… Like I said before, only if all of you were here with me.
However my surrogate family is doing me so very proud. Cliches aside it seems a month or 2 that we’ve been a team, not 13 days….

These people are beautiful.
Tanzania is an interesting place. We shot through it in a week, including Serengeti and Ngorogoro, as documented by our man. Mixed landscapes…

Hot and humid but much drier than equatorial Uganda or Kenya.
Except in the mountains where we stayed 2 nights. Whilst other mere mortals upgraded to real rooms, OMIK saved the MI5 expense account and camped, catching more than a few stars and the odd passing drop of dew…. Beautiful up here.

…before heading south through more amazing landscapes…

…

and finally ferrying over (rather akin to Wellington to Picton) to the “spice island” of Zanzibar.
The spice tour, gotta do it.

So tasteful. Ginger, vanilla, cardomon, turmeric, the wonderful “lipstick” plant…

Chanel#5 (more than a passing resemblance actually, if memory somehow serves me right), pepper, chilli, nutmeg and mace, cinnamon, and the king of spices, cloves:

Brilliant, just so interesting. I’ll never look at a curry the same way again. And a cosmic lunch of every tropical fruit ever invented and spiced octopus, of all things.
I could really fall in love with this island.

Could it get any better? Well I wouldn’t ask if the answer wasn’t Yes. The last accommodation of the tour was to be the best. Somehow I’ve managed to not share tents or rooms which has been great and more than possibly one of the increasing number of benefits of age and the sympathy it evokes:


Swanky hotel on the white sand beach, at the top of the island. Think Abel Tasman with sea at 30’C. And turtles.
Today we had a snorkel tour (as an aside, note, some people don’t go in for tours, too organized. Me, give me every tour you can imagine then send me on a tourism conference).

.. though too many tours can get to you…

And, don’t you love the evocation of a dhow, traditional sailing boat, variation of a dory.

My dad would SO have loved to join me, sailing into the African sunset on one…

…with my newest bestest shipmates:

Including captain Dan, our stalwart Kenyan tour leader…

… Love birds Simon and Liz, who became engaged on this very jaunt under the most romantic conditions known to man or woman, with Simon slipping both the ring and the question down in the hold…

…while the crew slipped discretely up to the poop deck for a beer…

and a dive…


And as the sun set slowly in the west…



… we bade farewell to another perfect day in paradise, to the mixed and possibly incompatible refrains of “Wonderful World”, “South Pacific” and “Captain Pugwash”.

Dan and I are scheming a scheme to bring tourists here to my sailing school. And, naturally, stranger things have happened.

I’m so very happy for Simon and Liz, a great combo. Go well in harmony, you two.

So, no, sorry, it don’t get no better after this.
The team dissipates tomorrow morning, dissolving back into their other worlds with a little added spice in their veins.
I’m staying on for 2 extra days, part of our man’s master plan to readjust to whatever the rest of my life may bring. R and R, reflection and readjustment.
Nearly home after so long. It will be good.

And maybe not before time…

Posted from MI’s WordPress for Android, as if!!
Like this:
Like Loading...