We only intended to spend 1 night at Swahili Divers but it ended up being 2, what with it being such a difficult island to get off. Raf was heading to the airport to fly to Zanzibar so we hitched a lift. Our only means of leaving the island was to fly (or wait a further 2 days for the ferry). We booked a flight with Coastal and spent the time before the flight on the net in Chake Chake. Where, because it was still Ramadan I had to discreetly eat my “lunch” (plain biscuits were all I could find) in the corner.
When the plane arrived Bhav and I were the only people waiting. The plane was a 13 seater Cessna but any hopes of having it all to ourselves were dashed when we walked closer and saw 3 others inside. The reason for the odd numbered 13th seat was due to their being no co-pilot. Unfortunately the best seat in the house was already occupied but we could at least get the 1st row. The flight to Tanga was quite short at about 20 minutes but we certainly enjoyed the view.
The luxury of the plane wasn’t matched by the next form of transport, another overnight bus this time to Mombasa in Kenya. Our taxi driver from the airport suggested we should get a bus in the day time due to “banditry” but we didn’t want to waste more time and money.
It took about 2 hours before we arrived at the border, where Bhav got into Kenya for free whilst I was charged US$50 for the privilege. We arrived in Mombasa after midnight and slept on a coach.
Our escape route from Pemba
Welcome to Tanga
We’d booked 3 morning dives and having been sized up for all the required bits of kit the day before, all we had to do eat breakfast and walk through the breakers to the speedboat. The last time I’d dived in the sea (in Australia), breakfast and diving didn’t work well together but thankfully it was quite calm on the water.
There were 8 people on the boat split up into 2 groups. My buddy was Bhav and we had Raf, the company owner as our guide. The first dive was an underwater mountain listed in the guide book as one of the diving highlights in the country and it certainly didn’t disappoint. There was a profusion of life everywhere requiring you to almost prioritise what you looked at.
After a 1 hour 30 min surface interval spent on a nearby white sandy beach we went for a second dive which was a wall dive. I didn’t enjoy the second dive as much as the first but that could have been partly due to the unfamiliar equipment (gear listed psi instead of bar).
It was also cool to be out diving with Bhav who I’d met exactly a year previously (in Australia).
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.
Our room
Sunset