Mercury's Moustache

This is completely anachronistic, but I'm going to tell you about something I got up to last year when I was out in Zanzibar. Exactly a year ago I was in Tanzania, excavating some olden days shit. When we'd finished the work I was left alone in East Africa to fend for myself. My colleagues cast me off to the lions with no protection besides a crumpled copy of Catch 22 and a beard as big as a house.

I'm ready for anything...

Anyway, I found myself on a bus from Arusha heading down to Dar es Salaam, it was a nine hour bus journey that I would not wish on my worst enemy. I did befriend two people though, one a kindly middle aged gentleman who was wearing a safari company t-shirt. I asked him if he worked as a safari guide. He told me no, he worked in a bank and the t-shirt was given to him by his friend who DID work as a safari guide. He seemed to be pretty intent on helping me, despite me not asking for any help. Maybe he would have been a good safari guide and was wasted in the bank. Who knows? The other person I befriended on the bus was a kindly middle aged woman. I was sat in my seat and she climbed on the bus and sat right down next to me. She was, shall we say 'big boned', and took up at least two thirds of the seat, crushing me against the window like that face in the car in Jacob's Ladder. Besides that she was lovely. After sitting down she announced 'Hello, I am magnificent!' I responded; 'Hi, I'm doing great as well!' It took me a little while to realise her name was Magnificent and she was not referring to her state of being. Anyway, these two made the journey a little more bearable and I was soon in Dar. I was also soon heading out of that fucking dump on a ferry bound for Zanzibar.

The best way to see Dar es Salaam, disappearing on the horizon....

Zanzibar was amazing, a really great little spot, friendly locals, cheap booze and pretty waitresses. Stone town was a good place to be based, but I soon grew tired of the hustle and bustle of the big smoke and wanted to break away to the country. I decided to head north to where the beaches are with an idea of spending some time sunning my corpulent body and having a proper relaxing time.

The grind of the daily commute was wearing me down...

I should have known better. The last time I had a 'beach holiday' was in America in 2004 and we stopped near Galveston at Fred's insistence to spend some time on the sea front. After two days of building sand castles I was bored out of my tiny mind and was desperately trying to chivvy the others on so we could continue the road trip. I arrived in north Zanzibar and booked into a beach resort. I instantly took a dislike to practically everyone else there, all being young, bronzed, slim and attractive. I plonked my old, farmer tanned, fat and ugly self on a sun lounger and spent the first day reading a Biggles book I found in the library at the resort. The occasional swim in the warm sea could do nothing to dampen my boredom. Then I spotted a scuba expedition that was being run by the hotel, I signed up for it. It was great, I really enjoyed the day looking at fish and breathing in about half of the Indian Ocean in the process. But then it was back to the resort.

It's got nothing on Whitby...

I packed up after three days and headed back to Stone Town, despite planning on staying at the resort for six days. The place I was staying in Stone Town, The Pyramid Hotel, had day trips on offer and I thought I might as well go on a couple. One was out to a spice farm where I was trussed up like a cunt without my consent:

I never asked for this...

I also met a nice Dutch couple on the bus to the spice farm, I saw them again the next day at breakfast and they asked me to exchange emails after I made a flippant comment about calling on them if I was ever in Holland. In a pure Larry David moment, I said no, I wasn't going to give them my email. I asked them what was the point? Are we really going to email each other about the time we all went to the spice farm together? No. It was a waste of my time. I carried on eating my 'continental' breakfast with a feeling of Davidian triumph. I also went on a 'swimming with dolphins' trip during my time in Stone Town. Now, for some people, swimming with dolphins is a dream come true, a chance of a life time. It has healing properties, so they say, dolphins can cure cancer just with their playful squeaking and twittering. A dolphin leaping through the waves has led to great advances in the treatment of AIDS. Unfortunately this is not the experience I had.

What I could have won

We (myself, a crazy middle aged French woman, a Korean couple and a Chinese couple (can you imagine the faux pas I made when I thought they'd all travelled together? Almost as bad as when I mistook the pre-mentioned Dutch couple for Germans...)) were taken by bus to some back water where we joined by a couple of girls from Leeds. They had been out on the lash the night before and were in no fit state to be standing up, never mind out on the ocean wave. And what a wave it was! The only time I have been on rougher seas was between the Westmann Islands and Iceland when the ferry was almost flipping over in the waves. This time we were on a tiny fishing boat clinging on for dear life.

We're going to need a bigger boat...

The waves buffeted us and we were thrown about like kittens in a washing machine. The two girls from Leeds were suffering the most, one was spewing the entire time we were on the boat. And we were on the boat for about an hour. God knows where all this vomit was coming from. Then dolphins were spotted off the starboard bow, the fishermen instructed everyone to ready themselves for the experience of a lifetime. That meant putting on a scuba mask and flippers and getting into the squall. Just before getting in the water, the French woman was thrown from her feet by a massive wave and smacked her head on a metal bar. Despite being obviously dazed she was still insistent on swimming with the dolphins. I declined the opportunity and decided it would be better to take my chances on the boat rather than dropping into the perfect storm. The ones that braved the water were thrown about and most of them nearly drowned. The chance of even seeing a dolphin in these conditions was minimal to nil, never mind swimming with one of the fuckers. Finally the fishermen decided we'd had enough water torture and headed back to the beach. So, as for my experience of swimming with dolphins, exhilarating was not the word...

'OK, time to start fishing the corpses out of the water'