We had to get up very very early this morning. 3:45am to be precise. Mr Lazy from the day before wasn’t feeling so chipper when we had to get up at that time in the morning. I actually forgot to mention yesterday that Dave was wearing his Mr Lazy t-shirt and for some reason everybody and I do mean EVERYBODY in Zanzibar just loved it. He had soooooo many people comment on the shirt that it was really quite silly. Anyway Mr Lazy and I had to get out of bed very very early this morning to make the drive [View Full Entry]

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Well today we did something different. We organised a tour to go into the city centre of Zanzibar to have a look at the old town. The stone town area of Zanzibar is actually a world heritage site protected by UNESCO in 2000. But I have to say that I thought it was really a bit of a hole. It looked just like any other third world downtrodden place that I have been to, like Amman in Jordan, although to be fair it was a little bit nicer than Amman. From where we are staying it takes an hour and [View Full Entry]

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Today was a bit more of a chill out day. We had arranged with the crap dive centre that we wouldn’t be going diving until the afternoon as the day before the weather was a bit icky in the morning and so cold. We have discovered in our short time here that the weather is usually very nice and sunny first thing in the morning, and then it starts to cloud over, usually raining by about lunchtime and then it clear up for the late afternoon. Very strange. This morning while we were having breakfast on the balcony we noticed [View Full Entry]

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So after the adventures of the day before you would think that I would sleep like a baby. But no. I awake at 6am Dubai time which is 5am Zanzibar time. Silly Chelle. Our room was gorgeous though with a stunning thatched roof. Shame we couldn’t keep it. We got up and had breakfast and then headed on down to the dive shop to find out about our dives for the day. The people in the dive shop were lovely (everyone here is just soooooo friendly and it is wonderful when they smile as these super white teeth just totally illuminate [View Full Entry]

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Well the journey got off to a lovely start when the limousine turned up on time. David was most concerned that this wouldn’t be the case as the last limo that he had had from Emirates had been MASSIVELY late. So when we got the call at the delightfully pleasant time of 8:20am that they were ready and waiting outside we were really quite tickled. The trip to the airport itself was uneventful (which is surprising for Dubai) and the airport itself was quiet, which was mind-blowing. But the craziest thing was the fact that the Emirates Business Class lounge was [View Full Entry]

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We had the pleasure of going out on a friends boat on Thursday. It was a public holiday (ascension of the prohphet) and we actually got a day off work. And even weirder they moved the day off to be on the Thursday so we would get a long weekend. They usually just cancel the holiday so we don't get anything. But not this time. This time we got three days off in a row. Fantastic! A friend of ours (Dave 2) has just bought himself a new toy boat - a lovely 23 foot speedboat. So we headed out [View Full Entry]

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We had a really weird storm blow through on Wednesday afternoon. One minute the sky was relatively clear, then literally in the space of two minutes, we had a complete “sand-out”. Have a look at the before and after photos to see how dramatic the effect of the sand was on visibility. [View Full Entry]

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Dave’s week-end was such a catalogue of mishaps (to be polite) that I may as well go through them in chronological order…….. 1 - There is now irrefutable proof that the speed cameras in Oman work !!! Driving down from Sohar towards Muscat with the sexy Swedish number Dave spends all his time lavishing attention on, Dave triggered a camera at c. 160kmh (ahem !!) 2 - After the first dive on Friday the people on the boat were treated to a glorious surround sound experience of Dave emptying the contents of his stomach into the Arabian Sea - there [View Full Entry]

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“ In a departure from usual reporting procedures, this last week-end’s diving is going to be a bit of an epic split into two blogs - one will be full of marine life and eloquence unbounded, the other will detail Dave’s dive trip which bore a remarkable similarity to “Coco the Clown gets on a boat” I was in Oman again for a meeting, so Dave drove over for the second time that week so we could go diving at the Daminiyat Islands - apparently a marine reserve because of the outstanding natural beauty of the place. It was certainly very [View Full Entry]

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Well we officially celebrated my 31st birthday on July 11. Phew what a day. We went back to the same place where I went last year to celebrate, Al Qasr in Madinet Jumeirah. And it was fab. This has to be one of the best brunches in the world, EVER! I had such a good time. The food was fantastic and there was so much alcohol that it wasn't funny. [View Full Entry]

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