There’s not much to say about the video that we didn’t already say in the video, but I’ll give it a try:

We spent a little more than a week on the island of Zanzibar, near a tiny village named Bwejuu.  We spent the majority of that time very near our lodge, but we did manage to get out of our hammocks long enough to do a 2-tank dive with the Rising Sun Dive Center.  Glad we did!  The diving staff that worked there were great and we saw or did something new on each of our dives!

Technical stuff:

In some ways, I wish we could reshoot elements of this video.  For instance, our underwater footage is overwhelming blue — so close to monochrome that my normal trick of color-correcting some red back into the imagery didn’t work at all.  In all fairness, I expected this would happen as soon as I learned we would be diving at a depth of almost 100 feet.  Water filters out the colors of light and red is the first to go.  Besides that, it was an overcast day, and the sunlight wasn’t that strong to begin with.  We could see just fine down there, but our point-and-shoot camera can only do so much…  (Too bad we can’t travel with diving lights, too!)

We also recorded our voice-overs outdoors, at the lodge.  The tropical scenery behind us is quite fitting, but the wind noise was something we couldn’t avoid.  Not to mention the birds.

Still, even with these minor problems, I think you’ll get a good sense of what our dives were like when you watch this video.

Notes

Rising Sun Dive Center
Breezes Beach Club and Spa
Our tour review of the Rising Sun Dive Center

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Tanzania started off bad for us and then went downhill from there.

It all began with what was supposed to be a 27-hour bus ride from Lusaka, in the middle of Zambia, to Dar es Salaam, on the Tanzanian coast.  We knew it would be a nightmare, but convinced ourselves that doing it all at once would be better than trying to find a place to spend the night somewhere along the way.  That was probably a mistake.  Due to a couple breakdowns and a few of those who-knows-why bus stops in the middle of nowhere, our 27-hour bus ride turned into a 34-hour one.  That may not seem like much of a difference, but just try to imagine spending an extra work-day on a hot, sweaty bus after you’ve already spent a day and a night in the same seat.

When we finally reached Dar es Salaam, we missed our stop at the main bus terminal.  Fortunately, the next stop wasn’t too far along and even though it was after 1am, we managed to find a taxi driver who was willing to take us to a hotel… for just three times the normal price.  Of course, the hotel we’d picked from our guidebook was full.  Our second choice was also full, but the night manager said we could have one room as long as we vacated it before 8am.  After showers, that left us with barely five hours for sleep, but we took it.

The next day, we looked around Dar es Salaam and decided that there wasn’t much for us there.  Our plan, as it so often does, changed.  We opted to spend our time in on the island of Zanzibar, instead.  If you’ve been reading along, you’ll remember that’s where we were mugged at machete-point.

If you haven’t read our story about getting mugged at machete-point on the beach in Zanzibar, you totally should.  It has a few more details about life in Tanzania and Zanzibar, plus I promise that it’s a much more interesting and entertaining than this blog post!

The whole reason for going to Tanzania was to climb Kilimanjaro and we had to back out of that plan because it was just too expensive.  Thinking back, I wish we had at least left the coast to see the mountain.  We could have gone on another safari, this time in the Serengeti, and seen some of the big herds migrating.  We could have checked out the Ngorongoro Crater, or even climbed one of the lesser peaks in the area.  Lots of regrets, lots of reasons to go back.

In all, our time in Tanzania amounted to just 18 days.  We left with some disappointing memories, but also some great stories.

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Yesterday, as we walked down a lonely stretch of beach, Oksana and I were mugged by a heavily-muscled man with a machete.

Our day started out well enough. After breakfast, we decided to follow up on an email we’d received from a dive center at one of the resorts. We checked a map and realized it was a walkable distance down the beach. To be sure, the owners of the lodge we were staying at warned us about a certain stretch of empty property where thieves had been known to hang out, but they assured us it was only dangerous for people with bags or cameras.

Oksana tucked a few bills away in her swimsuit and I debated long and hard about the two things I wanted to bring: My iPhone and our GPS. The GPS because I wanted to record at least one good track duringour stay on the Eastern side of Zanzibar, the iPhone because we were going to pitch a work-trade deal with the dive center and can bring up our previous diving videos on it.

I also carried my Swiss Army knife. I wouldn’t risk a fight over the iPhone itself, but I would for the data that’s on it.
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