From Nungwi Beach to Kendwa Beach

---

May 11th

Here’s a fun fact for you, did you know that Freddie Mercury is from Zanzibar? True story, the late lead singer of Queen was born on the island, he still holds local legendary status with pubs named after him actually.

On the morning of the 11th I woke up early to make it down to Kendwa Beach, a few clicks south of Nungwi Beach. The PADI scuba class to become fully certified in open water was meant to be a 3 day course, one full day of classes, another half day in the classes, followed by a couple confined water dives, and then the last day would be the first “real dives”. Justin and I decided to take a 2/3 course because if we had done what Nicio did (get fully certified) then it would have meant we would basically have no beach time. We couldn’t stand for that so we decided to do half days.

Basically we watched some videos on the morning of the 11th and then in the afternoon we had free time to do what we liked. We hung around the beach and played football, volleyball and just enjoyed the white sands. It was a great time, even though it was kind of a tourist trap wherein you had to basically pay for a view, if you moved out of the beach front then the prices would be about halved or more sometimes.

That night there was a reggae dance and party up at Nungwi Beach so Cameron and I headed up there to check that out. It was in celebration of Bob Marley as he had died on that day many years prior. The party turned out to be kinda lame, it was basically a singles mixer for local “rasta” guys to try and hook up with foreign women passing through town. Even the DJ was kinda lame by mixing in dancey-techno music with the reggae, Marley didn’t get played much so it was kind of a let down.

Cameron ended up running into another New Yorker and we left the party after a while to go hang out at the hotel room for a bit. The day turned out to be pretty chill, lots of hanging around and enjoying the beach, meeting locals and foreigners alike. Mission accomplished.

Soo…until next time…Pura Vida and Hakuna Matata
-Brendan

May 12th

A tranquil night led to a good morning and I made it down to the dive shop on time for scuba class.

Straight away we went into the water with all of our gear to do our skills testing. We had to practice things like gaining neutral buoyancy in the water, defogging and removing our masks while under water, using a buddies regulator in case your tank has run out, and also 90% of the hand signals you use underwater.

I was nervous at first, if only because when I was a child in Venezuela a friend had died of scuba diving when he came up too fast and his lungs expanded. The biggest rule in scuba diving is to not hold our breath, and especially when you are coming up. Let me explain, when you go under water, just even 10 feet or more, the pressure is something like a100x more than being in a plane at cruising altitude. Because of this, air becomes denser and smaller, that’s why a bottle of air going down starts to “suck in” on itself. So you can imagine that your lungs are a bit like the bottle, and if you come up holding your breath then that small amount of air expands and can be fatal. Anyways that was my main concern but I got comfortable with our dive instructor, Deus.

After the skills test we were free to scope things out but it wasn’t so great because we were close to shore and there wasn’t much around for coral or fish. It was a nice taste of things to come the next day though.

Justin and I were jazzed after class and were so ready to do our dives! I still held a bit of nerves though, because we would be going deeper and that kinda freaked me out. So after the confined water dives and skills test we did what we do best, we chilled on the beach. I could explain what we did but it would be repetitive, basically just more of the same from the day before, football, volleyball, swimming and enjoying the paradise. That night we took it easy and hung around the hotel room, trying to keep cool in the heat of the island, I wanted to get a good nights sleep for the next day and my adventure under water!

Hope you enjoy the pics! Take care!

Until next time mis amigos, Pura Vida and Hakuna Matata!
-Brendan

---

Comments

[lerina]

Thats so perfect!

[lerina]

I WANT this pic, please!

[Avila]

It's all yours!