The journey to Swahili Divers

We must have arrived at Pemba around 5 am, any attempt to continue to sleep while the boat docked and people started to disembark was pointless. The five hours I had slept for were actually pretty good. After getting off we squeezed onto a bus heading to the capital of the island, Chake Chake to where we thought Swahili Divers was based. Upon arriving we discovered that they had moved to the top of the island over 60 km away near a place called Konde. After the daladala to Konde we had to hitch the remaining 12km. Luckily a tour group soon appeared and Bhav and I again squeezed into the boot of a 4×4 along with 2 other people and everyone’s bags. The tour consisted of 4 Norwegians going to look at a remnant of rainforest. After the forest it was just us and the driver for the final 4 km. We’d set ourselves up for a fall by not negotiating a price before getting in as we normally do but it still came as a surprise when the guy asked for TSH 10,000 shillings each (about £5.20). Strangely he drove off without us giving him anything in the end.

The new location of Swahili Divers (we found they’d been there a year but my Rough Guide was old) is right on the coast in the middle-of-no-where surrounded by farmland. Unfortunately with us being essentially a captive audience in the wilderness we had to pay rather a lot more than we’d been accustomed to. In the end though we were just glad to get anything and the luxury was a welcome bonus.

Bhav and I were too tired to do much that afternoon but we went out for a sunset kayak with an American guy which was cool.