Day 17

Sandbank Picnic

Today we had a sandbank picnic. Sounds nice, right? In fact behind this label hides far more than I expected.
Our preferred partner Gallery Tours provided the trip. I had the nice company of Silke Macke, the General Manager of the Zamani Zanzibar Kempinski, Javed Jafferji, the Managing Director of Gallery Tours and a handful of other lovely people.

Dhow

Our means of transportation for this day was a dhow. Sailing on these traditional fishing boats is a beautiful experience. Gliding through the deep blue Indian Ocean, just relaxing in the sun – we had a fine time there.
A while later the water changed its colour from blue to light turquoise and we saw the palm trees and stunning white-sanded beaches of a small island approaching. Our first stop, before the sandbar. It was like discovering a secret tropical island.

Prison Island

This Island had many names. The original name was Changuu Island, named in Ki-Swahili after a fish common in these waters. Later the Government built a prison on it, which results in the widely known name “Prison Island”. But they never used the buildings as a prison but as a quarantine station to prevent epidemics brought through cargo and passengers at the end of the 1890s – the Island was renamed to “Quarantine Island”. Obviously the island was way too beautiful to have a prison or a hospital on it – it turned into a nice leisure resort and got its old name back: Changuu Island.

On a short roundtrip we inspected the old buildings and visited a population of Aldabra Tortoises. These giant tortoises are endemic to the Seychelles and were a gift from the Seychelles government. With the “Prison Island” this endangered species found a lovely second home. They are huge and, after all the wildebeest, zebras and baboons this was at least one animal that holds still if you want to photograph it. I guess if you live 200 years and have thick armour it is just not necessary to move fast.

Snorkelling

We left the Island and on our way to the sandbank the crew had another surprise for us: to get really hungry for the picnic we went for a round of snorkelling. We just put on the gear, jumped over board and had a look on the fascinating underwater world. It’s like an underwater safari! Sadly my camera didn’t like water at all and I couldn’t take any pictures of the gorgeous underwater scenery.

The “Picnic”

We finally made it to the sandbank. It was indeed a large piece of splendid white sand surrounded by the magnificent Indian Ocean. The “picnic” turned out to be a full-featured barbecue. It’s really a unique experience to have such a tasty meal in this location!
Hours later our sand island began to shrink – the flood tide was coming in. So we packed our stuff together and had a pleasant ride on the dhow back to the haven of Zanzibar Town. This was a marvellously organized and totally relaxing day!

Special

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