Advertisement
Published: August 8th 2008
Edit Blog Post
How do you even begin to describe the events and time spent these past few weeks on Misali? Incredible for one. We spent the final week of our time on the island sleeping on the beach because so many rats had chewed into our tent that it was no longer fun to even try to sleep. We must have been quite the scene…4 girls all wrapped up like cocoons to avoid the swarms of sand flies that were always around. We had gotten to be really good friends with some of the dive guides from the nearby resort Fundu Lagoon, so they would bring us leftover lunch and some good company. One afternoon I got the chance to go for a dive with one of the guides. Defiantly a highlight!!!! We dove a site off Misali called Coral Mountain, and it was the most amazing coral I have ever seen. We saw a totally pristine wall that dropped off to 65m below. It was incredible. We saw some sweet fish too…giant triggerfish, tons of huge puffers, a 3 foot parrotfish, and a bunch of rays. It was a great dive. I am so excited to come back to Pemba someday and
do more diving, it is supposed to be some of the best sites in the world. I did some great snorkeling off our camp beach now that my finger has healed (horray!!!) and finished my research. Now I am going to try to make some logical sense out of the data…a fun prospect. Our papers are due on the 10th, so I do not have much time.
Other than snorkelling everyday, swimming whenever we wanted and basically laying in the sun a lot, we loved hanging out with the people who worked on Misali…the rangers, fishermen and soldiers. One evening, we all hung out up at the ranger kitchen and I fried mandazi, an African fry-bread that is really tasty. We all sat around talking and drinking tea and listening to Bob Marley on one of the girl’s iPOD speakers. It was so much fun! Our last night in Misiali I made fried sweet potatoes that were a big hit. We are really going to miss all the crazy characters out on the island.
The last full day on Misali we were taken to another part of the reef by boat to snorkel some of the shallower section of
the coral mountain reef called coral gardens. It was beautiful. We are so lucky to have been able to see such an amazing reef…they are diminishing really fast.
So, as you probably gathered, we are off Misali now. We planned to go back to Zanzibar today by ferry, but our plans changed when we talked to our dive guide friends about the possibility of staying the night at the resort, Fundu Lagoon. Usually it is about $400 per person per night (not a student budget!) but they gave us an amazing deal that we could not resist. We planned to only spend one night, but after spending about 5 minutes here we unanimously decided that we needed to make it two nights and take full advantage of this place, so we booked our second night. We have two bungalows, one for me and Mary and then another for Emily and Courtney. Each room is a canvas tent house under a palm frond and mangrove pole shelter with a porch. They have a bathroom with a real shower (after three weeks of no showering this was such a huge deal!) and flushing toilet, and even has frosted bottles of two
kinds of shampoo, conditioner and two body washes: one for am and one for pm! We are in a really posh place! Our first stop was the pool and pool bar. It is up on a hill overlooking the ocean, and is one of the edgeless pools that look like it goes right into the horizon. We had a fun few hours where we thought that the plan we were on was alcohol inclusive (most are) but then we learned that we do not have it included in our bill. Oh well! It was fun while it lasted! I went to the spa for a bikini wax and it was fun to totally feel like a resort guest. We are waited on hand and foot here. We spent our evening out at the bar on the jetty watching the sunset and drinking and reminiscing about our few weeks on Misali. Then it was off to dinner. Ok, so we have been living on rice and fish right? So when you present a group of ladies with lots of food after living like that, we will eat until we are sick! The food here is so good. We actually had two
lunches our first day, and then after dinner we were too full to do anything but go to bed! It felt so so good to sleep in a real bed. And we slept in! We have been up at sunrise every morning for our time on Misali and here we slept till 7:30. Today I spent about 5 hours working on calculations for my data from ISP, and handwriting more of the paper. Yes, this is the time when we are supposed to be working on our papers that are due on Monday. Crunch time! I am going to head off to the jetty now to watch the sunset and enjoy our last evening out at Fundu and on Pemba. Tomorrow we are headed back to stone town. 10 days till we leave Africa!!!! This semester has flown!
Advertisement
Tot: 0.113s; Tpl: 0.037s; cc: 8; qc: 51; dbt: 0.0466s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.2mb