Day 16: Desert Islands, JellyFish and Bat Caves

It occurred to me last night that I had never seen a sunrise...so this morning Katie and I got up at 5:00am and walked the 50m to the beach to watch the sun rise over the Indian Ocean. It began to get light really quickly but we couldn’t see the sun. We messed about taking random photos and then suddenly saw a hint of the sun crawling up from the horizon. It seemed to rise in minutes and I think I took over 100 photos trying to get the perfect shot (which of course you never do) – was quite pleased with some of them but like many things, you just can’t capture it all on a camera.

We came back from the beach and got ready for breakfast and our snorkeling trip. Decided to go for the full “English” breakfast this morning which was actually quite good – proper sausages and really good scrambled egg too – just lacked the HP sauce!!

We left at around 8.00am and walked out to the little wooden boat that was going to take us out around 6km to the first snorkel site. We had to walk out about ½ km as the tide was so far out and the water so shallow that the boat couldn’t get any closer into shore. We got a “little” concerned on the way out as after being told there were NO Jellyfish we saw a couple on the way out to the boat. Harry revealed her phobia of water to us and threatened to literally kill anyone that made jokes about sharks! Of course...that led to.....jokes about sharks! Well it would wouldn’t it!

The journey out took about 40 mins or so and we saw Dolphins in the distance – 5 or 6 of them I counted. We all piled into the crystal clear and very very warm sea and began snorkeling...many of the boys still wearing their tee-shirts as our necks, shoulders and backs we still very burnt. The visibility was fantastic and we saw loads of puff fish, nimo fish and star fish (which got Katie very excited) before people started reporting that their felt a bit itchy. We blamed most of this on the salt on our burns but as we started to board the boat again, the skipper told us that they had seen loads of baby jelly fish. Pretty much all of us had been stung. Not badly, but Katie had lots of little stings on her back, Jan had been stung on the lip of all places and most of the rest of us had escaped with just a couple on our arms or legs!

After another stop (and more stings), we moored up at “Sand Island” which surprisingly was an island of....wait for it......Sand!

Words can’t describe what this little haven was like. It was like how I would imagine Mauritius or the Maldives to be like, or infact, if you googled the work “paradise” i image this is what would come up. The pictures will hopefully do it justice but it was literally just an untouched island of sand with waves gently crashing in from all sides. The sea must have been 45C – literally bath temperature! It was heavenly bliss and we just didn’t want to leave....unfortunately being a sand island, the tide slowly put a stop to our stay and we had to leave a couple of hours later before the island was immersed forever....well, until the next tide anyway!

Back at the resort, those that were not burnt before now were and those that were – well, we were even more red than before! We had lunch and then this afternoon half the group opted for a quiet relaxing afternoon whilst the other half (Jan, Adrian, Katie and me) ventured out to the caves. We were planning a visit to the natural hot springs too – but ran out of time.

The caves were wicked!! There are 8 formations of caves in total (all limestone). Unlike a typical cave tour in the UK, these caves had no lighting, no “do not touch” signs and no fencing or directions. Oscar from Really Wild travel was out guide and knew the caves really well. The tour was amazing and there seemed to b e many natural carvings in the limestone of Christian symbols, animals and even stalactites that resembled the statue of liberty for example. In some places we had to crawl through the caves as they were so low (Jan had fun with that bit) and right at the end there were tree roots coming through and down into the caves. Oscar showed off his skills by climbing up the tree roots to the top of the caves which then of course spurred Adrian to do the same. Not wanting to let him “win” we all had a go and discovered that Katie is actually not a girl...she is a monkey. She literally just wizzed straight up about 3 levels. We all followed (to the layer below) – just brilliant!!

We got back around 6ish, had dinner (fresh crab) then Kerry booked us all in online so we got good seats together. Some of stayed up for a bit, some of us went back, showered and packed....breakfast at 6:45am then we are planning to hot the road for 7:30am to do the 8 hr drive to Kilimanjaro Airport.

Well....this is the last blog entry for the RM FutureBuilders trip to Tanzania. We have done so much this past 2 ½ weeks and sitting on the beach on the desert island today felt so far removed from this time last week when were we refurbishing Uwa Primary School.

Personally this trip is right up there on the top list of trips I have been on – I have had so many “first” experiences on this trip in such a short period of time. Helping refurb a Primary school (in Africa), sleeping in a tent for 10 days, using squat toilets, going on safari, seeing dolphins in the wild, being stung by Jellyfish, sitting on a desert island, eating real crab, climbing up tree roots in a cave, staying in a bandana hut on the beach, swimming in sea hotter than my bath......to name just a few!

I also wanna say what a great pleasure and fantastic time I have with the rest of the FutureBuilders. We are already talking about coming back to Africa to climb Mount Kilimanjaro and would love to combine it with some more work with ChildReach if we can. This really has been an experience of a lifetime.

Now....for you folks at home picking people up....our flight gets in to Heathrow T4 at 6am on Saturday 20th November. Mum, Dad it would be great if you could get me some milk and tiger bread, and stick the heating and hot water on!!!!! Thanks and see you soon UK.