tech departures lounge aka. a patch of dirt with some white plastic lawn chairs. Two hours later we are boarding the plane, but we can see that our buggy of luggage has not moved an inch. I'll give credit where credit is due, Dave fought tooth and nail to get that luggage on the flight, but they weren't having it. Apparently when it is hot out the air is thinner (or thicker, I forget) and they can basically only carry the passengers on the plane because of weight restrictions so our luggage never stood a chance. They told us it would be on the next flight to Zanzibar, tomorrow.
So we finally arrived in Zanzibar about 4 hours after we were supposed to and met up with the rest of our group, who I didn't envy for a second. They had been waiting for FOUR hours for us at the airport in Zanzibar. I should mention that the airport is almost entirely outdoor, there is no air conditioning and the humiditiy is about 110%. We all made a trip into town to get some necessities since we would be without our bags for at least 24 hours. You know, toothpaste and swimsuits! The swimsuit I had to buy was not documented and has been donated to charity already as it was about 4 sizes to small and the top was made to cover a 12 year old girl who had not yet gone through puberty. But I will show you a picture of some of the awesome shirts the guys got to wear.
We finally arrived at the Fumba Beach Lodge and it was paradise! We were greeted with fresh coconut juice and then we had just enough time to put on our tacky swimsuits and have a few beers in the pool and watch the sunset!
Sunset from Fumba...not too shabby!
Then we all "got ready" as much as you can with no bags and enjoyed our first dinner at Fumba, it was amazing as was every other dinner we had there! Then it was off for an early night to bed as we were all exhausted from our days crazy journey! The lodge has a bunch of these thatched roof bungalows, which were really awesome, until I realized they did little to keep the abundant amount of gecko's out of our room. You can imagine how restful my sleep was while at Fumba. How is it possible that these stupid lizards can haunt me across the world! There is a light above the front door to the bungalow of course all of the nasty lizards congregate right above the door and just stare down at you daring you to open the door. Well, clearly, I couldn't possibly be the one to unlock the door. So Annie, who is also deathly afraid of these things, got nominated to open the door and then I would run as fast as I could into the room and she would slam the door shut. That was the plan. The first night, she finally pulled herself together and went to put the key in the door and a lizard CAME OUT OF THE KEYHOLE!!!! She screamed, I screamed....we heard people laughing across the whole property. By this time our fellow travellers had come to know our mutual fear of lizards very well. Luckily, Dave came to our rescue and opened our door, as we made him do every other night as well. Needless to say, this was not the last time we were driven to screams due to lizards over the next three days.
Our room at Fumba Beach Lodge
The next morning I had to face my second biggest fear (behind lizards, of course) snorkeling! Yes, people, I am terrified of the ocean! I have been ever since my family went to Mexico when I was 11 and I went snorkeling with my Dad and my sister and we saw a barracuda and all I could think about was that episode of Flipper (my favorite show at the time obviously) where the girl is attacked by a barracuda because she is wearing a sparkley necklace and barracudas are attracted to shiny objects. And of course I was wearing a nautical themed swimsuit with a giant golden anchor embroidered on the chest like a freakin' bullseye, thanks Mom! Clearly she did not watch that episode of Flipper. Anyways, so I am emotionally scarred. I have tried snorkeling a handful of other times and they all end the same way, with me hyper-venhilating and sucking in copious amounts of salt water in through the snorkel. Well, I was determined to give it another shot, I mean, I was in Zanzibar! I had even bought an underwater camera for the occasion. I should mention that while, yes, I did buy the camera for it's underwater functionality, the real reason behind that was that I lost a camera a couple of years ago in Cabo by dropping it in a glass of beer and I figured if it was waterproof it was beerproof too! Anyways, so after a mild panic attack I put on my wetsuit - to protect from both sunburn and jelly fish, how convenient (please note heavy sarcasm). We had to wade out to our dhow (traditional Zanzibari boat) and headed off to the reef.
The dhow is basically a bunch of old rotting wood nailed together, so as you can imagine, I was less than pleased to be sailing out over open water in this "Titanic waiting to happen". All of a sudden we stopped in the middle of the ocean and they told us to jump in! WHAT?!?!? The only snorkeling I had ever done was the kind where you rent the equipment from the guy on the beach and wade out and see what ever you could right off of the beach. And I had enough of an issue with that. And this guy wants me to jump out of this future shipwreck perfectly good boat into open water. I mean has he seen the movie Open Water. Somehow I managed to step outside of my body for a few moments and climb down the ladder into the water (I don't jump into any body of water, as a promise to my mother, after the "incident" at the lake that fateful 4th of July in 2005). I did a few breathing exercises to calm myself down so as not to inhale a lungful of water and then I did it, I assumed the position and put my face in the water. It was BEAUTIFUL!! I had never seen a coral reef before, well in person, and I never imagined that it could be so pretty. Now I get why people are addicted to scuba diving. But don't expect me to do a 180 anytime soon and grow fins, I still have a very healthy fear respect for the ocean and all that inhabits it...aka. sharks.
Proof that I got in the water
Nasty Sea Cucumber
We were supposed to have about 90 minutes to snorkel, but the weather got bad after 45 minutes and the water got really choppy and got stirred up so much you couldn't really see anything anyways. I will say that I did enjoy myself, but that does not mean that I wasn't a tense, nervous wreck the entire 45 minutes that I was in the water. I would turn around at least 4-5 times a minute to make sure that Jaws wasn't creeping up on me from behind. So we had to get back on our dhow after only 45 minutes and we were wisked off to our private island to enjoy a picnic on the beach as well as a couple of hours relaxing on the beach. Oh what paradise!
View of our Dhow from the private island
The next day we all spent hanging around the resort, mostly by the pool. I also got a 90 minute massage in a treehouse in a Boabab tree, awesome! The spa was literally a treehouse built in this giant tree! It was so peaceful and all you could hear was the sound of the wind rustling the leaves and the waves in the distance. I could get used to that!
A bunch of dhows
View from the hammock that I spent the better part of the day in
Simba...the lodge's dog...we made friends, he hung out with me on the beach all day!
That night was our last night at the resort so we got to have dinner as a group on the beach by candlelight...very romantic! It was also a full moon, which was very cool to see the moon's reflection off of the ocean. Since it was our last night at the lodge (we were headed to Stonetown the next day) we decided to have our very own full moon party on the beach! It was very tame, by Thailand standards, but we stayed up until almost 5 am drinking beers on the beach and hanging out...a very memorable night!
Our very own Full Moon Party
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2 comments:
absolutely gorgeous! and yeah, you couldn't have paid me money to jump in that ocean and snorkel. i think i was another person when i scuba-dived on my honeymoon in the middle of the ocean!!!
I am with you on the lizards...I will NEVER go to Zanzibar!
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