Happy Honeymooning Days 9 & 10: Eid, Blue Safari, and our Overwater Villa

 Tuesday, April 1st, 2025

6:24 PM

Isaraya Overwater Villas, Michamvi, Tanzania

Kenny and I were hoping to celebrate Eid last night, but we ended up at a local bar, which was also pretty neat. Haji picked us up to bring us to a "local party," but I'm not sure he actually had one in mind? Or, if he did, our plans got derailed pretty early.

"Is okay... I bring my wife?" he asked once he picked us up.

"Sure!" we agreed.

"We married... 5 months, she's my wife. She can come?"

"Of course!"

Enter Haji's wife, who speaks no English, and who is 17 years old while Haji, we find out, is 34. It's definitely a different culture in Zanzibar, and she obviously is not going to be joining us for any nighttime activities.

Haji tries to find us a hotel bar for some reason, even though we have told him we would prefer something local, before dropping us off at a pretty sweet local bar where we are definitely the only Westerners there. We get some chicken that's grilled right there for 10,000 shillings and we each have a Safari beer. There are pool tables, shisha (hookah), a DJ, and -- of course -- kittens.

Right outside the club.

The bar!

Dinner and a safari beer.

We had fun, but I was pretty tired when we left, and we had a long day ahead of us tomorrow.

This morning, we woke early to pack because we were moving rooms, and then we were meeting the shuttle at 8:10 AM to go on Safari Blue! Snorkeling, a meal on a sandbar of seafood and chicken and fresh fruit, and traveling to a mangrove.

But, for right now, it is dinner time.

Tuesday, April 1st, 2025

8:57 PM

Isaraya Villas, Michamvi, Zanzibar

Safari Blue was beautiful, definitely a unique snorkeling experience. I was the silly goose who forgot to bring towels from our hotel, but -- as I suspected -- it was nice and warm and we dried off naturally anyway.

Our group was a young Arab Muslim couple (I have seen so many full-body swimsuits with hijabs this trip, and some of them are low-key pretty cute), a young woman in her 20s with her mom (?) and a friend/sister of the mom (?) from Boston, two male friends in their late 30s from South Africa, and several tour guides. 

We started with hitting a sandbar because the tide was very low. A lot of coral that we had to step on, and the coral without water was a pretty wild sight. We also were on a dhow the whole time, which was a pretty unique experience.

There were many dhows taking many groups out today, and a whole slew of them stopped by a small sandbar. I saw a tour guide cutting up pineapple and I assumed it was for everyone, until a very angry German man yelled at me for taking his pineapple. I immediately apologized, and his wife luckily found the whole thing pretty funny, and I think the man was less mad when he realized I was just an idiot.

I had trouble seeing my phone screen so a lot of these are shots are diagonal. 

A starfish. Neat.

Kenny also took some photos. I think we hate asking each other to pose so we sneak attack photos when we aren't looking at each other.

Wednesday, April 2nd, 2025

10:32 AM

Isaraya Villas, Michamvi, Zanzibar

Okay, I walked away from the blog entry last night to just enjoy the new suite I'm in. Today, the weather is less good (still amazing views), so I have some time.

We got back on the boat after about 30 minutes to find another spot where we can go snorkeling, somewhere a little farther south and west. In fact, here is a map of where Safari Blue operates:

We left from Fumba on the southwest side of the island. Konokono is by Pingwe, but a little bit west, right on the coast of Chwaka Bay.

Right before we got in the water, Kenny told me he had never gone snorkeling before. I guess I kind of knew this, but I was excited for him to finally do it! Especially with how warm the water was. I snorkeled off the coast of Belize in January 10 years ago and I've still never fully recovered from how cold that was.

The snorkeling was, well, interesting. Some beautiful fish, of course, but my heart broke at how white the coral was. I'd never seen coral so white before, and, since I teach a climate change project, I knew this was the result of the reefs being bleached. I wondered if the reefs off the coast of Belize were this white now, 10 years later, or if these reefs would have been this white 10 years ago. The bleaching seems to be a rapid process, with scientists predicting that we could lose 90% of our reefs by the year 2050 if we don't do something drastic.

As I was snorkeling around, with the waves from the motors running in the dhows nearby making fairly sizable waves, I was suddenly hit with a stinging sensation. And then another. And another. And I was seeing a ton of little (like, the size of a nickel) see-through creatures with a shock of bright blue in the middle -- a swarm I was somehow in the middle of and had no idea which direction to go in to avoid it. I felt like I was being zapped in every direction, on every surface of my body, and it hurt. I lifted my head up and saw people heading back to the boat.

"Are you getting stung?" I asked Kenny.

"Yeah, everyone is, that's why we're going back to the boat."

I have no idea how big that swarm of (was it jellyfish?) was, but we quickly all got back on the boat. The guides apologized, and we went looking for another place to snorkel.

But hey, at this point? I was in a very bad mood. I had little red dots all over my body, and it was itchy, and I just wanted to bathe myself in cream and wrap myself in a blanket, in a dark and air-conditioned room. At any rate, they found us another place to go snorkeling, and I told Kenny I was staying on the boat. I was definitely pouting. Kenny still wanted to go in the water, but right before he went in, he turned to the guides.

"Hey, my wife is having an allergic reaction. Do you have any cream?"

Surprisingly enough, they had some antihistamine cream. I lavished my arms and legs with it, thanked the guides, and gave it back. Then I turned back to the water to see my husband having the time of his life. He was loving this snorkeling thing!

There's Kenny waving in the water!

The antihistamine worked pretty well, and I felt better. I did finally get in the water, and we went snorkeling around together. Kenny was happy to see me join him.

"Thanks for getting me the cream," I said. "How could you tell I was having an allergic reaction?"

"Your lips were getting really red. Hey, now that you're feeling better, can I just say -- of course you're allergic to jellyfish."

After some more snorkeling, it was time for lunch. We stopped at another small island where they had a grill and a small "restaurant" set up for us. We had to walk across a lot of coral because it was low tide and the water was gone.

Kenny walking on some coral on the way to our "restaurant," the white tent in the background.

Within two hours, this was filled with seawater.

We had a meal of chicken, lobster, seafood, beans, lentil curry, and rice. For dessert, we had fresh fruit, all just picked from their trees and cut up (when necessary) -- baobab tree fruits, dates, mango, pineapple, and watermelon. And then we had freshly cut sugar cane, which we were told to suck on, and it was kind of amazing? I'd never had fresh sugar cane before.

Lunch.

At this point, there were some souvenir shops to go to, but I decided to stop at the lounge chairs under a big tree, plop myself down, and rest. Kenny got me water shoes for about $10, which was very sweet (and great timing), and sat down right next to me. 

"Oh," he said. "I'm never getting up again. I'm just going to die here."

We then get back in the boat, which was now right by the restaurant because the tide had come in. They took us to a mangrove, which was beautiful, and which had the warmest water outside of a spring I'd ever been in. Kenny was in heaven. It was honestly a little warm for my tests, but I did find some cold currents occasionally to dip into and stay in.

I mostly slept on the ride back to the hotel, sunburned and still kinda itchy. Our suitcases had already been moved into our new room -- an overwater bungalow and now technically in the "Isaraya Villas." This in itself felt luxurious. Our boy Felix was back at the front desk, and he told the girl taking us to our room that I spoke fluent Swahili. I shook my head, but luckily she wasn't baited.

In fact, this girl likely spoke the best English of any of the employees so far. While Beatrice spoke excellent English, I could believe this girl (god, I forgot to get her name) was a native speaker. She mentioned Easter at one point, and I asked if Easter was a big deal on Zanzibar.

"No. The island is mostly Muslim. Easter is a big deal on the mainland, which is mostly Christian. I am from the mainland."

"Oh? Where?"

"Dar es Salaam."

"Wow. Okay, so Eid is the big thing here."

"Yes. The celebrations will take place this weekend because it was Monday and Tuesday this year. Which means that people will not come to work on Wednesday, and then maybe not on Thursday... and then it's Friday... the people on Zanzibar love Muslim holidays."

It's so funny how the practice of a religion is contingent on the native culture. Islam in Zanzibar does still mean that the women wear hijabs (not our girl, she was Christian and so her head was uncovered) and everyone fasts during Ramadan, but they still drink alcohol at night and party for a week when it's over. I don't think this is what Islam looks like in the Middle East.

But oh my god, our villa. I'm just going to show pictures because it's crazy.

Once we got in, I immediately went into the plunge back to soothe my burns and itches. I took a shower and used the aloe vera lotion we got at the spice farm. And then Kenny and I went to dinner. Kenny told me that, with the discount we got for booking during April (the rainy season), this villa was the same price as our shoebox room back in London.

Today, we are relaxing, and we will likely go into Paje again tonight. We are hoping to spend a bit more time in Stone Town tomorrow before our flight (!!!). I can't believe we only have one more night here!