So at like 8 o'clock yesterday morning my companions and I got on a shuttle bus and rode down to the south west coast to spend the day swimming with dolphins and snorkeling. This was not my first time embarking on such an adventure, in 2006 I went on a dolphin swim trip, with very little success. This time around was, um, different, to say the least. We arrived at the beach at around 0930 hours, picked out neon colored masks, snorkels and flippers and walked out to a wooden motorized boat and set out dolphin hunting. the next hour was equal parts hilariously absurd and awesome. The first thing we notice as we set out is that we are not alone. There are like 5 other boats full of pasty white european tourists in speedos, just like our boat, hunting down dolphins. Each boat has about 12 people in it, all sitting on the side of the boat, facing out, flippered feet dangling in the water. We're all heading in the same general direction, looking for dorsal fins. When a dolphin was spotted, all boats would make a bee line for the animal, circle around it, the guy driving our boat would yell jump, and 50 people would fall into the water and swim towards the one dolphin who is trying to get away from all these people as fast as it can. It's a sight to behold, and the whole time watching these people and myself I couldn't help but wonder if this was really stupid.
But then once you jumped in the water, you looked down and realized you were swimming with a dolphin in the Indian Ocean. The last dolphin we found actually stayed around and swam with everybody for a while, and it was pretty amazing. At a couple of points I thought it was going to touch someone's feet. So in spite of all the absurdity of the experience it was definitely worth it. Afterward we went snorkeling by a reef for a while. I've been snorkeling a few times in a couple different place but I've never seen anything like this. Thousands of fish and coral and plants in as many different colors. Afterwards we had a local meal of fish and rice (a bit more of a novelty for the other people in the group than for us, we're used to village food), then headed back to Stone Town. I'll write about the music fest at some other time.