back in the zoo…

My last day in Zanzibar was gloriously emphatic…diving my third and fourth dives from the little mango boat and into my aquarium again. Its funny diving, because the silence is punctuated by the sound of your air bubbles drumming out, and sometimes I could hear a click clicking in my head…heaven knows what the fish thought. And then there I was,  slinking along the bottom with a Skate, hardly noticeable on the sandy bottom…and skirting along like a girl in her first frilly ball dress besides a couple of rocks where a huge black and white lion fish rested. His quills and frills equal only to a peacock in full regalia. This aquamarine fish soup was well worth the effort and I was really conscious not to touch any reef with fins or hands….it should never be spoilt.

The hour under water at about 18.6 meters went quickly and boy are you ready to have that cube of cake and hot tea, it was always just lugging myself out of the water that was the difficult bit. First the weight belt, the bcd and the flippers have to come off in the water.I was like a contortionist hanging onto the rope and twisting every way to prize them off.

The second dive was easier as we were not swimming across a current. My legs and flippers flapped trying to keep up and it made me appreciate the strength of these fish. I wished I had had a book down there to identify the amazing coral shapes, some round, some piping up like purple cigarettes, and sea anemones in dozens of colours, or even an underwater camera so I could name the dozens of different fish in every colour. That might be next..

But I had to leave this sleepy lagoon-like Indian Ocean and change it for zoos of another kind. My timetable said ‘Zambia, Victoria Falls’ .So a sleepy following morning after finishing The Elephant Whisperer, on my deck, which everyone should read, I said my goodbyes and thank you’s to the team and smiley Munisee and once again was bumped along to Zanzibar airport.

I’ d started to realise that all these airports were their own zoo. We all become like animals in transit, moving sweeping, changing direction till we get to the gate, our escape.

it seems there are 3 classes of airport zoo. I was to find out that Nairobi, similar to Schipol, or Heathrow, or Manchester are the preserve of giraffes. Deep wide open avenues where everyone slowly and deliberately saunters to their gate. Often you never see a zoo keeper and almost guess your way along 7 mile bikes to the loading point. But Zanzibar airport is like the monkey enclosure, everyone seems to be over everyone and a kind of organised chaos is the norm. It was a world of difference to the sweet Seronera airport in the middle of the Serengeti. That was like a private gazelle gate. If you were calm you could stand so close in the dust and be part of their family.

So here I was, waiting for the last chapter before the excitement of getting to Oz to see Matthew.Because of flight times, I had to disembark in Zambia, and pay an inordinate amount of dollars for just a few hours whilst I was picked up and driven through a literal no mans land to the border at Zimbabwe . The funny thing was ,it really felt like a change of country, and then out of the clearing rose The Victoria Falls Hotel…