Zanzibar: An Island of Relaxation, Reflection, and Reefs

Last week, we traded in the dusty savannah, ringed by round humps and jagged mountains like a giant’s fist punching through the crust of the earth for the lush, luxurious island of Zanzibar, green and blue in every direction. 

Water the color of Gatorade even from the sky, we stepped onto the island on a Saturday morning, following our last night of homestay and a very colorful celebration, and instantly knew we had entered a very different Tanzania than the one we’d come to love. Taxis, tuk tuks, and motorcycle drivers practically lunged at us as we exited the airport, with us having to use our new Swahili skills to negotiate a low price for a tuk tuk. We motored into the city of Stonetown, a close-hewn, white-washed city with a distinct Mediterranean feeling, and wandered to our hotel, side-stepping puddles and honking drivers in the narrow alleys. The roads, paved. The tourists, plentiful. The easygoing, easy-made friendships with locals, completely out of sight.

Our hotel was perched behind several restaurants, in an alley behind an iron gate and up a flight of stairs. Balcony-perched, our room overlooked the ocean lapping at blinding white sands only a block or two away. We dropped our stuff, leaned as far out of our shuttered bathroom window towards the water as we could, and headed out on the town to find cheap beer, good food, and a swim spot. We ate Ethiopian food while we waited out a midday rainstorm, nursing our mojitos until the power came back on. Worth it. 

Stonetown is a lovely city to get lost in. We wandered the zig-zag alleys, doubling back on ourselves, avoiding motorcycles, cycling endless “hapana asante”s as we passed shopkeepers and restaurants. The feeling of the city is one with a deep history somewhat clouded by the incessant tourist culture. We walked into one store that felt unlike anywhere we’d been in Tanzania, with no one bothering us as we perused shelves that looked and smelled like a Maine antique store. We each bought a trinket and continued on, perfectly content in the fading afternoon light as we meandered. We sat at a cafe on the street ringed by greenery and shared a pot of coffee, steeling ourselves for a long night ahead.

Eventually I desperately wanted to swim, so we headed towards the water, only to find ourselves in an unwelcoming swimming spot during sunset. Olivia and I jumped in anyways, our coastal Maine need to be submersed outweighing many watching eyes. We found a dinner spot, gorging on non-Tanzanian food, and shared a bottle of wine on a balcony, surrounded by tropical plants and peering down at a busy street as the lights winked on for the night. More wandering, cavorting, window-leaning.

By the next morning, after a late night to bed, I was ready to leave the city for quieter, blue-er horizons. We ate a simple breakfast and got into a van I’d booked to head to the north end of the island, to a small beach town called Nungwi. Another hotel check-in, another win for my booking skills (you hear that, Mom???? I was 3/3 in Zanzibar…). We bee-lined it to the beach, finding the kind of water you can only dream about until you’ve seen it. Arctic Blast Gatorade as far as the eye can see, soft white sand and rushing waves right up to the restaurants. I spent the entire afternoon in the water, doing handstands, taking advantage of others leaving the beach to go get beer, (bad) bagels, and water, unwilling to get out of the water for a single second. 

After the beach, we stepped into a routine for the week: half-off cocktails during happy hour, dinner and a bottle of wine at one of the restaurants at high tide, waves lapping below us, and an arm-in-arm walk back to our hotel. That first night, we dove off the steps from the beach up to the restaurant, wheeling around under spotlights swirling past the decks. 

The next day, our first full one in Nungwi, we woke up early, dragging our slightly-hungover and very dehydrated, un-fed selves onto a dhow, or a traditional fishing boat, outfitted for tourists, like most of the ones on the beach. On a recommendation and significant discount from our hotel owner, we scored a deal to snorkel, swim with dolphins, and see starfish. The day started right off with a long motor to Mnemba Atoll, the most famous reef near the island. We jumped in, swimming along looking at… not much but other tourists. A chunk of coral here or there, trumpet fish swimming in the gaps between us, nearly camouflaged with the bouncing surface of the sea. Mostly ourselves. But it felt good to be in the water, to do one of my favorite things–that is, being able to see underwater and feel like I live there. 

Swimming with dolphins was comical and a little sad. You picture a children’s book, tanned girl with long streaming hair as a pod weaves around her. You picture peaceful sand beaches, a gentle shush-ing of water on skin, a hand brushed along a dolphin’s side, if you’re lucky.

Dead wrong. It felt like being on safari, but if every time you saw an elephant your guide yelled “jump jump jump!!!! Look down look down look down!!!!” as you and nine other people flailed over the side of a small boat, gunwale dipping into the water. The closest I got to the dolphines was seeing a pod swim by beneath us, about fifty feet below, their shimmering backs hazy in the darker water. I was glad to do it, though, mostly for the laughs. 

The starfish were a treat among sadness. We snorkeled over an almost entirely dead and bleached shallow reef, the bright and round shapes of thorny red starfish poking along the ruins. We picked them up, showing them off, and swam back to the boat against the current pushing us to shore. I was glad to have gone, and hungry. 

We returned to shore, sunburnt and windswept, waiting an hour and a half for a meal at a burger place on the inland stretch of town. I was glad to sit and laugh with friends, in the shade and after a long morning of water time. Nothing better than that. 

Neil, Catie, and I rushed along to our scuba dive checkout, where I felt every dream and faith I’ve ever had in my ability to and love of working far from home snap back into place. Our dive shop reminded me instantly and strongly of BioBio, and I felt at home among the stew of romance languages and southern hemisphere accents, cool young people who love to do good work outdoors. I’d been missing a home base like this, a place that felt international and approachable and like a community I’d like to be part of. I was glad I’d picked this shop. 

We practiced gearing up, using our Swahili all the while and getting significant attention for it, out-of-place as we were among uncomfortable European tourists, then went for a practice dive on the beach. 

In the past year, I’d almost forgotten what magic it is. A hiss of air at your shoulder, the feeling of weights dragging you down by your feet, a singular moment of panic as the top of your head hits water and you breathe in, always expecting salt in your nostrils and instant death, and instead you’re breathing. Cold dry air in, warm salty bubbles out. They tell you all about the things you’ll see, the fish and corals and colors and buoyancies that can’t be experienced anywhere else. 

What they don’t tell you about scuba diving is that, especially if you’re the kind of person who believes that god resides in the waves, you’ll never forget this feeling, and it really is all about this feeling. When you’re snorkeling, you’re still a land animal, still interloping on a world that’s not yours. When you’re scuba diving, you’re one of them. Everyone forgets you’re there, the whole world above the waterline stops, and below it you’re just one of the gang. A member of the phantasmagorical, colorful city portrayed in Finding Nemo made real, and you’re a member. 

Let alone the feeling of rising and falling with the filling of your lungs. Let alone the sensation of flicking a fin only to travel yards in the direction you want to go. Let alone the feeling of being among a school of fish, just another yellow traveler in the cloud. Magic.

And all this flooding back to me from just a couple of minutes of groping around on the sand, nothing to see, us and the water. I was grinning from ear to ear for the rest of the day. 

The next morning, another early start. Not the most relaxing vacation of my life. Another schlep to the waterfront, to the hustle and bustle of the dive shop, donuts and coffee and regulators flying. We were on the boat by nine, sandwiched in between fifteen other tourists with sunscreen smeared across their foreheads. 

Back to Mnemba Atoll for our first dive, almost directly below where we first snorkeled, made much cooler by eighteen meters of water above us. Huge chunks of reef decorated with schools of silver and yellow fish, colors and shapes poking up out of rocks I’d never seen before. A dive of figuring out how to manage my air, remembering how to swim and how to communicate without any air, any words. 

A leisurely break back on the boat, with the freshest mango of my life, ginger tea in plastic mugs, juicy pineapple on a platter. We gorged, feeling grateful to be well-fed on a boat, going over the things we’d seen below, jumping into the Cool Blue Gatorade water to cool off. 

Our second dive was a wall dive, floating alongside a huge wall rising above us. It’s hard, without knowing what I saw (no words, remember?) to truly describe it all, but when I tell you that I couldn’t have thought up half those shapes and colors, when I tell you it made me believe in god, I mean it. I saw fish that were perfect fish-shaped holes in the universe, with no dimension, like PacMen swishing through the water column. I saw fish darting in and out of anemones, fighting shrimp pacing across cave entrances. I saw things I could never have imagined. 

Lunch back on the boat, fresh chapati with pico de gallo inside. We, the hungry, some-Swahili-speaking Americans, finished most of the platter. A long ride back to the harbor, dozing with my feet in the sun, head on Neil’s shoulder. A day well lived. A life well spent. 

Another evening out, after a warm shower, at a bean-bag, edge-of-the-water restaurant where we ate pizza and watched acrobatic performances on the beach. More wine, more carrying on. Our last night with the whole group, before many traveled to the big city, Dar Es Salaam on the mainland.

Wednesday, more diving, more lugging our things across the sand and getting soaked clambering into a boat. A smaller crew this time, us and only three others heading to Tumbato, another island off Zanzibar. A different vibe this time, far more chill and jovial, which mostly felt like a hangout between us and our new-friend dive instructors.

The reefs on Tumbato are shallow, and huge. Our first dive was another wall dive, drifting up and down with the current to see into caves, levitate over anemone, swim under schools. We saw a sea turtle glide by, three orange fish hitching a ride. Countless yellow fish coming together and apart like geese in the sky. A school of tall, flat, yellow-and-black striped fish waiting for some signal to swim across an open area on the sand. Messages and signals I’ll never understand, but probably spend my whole life trying to interpret.

More lounging and ginger tea on the boat, drying out in the hot midday sun. Discussions of the group, our gratitude for studying in Tanzania and each other, excitement to return to what almost feels like “normal life” in Arusha. 

Our last dive was like the first in some ways, but far more spectacular. Here we could see the reefs in the process of being bleached, a bleak reminder of how things are heading, but so tangibly alive with life nonetheless, huge twenty-foot monuments of coral with odd angles sticking out, corals that look like lettuce but pink, fingers but blue, ears but green. My favorite dive of the trip, the one where I felt most comfortable, most like I could have stayed down there forever.

Instant sadness back at the surface, motoring back to Zanzibar. Wishing every week was like this, so full of beauty and despair, sharp emotions and strong physical sensations, boats and new friends from faraway places. We had one evening left, so we switched towns, to an undoubtedly worse town a little down the coast, far more resort-y with the chaise lounges set up a quarter mile from the water. Our hotel, weird and a little rank, damp-smelling and hard to find, but fine for us, cheap college students we are. The most heartbreakingly, the hotel was without its promised pool. 

We wandered the beach, our group of ten down to only four, seeking a pool, cheap drinks, and good-enough food. We ate next to a mini baobab tree, those giants of the savannah we’d come to know in far-distant ecosystems, looking out over faraway water at the sun sinking below the horizon. 

After, Ava leapt into the pool we’d been shown, only to be told it was closed for cleaning. Discouraged but with spirits never broken, we took to the ocean, wading into shadowy water, my friends silhouetted by floodlights far away. I dove in, stroking away from the shore and towards distant lights. Floating on my back, I let the week wash over me, the moments of inconvenience or annoyance, the logistics and almost-misses, the sunburns and interrupted hammock naps amidst all the joy and clamor. It hit me quick and hard, a strong voice in my mind as my fingers grazed the sand below me. 

“This is what you get.”

This is the life you’ve been given, and with it all the small inadequacies and things you’d imagined differently. This is it, your roaring twenties, your skinny dipping in the Indian Ocean, the hills you climb and the people you’re with. This is it. Drink it in, drink in the sweet scent of starshine and muffled giggles. You’ve made it. 

Simultaneously, I realized that everyone’s twenties were like this, they just don’t mention it. In every golden-light-tinged, perfect, romanticized memory I’ve ever heard, there were too many bugs, or a sub-par-but-not-bad-enough-to-be-funny hotel room, a person you didn’t really want to spend all that time with, and all the rest. Everyone has them, and yet no one remembers them. Spending all this time worrying about it now serves nothing. 

I felt an almost physical release, a suddenly heightened ability to live in this and every moment, to shed the inconveniences like snakeskin and not look back to see them twisting in the wind. A smile spread across my face. What a life. 

There have been, in my life, places where some part of me will always be, stuck in time, lost in a particular sightline or feeling or, mostly, body of water. Some part of me will always be floating in the Indian Ocean staring out at Tumbato, fingers dangling on soft white sand. Some part of me will always be in my pond, big blue sky ringed by dark pines, water the same temperature as summer’s morning air. Some part of me will always be swimming off of Whim on the island, waving to lobstermen through the fog, feeling seaweed dangle around my feet. Some part of me is always, always in scuba gear, breathing myself upwards and downwards through the water column. Sometimes you spend enough time in a place, or a moment affects you so deeply, that you feel a layer of yourself peel away and settle to the bottom, snug in the rocks, a place you’ll always return to even if you’re not trying.

The next day we headed south again, back through the chaos outside the airport and back to Arusha, me and Olivia paying cash ten minutes before a flight left to get on an earlier one to avoid many hours in the airport. Back to Arusha, the land of radiating heat and honking streets. We stayed in an Airbnb with our post-Kilimanjaro-summit friends, playing games in a pool, eating copious amounts of butter, and laughing until the wee hours. We returned the next day to our regularly-scheduled, academic lives, but part of me stayed behind, floating in the warm, Gatorade-colored water, miles away and across the sea.