There are guys on all the beaches of Zanzibar who pick up tourists and offer tours to all kinds of places – they can take you everywhere. One thing – you need to negotiate very well, it is best to do it with several people at the same time in order to beat the price. For example, today the price has decreased by 50 dollars for me.
Then the tourists are handed over to the captains of the boats. The most exciting thing about this swim is that you can see the bottom all the time. Our captain says that everywhere here the depth is about 2 meters – very shallow, so even the biggest cowards who are afraid of boating will feel safe off the shores of Zanzibar. Good, nice.
Probably the most anticipated tourist stop, where you can not only look at the fish or the water, but also feel like a fish in this wonderful ocean. Many boats stop here so that people can swim and look through the glasses at the underwater world. It’s the kind of thing you can’t get bored of – some people want to do it every day after they come.
You don’t need to take anything with you – the captains have all the necessary equipment. You can use as much as you want. It is not clear what we will see today, they said that the picture changes every day. In order to attract as many fish as possible, the captain uses a trick – bananas and watermelon, because the fish like them very much.
I jumped into the water too. It is a wonderful feeling to swim when there are many exotic, very beautiful fish and other animals around you. I actually saw some of them for the first time. I would have swam like this for at least an hour, but then something completely unplanned happened.
When booking such excursions, no one will warn you that not only friendly animals live in the water, but also those that can attack or even bite. It was the first time I was a participant in such an attack. I was bitten by some kind of fish, now my leg is bleeding a little, there are even some teeth marks left. At first I thought that I got caught on some stone, but then I feel that the pain is stronger. When I got out of the water I saw that the bite.
A nasty feeling. The pain is so tingly, not very strong, but when it happens for the first time and you don’t know how dangerous it is, maybe even poisonous, it’s a little unpleasant. However, we did not gather here to cry, we need to swim further and admire the surroundings of Zanzibar.
The biggest trick of such trips is that everyone who comes to Zanzibar hears the legend about the beautiful island of Mnemba. Everywhere you will see advertisements, advertisements offering to swim to see her. I was also seduced – I say, I really want to see, we are swimming. Although I knew that we would not actually sail to the island, because it cannot be done.
We can see the island, but we cannot stop there and disembark. This is a private island owned by one of the richest people on the planet – Bill Gates. There is an extremely expensive hotel, which the local people, the captains, talk about as something on another planet, as if it were a flight to the moon. None of the locals have been there – if you don’t work on the island, you never get there. It’s the same with tourists – if you haven’t paid a lot of money to stay on that island, you won’t get there.
At the island location, people get access to the dune in the water. We will disembark here now. This is a very shallow place where the water reaches the knees. Here, people bathe, take a walk, look at the island, dream of how good and beautiful it would be, and swim back.
In the tourist world, a lot of things are based on money – the less you pay, the less you get. We decided to pay less, so we are further away from Mnemba Island with other people. If we paid significantly more, we would be much closer to the island.
