Snorkeling at Mnemba atoll

20th September 2010
We woke up bright and early for breakfast which consisted of a huge platter of fruits, fresh orange juice, coffee, omelettes and yummy toast.

We had booked a snorkeling trip with a dive centre (OneOcean) and were snorkeling around Mnemba Atoll, which is a popular snorkeling and diving site near Matemwe beach, where we were staying.

It was a very bumpy and stuffy 15 minutes bus ride, before we arrived at the site to board the mother boat (Caroline). Here is the one and only picture we took during the snorkeling trip! (SAD!!!), because we did not want to get the cameras wet and promptly kept them in the dry box once on board the boat.

Please bear with the rest of this PHOTO-Less post!

Su packed her equipment on to the boat, but decided not to snorkel in the end because she wasn't feeling well. We had a mini lesson on marine life where the guide showed us pictures and hand signs to signal different types of fish, before we left Caroline and the rest of the divers for smaller boat to begin our snorkeling expedition.

Less than 3 minutes into the smaller boat - when we were barely ready, the skipper and guide started signalling to us that there were dolphins in the water and for us to quickly get into the water to swim with them. We saw dophins swimming at the surface of the water and jumping. Most of us were still unprepared and started to hastily put on our snorkelling masks and get into the water. I think most of us plopped into the water instead of sliding in which I later read somewhere that it can scare away the dolphins.

In the waters, I saw about 6 dolphins swimming under me. However, they were a couple of metres below me and weren't really swimming WITH me. The dolphins swim much faster and we lost them after a while, so we had to get back into the boat once or twice to catch up with them. W, is the best swimmer of us and she managed to swim behind some dolphins swimming on the surface. How cool is that... Kiwi didn't need to chase after them, one dolphin came swimming in her direction on its own. I was quickly tired from chasing dolphins due to the less than calm waters.


Here I'm posting a photo of dolphins WHICH WE DID NOT TAKE. This photo was taken from http://africafreak.com/zanzibar-swimming-with-dolphins-at-kizimkazi. I just felt that there was too much dolphin text, with no dophin photo.

The previous day, we agreed to not take a dolphin-tour trip, because we decided that it was pretty pointless and contrived to take a boat simply to search for dolphins. But then! The dolphins appeared anyway during our snorkeling trip, so it was a bonus.

After the whole dolphin excitement, we proceeded to the snorkeling sites. The water was much calmer and we proceeded to swim around leisurely, looking around for coral reef fishes. We saw numerous different fish in all sorts of colours. We tried to identify a couple and the guide pointed out the more significant ones like trumpet fish, eel, clown fish, bat fish. It's fun just admiring the fish even if we don't know what type they are. We followed up with some simple lunch on board Caroline, before continuing our snorkeling at another site. Again, here.. I think we should have invested in some water proof camera of sorts cos I have no photos to post!!! Oh well! The next snorkeling trip!

At the end of the snorkeling, I'm not sure about the rest, but I was very relieved to be breathing through my NOSE again and feeling like I had enough oxygen in each breath.

After Snorkeling, we returned to Sunshine Hotel where spent the last 3 hours, lounging by the pool, swimming and having our second lunch!

Here is my attempt to be a dangerous predator spying on my prey, W, as she relaxed by the pool. Luckily, W had the camera, or I may have ambused. These captions on the photos are not by my choice!
We then headed away from the beach, towards Stone town. Stonetown, Part 2 of our Zanzibar trip can be found in another posting by Su!
During the hour long journey, Mama Rebec taught me an important survival skill - How to tie a headscarf or shall i say headmask?! Useful for blocking out the wind, sand and sun.

(Btw, in case you think Rebec learnt this in her travels of Africa.. um, no. she learnt this from Top Gear, the tv show.-WL)