Day 193 Nungwi to Kendwa

Our new friends (from Arusha) texted where they had settled on Kendwa Beach. Kendwa is just south of Nungwi, and we had planned on meeting up with them when they arrived. More like, as soon as I was finished hanging out with the sea turtles. It was simply so peaceful (as you can see above – and you can catch one of them coming up for air, although it might not amuse you as much as it did us). Needless to say, it was hard to tear myself away from them.

The water was so much clearer today than it was yesterday. I should have went swimming with them again, but thought I was only going to say goodbye instead of sitting and hanging out with them for an hour before we taxied over to Kendwa.

Cristina, Asha, Nora and Tiffany were already on the beach and we chatted for a while before I tried to find some Wi-Fi and they tried to find some cheap massages. Then we all hung out under leafy umbrellas. Sometimes sleeping. Sometimes swimming. Most of the time doing nothing at all. It was glorious.

Day 192: Swimming with sea-turtles

Sea-turtles are the most graceful yet most clumsy animal I’ve ever encountered. Walking down the steps with a bucket of seaweed into their natural aquarium is what I would imagine walking into a room of puppies with an armful of doggie-treats would be like. Somehow they just know you’re there and chances are you have something good for them to eat.

My favorite was the biggest one, a male, roughly around 30 years old would bump all of the other turtles out of the way and then use his front fins to push up out of the water. I’m not quite sure why he did this, because eating the seaweed in the air did not seem to work at all. It needed to be in the water so then he, like the rest, could scoop it up in their mouths. But I like to think he was always trying to give me a little bit of a hug, if he could, by pushing up on the rocks to greet me the way he did.

When I finally mustered up the courage to climb in the pool with the ten turtles, Andrew and I timed it out. He would fed them on one end of the ledge while I scampered in unnoticed at the other end and perched on a rock that was slowly becoming submerged with the tide coming in. When the turtles ate all of the seaweed Andrew had thrown in, they would circle back to me, as if I had some hidden. They are totally harmless, but I would get a little nervous every time they surrounded me. I thought I was being a bit of a baby until Andrew got in and would not move his hands away from his manhood. Like they were going to bite it off or something.

I became totally fascinated watching the turtles rise out of water for a breath of fresh air. It’s like they are all born being super old open mouth breathers or something because they sounded absolutely ridiculous breathing. I set out to capture it on camera, but I would always miss it. We took turns. Jumping in and swimming. feeding. taking pictures. And then we just hung out on the steps with them for awhile, like we had an aquarium all to ourselves. Eventually, Andrew dragged me away, promising me they’d be back after we went to the beach.

After we went swimming, we went to a restaurant on the beach. At the restaurant next-door, a Masai wedding began to take place. A Western woman was marrying a “warrior.” I put quotations around warrior, because some Canadian girls at the table next to us asked our waiter if he was really a Masai. They had heard that none of the Masai on the island were real Masai, that it was only for the tourists… Our waiter smiled, and didn’t comment. We all laughed. From what we could see, the wedding consisted of a few pictures and then some singing. When we all moved out onto the beach for dinner, the wedding party had disappeared.

Day 191: Stone Town to Nungwi

I was excited and a little on edge about heading to Nungwi and Kendwa. These are the two beaches on the northern and western part of the island. While undoubtedly beautiful, there was a reputation for theft. Theft from your hotel room, theft from hotel safes, theft on the beach… and, per usual, it was advised not to walk around at night. I tried to concentrate on the beauty of the scenery instead of the logistics of how I was going to go swimming with my laptop, camera, iphone, wallet- not leaving anything in the guesthouse room or on the beach for someone to walk away with. This concentration led to an experiment of photos taken from the dala dala window on our drive up. Some are a bit blurry, but I quite liked the watercolor-esque tone that the images took on.

We dropped several people off outside of different guesthouses and one fancy hotel where I lusted after the cool wet towel that was immediately handed to their new guest. One day I will be that kind of guest. One day…

Then we rolled up to the guesthouse Andrew had read about. It was close to the beach. It wasn’t a hotbox ON the beach. And there were sea-turtles. Unfortunately, upon first glance, it looked shabby. All of the warnings Andrew had read aloud to me about what to try to avoid clouded my judgement, the malaria meds got the best of me, and I immediately envisioned all of our things getting stolen and several nights of restless sleep for a price that simply made me angry. Not wanting to walk with our bags back into town, we decided to stay, and I continued to feel uncomfortable.

And then, as we waited for our room to be made up, we spotted the natural pool of water and the ten rescued sea-turtles swimming about within it. I watched, mesmerized by them. I took photos of the couple that stopped by to swim with them. We checked into our room and it was cool and clean. I felt better. But not good enough to leave my computer behind while we walked down to the beach.

We jumped in the water and marveled at how few chairs there were set up or people out enjoying the white sands and clear water. Beach boys bombarded us asking if we wanted to go snorkeling with them tomorrow, if we wanted the sunset cruise tonight, and even if we wanted something to smoke or snort… We said “No” and explained we were just there for the beach (and calamari for me, beer for Andrew).