Woke up at 5:30am this morning. Not because of the bird convention outside our room, but because we made plans to be driven to the south part of the island (about an hour and twenty minutes) to go on a boat and snorkel/swim with the dolphins. The dolphins mainly come out when the sun not strong which so we had to leave early to make up time. We met our tour guide and ride at the reception area of our resort at 6:00am and handed the remaining 80,000 Tsh we owed him per our deal we made the day before when we made a deposit of 20k. When we did this, he (who I likened to Eddie Griffin) asked where the other half was. While this was happening, there was another Italian couple waiting patiently in the back of the van. Immediately, after Eddie asked this, T went into attack/bad cop mode, which is always a spectacle. After 5 minutes of arguing back and forth about the fact the ehdeat cut a deal with us yesterday and was going back on it today, the Italian male in the back seat was getting restless. I found all of this quite amusing. The guy was wondering out loud to Eddie why we were paying in shillings. Eddie was going back and forth to both sides of the van and was whispering to both parties as if to keep conversations separate. The whole thing was shady and he basically had fucked himself. T and I were annoyed and fed up and just asked for our 20k deposit back which the idiot didnt even have. He had to give it back later on in the day on the beach. We just decided to go back to the room and watch an episode of Breaking Bad.
We went down and had breakfast the usual time and continued out to our usual bungalow. There was a continuing formula to the weather where it didn’t get completely sunny until around noon when it would get absolutely perfect. Because Eddie had fucked us, we had to focus our efforts on finding a snorkel trip for tomorrow. Luckily four girls from various parts of NY were laying right near us and helped us out to make decisions on where to go and how much was a decent price. We summoned several beach hustlers, but told each one we wanted to think about it. Then we went to our now favorite eatery, Kendwa Rocks for what else, pizza and Coca Cola. I tried a new flavor today, which I will probably have again for dinner. Shortly after lunch it started to rain so we went to nap in our room. This lasted til about 3 at which point we descended on the beach like the boats at Normandy and the sun came with us. This is when we started to have some real fun with the beach hustlers. Every guy trying to sell something on the absolutely pristine beach was summoned to our bungalow. Apparently the hustlers are not allowed to be near the chairs, so our establishments excuse for a security guard had to come over four or five times to shoo them away / tell us to move to the sand. Silly rule. There are generally four or five different types f hustlers: jewelry, wraps and dresses, jerseys, sunglasses, and boat tours. Oh and this sad pathetic guy that walks around with three conch shells and sadly mutters “spear fishing?” that I have said no to upwards of thirty times in the past day or so. Brian had mentioned he had done it a year ago with the same guy and all he “caught” was a fish that completely disintegrated when he shot it.
We got some awesome pink shades for 6,000 Tsh from Uma, the guy we got 5 from the day before. We got a cool Zanzibar football jersey that I will probably wear for football now. A wrap with a cool fish design for T and we also settled on a snorkel trip at Mnembu Island / Reef for tomorrow which should be pretty rad.
Side note: negotiating with these guys is getting pretty easy. You really just need to spend time and hold your low price and they usually break.
A nice little swim in the Indian was followed by a nice 20 minute hammock session during sunset which was accompanied by some very soothing music from the voice of whom I later found out was Asa mixed with some music that sounded like it was made for softcore porn. We both decided on a favorite track that we aptly named “fake penetration.”.
Just finished dinner. Usual Kendwa Rocks pizza deal, but we healthied it up and substituted water for coke. Good kids.
Ok. Bonfire then sleep. Then snorkeling tomorrow!
Lala salama!
