Places with cool names... Zanzibar (Pt 2 of 3)

After a few days in the hustle and bustle of stonetown, it was time to jump a taxi to the beach. Again, we hadn't booked anything, but the locals are so easy going, it wasn't a problem just to call ahead and turn up.

we landed at Nyota Beach Bungalows...

man, this place was sooo laid back, you had to remind your haeart to keep beating every now and then as you just lazed around...

nothing to do for a few days but read, swim, eat, read, snorkel, eat.....



our room faced the ocean, and with mozzie mesh on the windows you could wake up each day to a beautiful sunrise

or sunset...

The bunglows were quite isolated, with most of the resort much further north, and so the locals here just got on with their lives and ignored the small number of tourists...

The beach on this part of the island is protected by a barrier reef about 200m off shore. When the tide is low, the reef acts like a dam, keeping a foot or two of water in one huge rockpool. The locals use this area to farm seaweed, and each day at low tide all the women would go out to their particular plot and harvest seaweed and bring it onshore for drying (which they'd then sell for medicine...)


As the tide would come back in, all th little sticks would be covered and you'd never know the farms were there...


...even the kids would be involved...




When to tide was really low, everyone would go out to the barrier reef and search for shellfish and crabs (the pic below is take about 300m offshore - though you woudln't know)

The old italian guy who ran the place (didn't really speak english) had a sea kayak and a bunch of snorkelling gear that you could jsut borrow for free whenever you want, so we spent a lot of time diving on the reefs and generally stuffing around - it was heaps of fun..