Zanaibar

Border officials can be a fickle lot – the Malawian guy wouldn't accept a manifest and a stack of passports, and insisted on marching us all into the office; meanwhile his Tanzanian counterpart threw us out of his office, and insisted on one person with a stack of passports. Eventually we made it into Tanzania, and on to Old Farm House camp site near Iringa.

The third day of malaria is reputed to be the worse, so I did not envy Jacques as we set off at 6am for the long drive to Dar es Salaam. The first two hours were spent covering half a mile through road works, and when we got up to speed on the bumpy road, one of the brake lines went (a different one this time). This was plugged up fairly quickly, and we proceeded for another hour on three brakes, until a brake booster expired.
















Fortunately this happened in a small town. The local mechanic found a spare, and after two hours work beneath the truck, we were back on all four brakes. The unplanned stop did give us a chance to interact with the local kids, who were much shyer than their Malawian cousins; they sheepishly approached the truck, but quickly scattered if you approached or produced a camera. After two pit stops, roadworks and traffic jams, we reached Dar es Salaam at 9pm – 15 hours after we set off.














To get the ferry to Zanzibar, we first had to get the crowded, noisy car-ferry across the bay. We survived the mad dash off, and even found our taxi (which was handy, as our bags were still in the boot). The 90 minute boat trip to Zanzibar is unspectacular if you're sat in cattle class – apart from the initial choppiness, you might as well have been sat in a (cramped) cinema. Once on Zanzibar, we had a quick lunch in Stone Town, before bidding farewell to our companions (for a day) and heading north to the beach. The beach in question was Kendwa – a pretty stretch of corral sand, which is not too developed, and with the added advantage of a steep drop off, meaning that you don't have a 2-mile walk to the water at low tide.














First on the agenda was to book the diving with Scuba Do (see what they've done there?), before taking a relaxing late afternoon dip. The dive trip was to the reef off Mnemba island – the island itself houses an exclusive $1000 a night resort, although all your water sports are included in that price. The folks on Mnemba might well be cursing their bill, as the rain was pelting down when we arrived - still it never rains under water. Owing to some rather strong currents, we had a blink and you missed it, trip over the reef, although quite a few turtles did try and swim into me. The second dive, along a reef wall, was prettier, and again with inquisitive turtles.

You'd expect frequent power cuts on Zanzibar, and we certainly got them. As an added bonus the lack of power meant no water (the tanks were filled by a pump). All this would have been tolerable if the staff at Sun Set were not so incompetent and surly. Ultimately you get what you pay for – if we'd walked 150m down the beach, there was a 4-star resort for $150 a night, however their guest, a few of which were on our dive boat, were hardly singing its praises.

Another morning dive, on a nearby reef, kicked up a nice array of scorpion fish, stone fish, croc fish and a whole lot more I need to learn if I'm to look like a serious diver. While the diving is good, it's not world-class, so we chose to spend the afternoon on the beach.





















Zanzibar has a rich history, with its role in the spice and later the slave trades, giving it a mix of african, Arabic, Persian and Indian cultures. While we flirted with the idea of spending our last night in one of Stone Town's exclusive hotels, meanness got the better of me, and we opted for the well located, though basic, Karibu Inn. After lunch in the vegetarian Indian restaurant next door, we plunged into the maze of alleyways.














Stone Town is basically a triangle, with sea on two sides and a major road on the third – if you can keep your bearing and walk for 10 minutes you will hit either sea or road, so getting truly lost is hard, and we managed to hit most of our targets straight off. First on the list was the Anglican cathedral, built on the sight of the old slave market (the missionaries were instrumental in abolishing the trade). There is little trace of its former use, save for a couple of cellars used to store the “merchandise” in horrendous conditions, and a sculpture of several slaves in chains.














Next up was the Darajani market, which is split between fish, meat and fruit and spices. Being mid-afternoon, most of the meat and fish had gone, just leaving the nauseous smell and the flies. The market is fairly free of hassle, but the alleys selling the tourist tat are not. The key is to show no interest whatsoever (unless you actually want some mass produces, generic painting of a group of Masai), lease they follow you relentlessly down alleys – I mistakenly gave a thumbs-up to a Obama tea-towel. Saying that, compared to Cairo or Istanbul, it's a breeze.

We couldn't afford to stay at the Serena Inn, but we could stretch to sunset cocktails, watching the dhows return home for the evening. This was follow with a traditional(ish) dinner at Monsoon – basically, sit bare foot on rugs as a local band played traditional music – a fine way the finish Zanzibar, and only slightly spoilt by the 6am start to catch the ferry back.

Sodwana Bay

Sodwana Bay is home to the world's southernmost coral reefs, and the most popular diving location in South Africa, so as we were in the neighbourhood I couldn't resist booking us in for a day. Unfortunately, on the morning of the dive we woke up at the required ungodly hour to find it pouring with rain – not exactly the beach paradise we had been promised. With some effort we dragged ourselves up and unenthusiastically made it on to the dive boat. Like our diving south of Durban, they use small inflatable boats (rubber duckies) and you have to cling on for dear life as the skipper skilfully (well hopefully) waits for the right moment to bomb it out through the breakers.
















Our first dive was at 9 mile reef, which is unfortunately one of the furtherest away, so after the thirty minute journey we were pretty cold. To add to this, Rich, who had come down with a stomach bug, was vomiting over the side of the boat. Not to be deterred, we rolled off the boat backwards into the water James Bond style, to find it actually pleasantly warm compared with the conditions above sea level.
















The main draw of this dive area are the lovely coral reefs, and they were certainly very pretty, helped by excellent viability and several interesting swim-throughs. Also, there weren't the strong currents like on our previous dives at Aliwal, so it was much more relaxing, or was until I realised just how cold I was and the shivering set in.
















On the way back to land we met a pod of dolphins who were eager to play, swimming right up to the boat. Unfortunately they were too close to the breakers for it to be safe for us to get in a and join them.
















Back on dry land again, and warmed up by a cup of cocoa and a hot shower, the sun was finally making an appearance making me feel much more enthusiastic for the second dive. This was at the much closer 2 mile reef (the clue is in the name). Again, this was a lovely reef dive with plenty of colourful fish and and a few turtles. The reef covers quite a large area so you can drift around with the current and still have plenty to see.
















The next day we decided it was time for a new country, so headed on northwards to Swaziland. As Rich was still feeling rather poorly (note to self that stomach bugs don't mix well with rough boat rides and scuba diving), I took over the driving. After negotiating the numerous potholes on the way back to the main road, I steeled my self to the madness of African driving. I soon relaxed and successfully executed my first two truck overtaking manoeuvre without crashing into the oncoming traffic.

The Aliwal Shoal

I was beginning to feel deprived of diving, so after a very long drive north from The Wild Coast, we arrived at uMkmoaas. This small town, around 40km south of Durban, is where the dive boats launch for the Aliwal Shoal. Often quoted as being one of the top 10 dive sites in the world, it is known for the abundance of sharks, in particular “raggies” (ragged-tooth sharks).
















We set of early in the morning with Aliwal Diving Centre. The launch here is a slightly hair raising affair – they use small inflatable boats which speed out from the river across the surf with the divers hanging for dear life. Getting back in is equally fun as they head the boat straight at the beach and go as fast as possible to avoid having to drag it up too far.
















The cage diving near Cape Town was freezing, so we were somewhat concerned this would be an unpleasantly cold dive. However, as this is now the Indian Ocean, and we were wrapped up well in 5ml wetsuits, it was actually fine. The visibility was reasonably good, but the currents were strong and unpredictable, buffeting us around quite a lot and making the going pretty tiring. We did two dives, and whilst not the most exciting we have done recently, we did three see three raggies, a bull ray and several stone fish. The reef is also an interesting landscape, covering quite a large area, meaning that it doesn't matter if you drift around with the current, there is always something interesting to see.
















After our day's diving, we drove up to Durban for a two night stay to allow ourselves to get organised for the next stage of the trip. Despite all the horror stories the locals had told us in Cape Town and on the way up, about how unsafe Durban is, we felt pretty comfortable, albeit we used cabs to get around and didn't leave the security gated and electric wired hostel. The motto of our hostel, Tekweni Backpackers, was “Tekweni goes off”, so the second night we felt obliged to join the staff in an excess drinking session. Other than that, we spent much of our time trying to book a 4x4 hire car to take to Lesotho, and touring the city's malls. The latter activity was focused on buying sleeping bags, and other equipment, that we need for our overland tour from Jo'burg, and for Richard's proposed Kilimanjaro climb. We were duly conned into spending far too much money in the kit- tastic Cape Union Mart (probably equivalent to the UK's Blacks). All the gear and no idea...
















Having had our fill of shopping malls, we were picked up the next day at 9:30am to get our 4x4 hire car. However, we didn't manage to leave Durban until about 6pm, and in the dark... a whole story in itself which I will leave until the next entry.

The SS Yongala

The SS Yoangala, along with its 122 passengers and crew, sank without trace in a cyclone around the 23rd March 1911 on its way from Birsbane to Townsville. It lay on its starboard side in 30m of water on the sandy bottom, undisturbed until its discovery by divers in 1958 (it was picked up on the sonar of a US navy minesweeper in 1943 and marked down as a reef).















Over the 98 years since its sinking it has become an almost ideal artificial reef – being the only reef structure in the immediate area, it has become home to a huge range of marine life, from schools of small colourful fish, to turtles and sharks.















Cyclone Hamish had blown through, but another tropical low was forming, and the sea was choppy – the boats weren't leaving from Townsville due to the swell. Our dive boat was a large inflatable (10 divers) which launched from the beach. After we'd cleared the breakers (which took some time), the skipper opened up the twin engines and things really got bumpy.















Only one bloke actually threw up on the 30 minute theme park ride out to the dive site (although a few others looked like they'd join him soon enough). Kitting up in a 2 metre swell was no fun at all, so it was a relief to get into the water and down the mooring line.















At 16m you reach the top of the wreak (at this depth it's all calm) and it becomes clear why this is such a highly rated site. The destiny and diversity of the marine life is incredible, and even though the crappy weather meant the light was poor, I can imagine that on a sunny day the display of colours will match any of the natural reefs.















The surface interval was one of the more unpleasant hours I've spent – the bloke from the way out spent the time with his head in a bucket, while one of the dive masters threw up over the back. Back in the water, we saw turtles and a nurse shark, while the other group spotted a Bull Shark :-(















The return trip was comedy of errors as the skipper managed to beach the boat near the shore, and the ten of us ended up waist deep in the water trying to heave-ho the boat over a sand bank.

The Movie - Part 1

Kirsten spent ages cutting together this video of the first six months of our travels. Enjoy! Note: If this doesn't work, use the lower quality version embedded below.

Bali and Komodo

The plan was to head straight over to Komodo to do some diving (and see dragons), but as it seemed impossible to buy the plane tickets before arriving in Indonesia, we decided to spend a couple of days in Bali first, so we could sort out the travel arrangements and also have some much needed R&R. We decided to stay in Seminyak, as the Lonely Planet describes this as being more 'sophisticated' than the backpacker hangouts of Kuta and Legian (Kuta is where the 2002 bombings were). It turned out to be pleasant enough with plenty of swanky looking boutiques, restaurant and bars. However, the beach was a big disappointment. Whilst it is a good wide expanse of sand, it is also strewn with rubbish and rotting dead fish cast aside by the fishermen – hardly the idillic scene painted by the LP.















Having orientated ourselves, and had a fantastic dinner in a beach side restaurant, we decided to sample Bali nightlife. I think we headed out too early as most of the bars were deserted – most places don't get going until after 11. The only lively looking place on the street was Mix Well, a glitzy looking gay bar. We settled in for the evening with our Pina Coladas.

After another day recovering from our hangovers we boarded our flight for Labuan Bajo on Flores island which is the gateway to Komodo. We had arranged for three days diving with ReefSeekers and we headed out the next day. It takes a couple of hours to get to the dive sights, but the boat was well equipped and extremely well run with coffee and tea delivered to you at regular intervals so trip wasn't too painful. And as for the diving itself – well to be honest I would have been prepared to go twice as far for diving this quality. On the first day we had around 10 Manta Ray encounters and the second day we saw a group of three dolphins, including a pup – awesome. Other notable sightings included a beautiful eagle ray, bump head parrot fish, a giant shoal of fusiliers being chased by a giant trevally, a grey reef shark, several white tip and black tip shark, turtles, and mandarin fish. In addition to all this, the coral and abundance of small fish was incredible. Unfortunately, although we rented a camera, the light on that day was poor, and it fogged up so the manta ray is more of a shadow.














Obviously, a trip to Komodo would not be complete without visit the infamous dragons, so on the fourth day we charted a boat to Rinca beach which we had been told was the best place to guarantee finding them. It was only a short work from the rangers office, when accompanied by a guide with a large stick, we found our first dragon. We trekked for around 2 hours seeing around 6 dragon of varying sizes. They were actually not as large as we were expecting (about 3m nose to tail), but this could have been because they were mostly laying down sleeping in the sweltering heat. Apparently, if they kill a buffalo they will not need to hunt for another week so they can spend their time sleeping.














Other than the diving and dragons, Labuan Bajo doesn't have much to offer travellers. Luckily for us there was one very good restaurant and bar, Lounge, which as well as great food offered live music and even impromptu dance classes which obviously I couldn't resist much to the amusement of the locals.

Diving Video

As we've become complete scuba junkies (45 dives in two months), we've put together a short dive video. The footage was taken over three days in Palau and Sipadan. Enjoy.

The video is on YouTube here, unfortunately they've removed the audio track (Porpoise Song by the Monkees), but the small embedded video below still has it.

Sipadan

Since Air Malaysia cancelled our direct flight from Manila to Kota Kinabalu, we had to go via Kuala Lumpur – the equivalent of going from London to Madrid via Athens. We overnighted in a functional hostel before taking the early flight across Sabah (north east Borneo) to Tawau. There was too much cloud cover to see the jungle from the plane, but when we descended into Tawau, we could see the rain forest was completely replaced by neat rows of Palm Oil plantations as far as the horizon (and presumably beyond). Also the hour long drive to Semporna (for the boat to Mabul) was entirely through plantation. Environmental groups are concerned about the destruction of wildlife habitation and loss of biodiversity, but Malaysia is the world's largest exporter of Palm Oil, so there are huge economic interests.















The oceanic island of Sipadan, sitting on top of a 600m limestone stack, is generally regarded as one of the world's top dive sites. After three days without diving, we were chomping on the regulator to get back in the water.

Sipadan itself no longer has any resorts on it, and the island is controlled by the Malaysian navy, complete with green speed boats and automatic weapons. I imagine the heavy military presences is party to do with the kidnap of 21 staff and guests from a Sipadan resort, by a Filipino islamist group in 2000. We stayed at Borneo Divers on nearby Mabul – a good midrange option. Other options include a converted oil rig which is parked about 200m off shore in front of Borneo Divers, and huts on stilts out from the beach. Given the limited permits for Sipadan (120 daily), our place managed to get enough for everyone to dive Sipadan everyday.















The diving schedule was 2 dives in the morning around Sipadan, then a afternoon dive somewhere around Mabul or Kapalai. After registering on Sipadan we started our first dive. As soon a we hit the water there was a turtle swimming round us. The turtles round here are quite used to divers, so don't swim off if you get too near, but rather just get on with their own thing (which is mainly sleeping). The sheer amount of marine life is staggering – on the second dive there was nowhere to look that you couldn't see turtles.





























So this brings me on to my first rant: We had 11 divers in the group (the dive master, camera man, and 9 guests), but normally people space themselves out, so it doesn't feel too crowded. Not this time – between inexperienced divers not being able to control their buoyancy (or their fins), and plain selfish ones who'd cut you up to get a shot, or swim in front of everyone else's shot for their own me-in-front-of-shark/turtle shot, the whole thing was rather stressful (I felt more relax in the pitch black inside a wreck in Coron). The worst offender I will call the Russian.















The boat group changed a bit for the second day, but still had the Russia, who insisted on completely ignoring the dive master and swimming off in random directions. When with the group, he assaulted several turtles – tried to pull one off a rock, knocked on the back of another's shell, and finally kicked one in the face – I've never seen someone getting so many underwater bollockings (and completely ignore them).















The second day was relatively cold, and the driving rain on the boat back to Mabul made the 20 minute journey seem like a hour. This didn't do anything to improve Kirsten's stinking cold so unfortunately she had to bow out of the afternoon dive – a muck dive beneath Seaventures' oil rig. Muck dives are so called because you look for critters that live around the relatively low visibility sandy bottom. My fish identification is pretty awful, but I think there was a crocodile fish, a stonefish, a Lionfish, a couple of Moray Eels, and a tiny sea horse (although I'm not convinced about this last one, frankly it could have been anything). I also did a sunset dive, and finally saw Mandarin fish. I think the problem is that I've been looking for something, well fish sized, when in fact they are about 1cm long.















Day three was back to warm sunny weather and a small group (including the Russian). This gave excellent light for photography, and the sea life was very cooperative with six turtles sitting below the boat on the second dive and the school of thousands of barracuda showing up bang on time at the end of the first dive.

We hired a camera for the second a third day; an ancient 3 megapixle Canon, but given the plethora of marine life, you'd have to be an imbecile to not come back with good photos. Anyway, I'll let the photos speak for themselves.

Coron

After supposed engine failure on one boat, and the next day's being stuck in Coron due to a typhoon warning, we finally made it out of El Nido on an overnight ferry/cargo ship. This was a relativity small wooden cargo ship, with the upper deck given over to passengers, and the lower deck carrying mainly live fish. Basically you grabbed a marine bed from the pile in the centre, and made yourself comfortable – by the time we set sail at midnight, you could barely get some dental floss between the beds. I had to close the wooden shutters at 3am, because the rain was driving in, and you had to be careful when going to toilet not to fall into the cargo hold. That said, I had a pretty good night's sleep; better than a lot of the trains, and certainly better than the overnight bus to Banaue.















We arrived at Sea Divers (our lodgings and dive operator), minutes too late to wreck dive that day, so we relaxed and had some breakfast. The bangka (outrigger) we were meant to get, the Jessabelle, was parked at the end of Sea Divers pier in Coron, and going nowhere. Frankly, after looking at it (it's a big canoe with outriggers), I wouldn't want to spend 7 minutes on it in open sea, let alone 7 hours to cross from El Nido to Coron. A similar boat sunk on Friday killing 11 people (www.guardian.co.uk/world/feedarticle/8005382) .















After heavy losses in Manila Bay, the Japanese pulled the remaining imperial fleet back to Coron Bay, where it was duly sunk on 24th September 1944 by US task force 38. Their loss was the dive community's gain, with half a dozen wrecks easily accessible in less than 40m of water.

Keen to get right into the wrecks, but not die, we enrolled on specialist wreck diving and Nitrox (enriched air) courses. Dive one was the Kogyo Maru, a cargo ship lying on its starboard side at 36m. We played around in the large cargo bays, but didn't do a full penetration. The second dive was the Morazan Maru (AKA Olympia Maru), which also lies on its starboard. Here we swam into the cavernous boiler room, before moving through the ship to the bow, squeezing through sideways doors and up vertical corridors – it's easy to see how you could get fatally lost inside.

We had 3 more dives on the second day: the Irako, the Akitsushima and the Okikawa Maru (AKA Taiei Maru), all of which involved swimming head first through tight holes into dark rooms, and marking our way along inside. The Taiei has its bow broken and pointing up at 45 degrees, so there's a cathedral like quality as you enter this section with the shafted of light coming through.


We finished by swimming up the propeller shaft, from the rudder to the engine room and out. After we'd all surfaced, we were a diver down – his buddy swore he'd seen him on the mooring line. After 10 minutes of staring at the horizon, with his mate looking slightly worried, he was spotted some 200m from the boat, having lost the mooring lie and been taken by the current. His mate opened a beer, relived at not having to explain that one to his family.















Sorry, no wreck photos as I didn't bring the marine housing and they don't rent any cameras. It's a shame we only had 2 days rather than the 4 we'd planned, but I'm now addicted to wreck diving, so we may have to go somewhere else to cane more money.