The reef around Pemba island is in bad shape. I thought it was because of us tourists, but apparently the water has been unseasonably warm for too long. The fish were plentiful though – and so were the jellyfish! I felt many baby jellyfish sting me, and kept looking around for the grown ones but never saw any. Later I met a girl who had been stung so badly her entire skin was prickled red like a fit of hives. Holiday experiences can be rough.
Fortunately, on my outing I could focus on tailing a beautiful dark purple pufferfish with pearly white dots. As it was so beautiful we forgot to photograph it. But here is another pufferfish, almost equally pretty.
(Pemba Island, Zanzibar, Tanzania; August 2017)
In Nungwi the location displayed in the iPhone weather app is “Indian Ocean”. How suitable. We really are on a bank of coral rock and beach sand the middle of the Indian Ocean. And it never gets cold at night.
At the tip of Nungwi village, by the lighthouse, there is a turtle sanctuary. And for nearly a week they offered sanctuary to me, too, in one of their vacant guest rooms.
(Nungwi, Zanzibar, Tanzania; August 2017)
On Zanzibar the tourists occupy the prime beach front and the locals the remainder of the island. Right after the beach-lining hotels and restaurants, real Zanzibar begins. It is sad that the locals have mainly lost access to beach-front living. But in Nungwi, the village is so much more present. It spills onto the beach at the northernmost tip of Zanzibar: kids playing soccer, women fishing in tidal pools, and fishermen repairing their boats and nets. The water is turquoise and shallow for several hundred meters, until the reef that catches the breakers. Here everything happens on the beach, also after sunset if the tide is low.
(Nungwi, Zanzibar, Tanzania; August 2017)
Somewhere out there across the ocean is Indonesia. Last year this same time I was on Bali, almost directly across from here. Now I am looking at incredibly turquoise waters and kayaks on floaters and kite surfers. Every hundred meters there is either a kitesurfing center or diving center. Maasai prowl the beach in their red drapes, wearing traditional weapons and shoes made out of car tires. They sell safaris but mainly approach ladies. In Nungwi they were quite persistent. My Kenyan friend says they sometimes also sell other services. Welcome to the beach front of Zanzibar.
Lovely ones, apologies for the long silence. You see, I have spent the two past months in Africa. I thought I would have so much time to write, but first there were long (lovely) days with dolphins, then some crazy driving around the desert, and finally more lovely days by and in water a most astonishingly shade of turquoise.
This blue marble 