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April 29th Rain rain rain, go away and come again another day. That was what Victor and I were singing as the dhow left for the island of Mandatoto. We had some breakfast on the boat with the crew of four and another passenger, an older lady from Hamburg, Germany named Fraukas. The captain of the ship was Simba and he had been in the business for about 20 years. His crew were two 18 year old guys that run around the boat and managed the sails like it was in their DNA, along with them was a 14 year old named Abu who had the day off from school and wanted to get some practice in (and probably earn a buck or two as well).
It rained the whole way to the snorkel spot but the crew did a good job keeping us dry by creating what Simba called a bungalow in the middle of the dhow. By about 11am (we left around 8:30am) the rain had subsided and we were a happy group. Before long we had anchored and the crew got to making lunch for us, meanwhile me and the German snorkeled. The visibility wasn’t great
and the fish weren’t in abundance because of the rain, as you can see in the video I recorded from my video snorkel mask
here. I tried my hand at the Hawaiian sling speargun I brought with me, but had no luck, there weren’t a lot of fish worth shooting at but I did take a couple pot-shots!
After getting down snorkeling I got back on the boat and was happy to see lunch preparations were underway. The crew worked in such harmony and made a lunch that will be hard to beat for sometime. Curried fish and coconut rice with a nice salad really hit the spot, it’s a shame I didn’t have a huge appetite, probably because of the lack of sleep and amount of beer from the night before. But it was delicious none the less.
When we had finished lunch we made our way back to Lamu, the sun was shining and the winds were in our favor to make it back in good time. I was negligent to my skin and didn’t put any sun screen on, and at the moment my back, shoulders, arms (and a bit of my ass) is still
burning.
After getting back to the island I jumped on the internetz and got some blogging and photo uploading done at a great cyber café ran by a couple young guys named Mohammed. They were really friendly and very proud that they ran the fastest internet on the island, I was impressed with the connection speed on the remote island as well.
Sleep time after getting my things done online, I headed back to the hotel about 7pm and slept until 8am the next day. It was a rough night of sleep for me because of the sunburn but I managed to get enough Z’s.
Overall it was a great day in the archipelagos of the Kenyan coast in the Indian Ocean. I would do it all over again in a heartbeat, with the addition of sun screen next time!
Hope you like the pics and videos everyone! Until next time, Pura Vida mi familia y amigos!
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