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Published: August 8th 2008
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Hello all! I managed to find an internet cafe that was open during our restocking run on Thursday to Chake Chake! Horray! I am a bit pressed for time, but will try to cram as much in this email as I can.
We left Stone Town on Monday by ferry at about 9 am. It was pouring in stone town (the short monsoon season has started) and got totally soaked going the 50 feet from the taxi to the waiting area. Like totally drenched through. The boat had a rather rough crossing...two of our group felt really sick. It poured down rain the whole time. Like drench-the-windows-so-you-cannot-see-out kind of drench. It was an omen. We got off the boat in Pemba and hired out a dalla dalla to take us to Chake Chake where we bought water and then took our stuff down to Wesha where we were trying to find Hammud, the head boatman of the harbor. He was not answering his phone, so we were standing around, four white soaked girls with a huge pile of tents and stuff, trying to find a fisherman to drive us out to Misali. We were in luck! Hammud showed up and
waiting in the rain
we were soaked through before we even got out of Stone Town let us hire his diver on a huge fishing boat...the smaller one was stranded on shore due to the tide and he wanted us to be able to get out to Misali, and did not even charge us extra! He is a good guy to be friends with. We made it out to Misali and only got rained on part of the time, and then set up our camp under the baobab tree. Well, semi set it up. We had all sorts of problems with missing poles and wrong pieces of tents...and it was a monsoon. Great. We had a LONG wet night and everything was soaked. Damp clothes, damp bedding, and strange noises and mice running across the tent...none of us got much sleep. However yesterday morning was beautiful! We woke up at a about 5, ate some food, and then re-invented our campsite to better prepare for the next storm. Honestly though, tents are not supposed to ever bee used in this kind of rain. Water is something we are going to have to get used to. Mary and I snorkeled the length of the reef and mapped it out in general segments so that we know what
riding a dala dala
soaking wet, tired, running late, seasick...it was slightly stressful getting to Misali we are getting into with the transects we select. We start doing data collection tomorrow. Yesterday afternoon we all spent a lot of time laying on the beach, reading, doing research, writing letters and working on evening out our horrible one-piece tans. We can get away with wearing two-pieces here, thank goodness! The rangers are great, they are going to help us cook and a group of them taught me to play bao...a very complicated and outrageously popular version of mancala. It was really confusing but they were sweet and let me win. Last night they invited us up to their hut for tea after dark (they make amazing tea!) and we were shocked that they were watching the news on TV! We do not even have TVs in stone town at our hotel! They have a generator that they use to run lights at night (we can charge our iPODs!) and apparently the TV. One will always find a surprise in Africa!
Last night there was no rain, and we all slept much better. We hear bush babies at night! We are going to go on a bush baby hunt one of these nights. This morning we had
breakfast with the rangers (ugali and fish and tea) and then hopped in the boat to head to Chake Chake to buy supplies. The boat was full of us, huge water drums, and about 15 fishermen and their fish. Huge barracudas and a tuna! They looked so good! We dropped off random people at little villages along the way, and eventually landed in Wesha. We got a ride with the dept. of fisheries to Chake Chake where we loaded up of fruit and oatmeal and water for the next week. I am so excited about the fruit. I hope it keeps ok. I got mangos, a pineapple, two soursops (horray!) and we also found this amazing flat bread. We are going to have it tonight for dinner with some canned hummus and tomatoes that we bought. Yum.
Well, I guess that is about it! The island will be a very unique experience. It will be a lot of down time so we will have to be creative to not get bored. There are lots of trails though, and tons of great snorkeling sites. Two of the girls even saw monkeys yesterday! We are praying that the weather holds off
on the rain, but you never know. Hopefully next time our tents will be a bit more prepared. These three weeks are going to fly!
With love,
Layla
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