I had a lot of fun yesterday. We rented two jet skis and had them out for an hour. There are no speed limits or anything, and Mike went cruisin’. I was screaming and clinging to his life jacket and loving it. We went out really deep and got a lot of air on waves. We only ever fell off when we stopped to talk. The funny thing about falling was that it was a pretty busted jet ski with no emergency stop key, so if you fell off the motor kept going and it could get away from you. We had to swim after it a few times, but luckily it went very slowly. There were little things in the water that sting you a little as you swim, and I kept thinking about sharks and getting really freaked.
After a quick lunch we went to our sunset cruise, which was actually a creaky old wooden boat. To get to the boat you had to walk down a huge flight of stairs into the oncoming waves, swim to the ladder and climb up, all while holding your gear above your head to keep it dry. Me and Courtney made the Australian guy who checked us in carry us out to the boat because she was scared and I can’t really swim. He asked us if we had any questions, so I asked if there were sharks in this area of the ocean. He gave me a look and asked again if we had any questions. When he realized I was serious he said there weren’t. We were pretty sure he hated us.
We boated out to the coral, which was actually dark and ugly. You couldn’t see much, but some fish did come very close to us. We kept getting stung by those little water things, so we got back in the boat early with our guide (who we were pretty sure was on drugs) and napped on the waves. It was lovely.
We went to Zed for dinner, and it was wonderful. The presentation was awesome and everything was fantastic. We each had a four course meal for $25 plus drinks, and we were loving the first world comforts again. At the end of the meal Mike got really sick, and Carissa and Lauren had to walk him home. It turns out he was dehydrated and he was better the next day.
The sisters and I went back out for some drinks, and we were lucky to stumble on the ‘best bar in town’. There were about 15 people there, and more than half of them were locals trying to mack it with the mzungus. We tried ignoring them for a while, but it just got miserable and we left around when the bar was closing. On our walk home one of the gates to pass through the hotel area was locked and everything was very dark and deserted. We found someone to unlock the gate to let us through, and we linked arms and walked by the dark doorways and buildings. Carissa was tipsy and talking too much, and Courtney and I kept trying to get her to be quiet and put down the beer she was carrying. We were walking quickly along the beach and then saw a man following behind us at a distance. We were practically running by the time we reached a hotel with lights near the beach, but I didn’t feel safe until we were almost at our rooms again. That walk was one of the scariest moments of my life.
Now we are trying to check out and spend some time in Stone Town before heading back to Moshi, but the front desk is trying to tell Mike we owe $300 for New Years Eve. Good thing he kept his receipt!