Snorkeling at Kizimkazi

January 12^th 2024

Kameleon Blue was a nice place to stay.  Being only 2 years old, the facilities were great and the staff were very nice.  I lucked out and there was only one other guy staying in the 6-bed dorm room.   He was a 47-year-old German guy who is travelling for 2 years, with just a couple months left.  We went out for dinner at another nearby resort called Promised Land and I had a good fish curry.

The entrance to the Kameleon Blue resort.

Some of the private rooms:

The nice pool:

The bar:

Nice painting of a chameleon.

This was the view at the Promised Land, I went there for lunch too.

Lots of dhow sailing boats heading out to fish.

I signed up to go on a snorkeling trip and I ended up being the only one, so I had a boat to myself, which was captained by a local named Abdul.  The tide was out a bit out, so we had to walk out to the boat.  Abdul poled the boat out through shallow water until we reached a bit of drop where the water was rushing out to sea.  We journeyed about 10 minutes north until he dropped the anchor and I hopped in the ocean. 

Our boat:

Heading out to sea:

Looking back at the shoreline:

There had been a storm the night before so that might have had an effect on the visibility, as it was only about 10-12 feet, much less than when I snorkeled in Kenya.  At first, I didn’t find too much, the odd rock with coral and a few fish.  There was a lot of half inch wide sea grass and with the waves going in and out, occasionally it caused an optical illusion that the rocks were moving and not me with the waves…kinda cool.

 

We moved to another spot, and it was better.  Before getting in the water, we could see a disturbance on the surface caused by a school of fish.  The odd seagull was diving down, trying to get some lunch.  I was able to swim over and find the school, which I think were bluestripe herring that were about 1 to 2 inches long.  There were thousands of them.  At one point I just remained motionless, and it was like a river of fish coming at me…super cool!  Another highlight was seeing a few pink skunk clownfish hiding in the wavy tentacles of giant carpet anenomes.

A cool starfish that Abdul found on our way to shore.  I saw one like this in Kenya too.

The local fishing boats:

Funky looking restaurant...although I'm not sure if I'd eat there...

All in all, it wasn’t a bad snorkeling trip, but it wasn’t quite as good as my previous on in Kenya.

 

In the evening, Thomas and I met a nice couple who live in the Netherlands and they were at the start of a three month trip in Tanzania and Uganda.  Robert is Dutch while Linda is originally from Germany.  They had a “travel quiz” book and we took turns being the question master.  It was a nice way to finish off the evening.