Safari njema! My Adventures in Tanzania: Tanga!!!

We finally got our residence permits in order on Thursday evening so we were able to go to Tanga. We took the 6:30 am bus on Friday for what we thought would be a five hour drive. Nine hours later we were sweaty (no air conditioning) and tired (apparently not many people know about personal space on public transit) but we made it to Tanga. We were then picked up by a friend of our coordinators who drove us to the Peponi Resort. It was a beautiful resort owned by a British couple that has lived in Africa their whole lives. We all shared a banda or chalet.

On Saturday, we woke up to see the sunrise then went out on the Pepi boat. We met a family from Alabama that lives in Moshi and another family from St. Louis. We all went out snorkeling. This was my first time snorkeling and I was kind of afraid. When we jumped into the Indian ocean from the boat, I think my body kind of freaked out. I just couldn't get the hang of floating on the water and breathing through the snorkel. It must've been too counter-intuitive because I kept swallowing salt water or holding my breath when I had the snorkel. I took a break and got back on the boat. After awhile, the others joined us on the boat and we journeyed to the sand island for lunch. When it is low tide, the sand island is a great place to stop and rest.

The employees on the boat asked us if we would like to try snorkeling one more time before lunch, and I thought I would give it another try. Apparently that was a bad idea because as soon as I jumped in the water and started swimming towards the coral, a boy from the family from St. Louis yelled that he was seeing a ton of jellyfish. I did not want to get stung, so I started swimming for the ladder on the boat. As soon as I was five feet from the boat, my arm ran right into a jellyfish. It stung my arm and both of my legs. I kind of flailed to get out of the water and into the boat, and in the process of frantically trying to get my fins off to climb the latter, I must've pulled a muscle in my back. Boy was I a sight to see. I had a blistering sting on my forearm, two stings on my thighs, and I could hardly breathe because my back hurt so bad. I got back in the boat and used some of the medicine they had on board to soothe the stings. It still hurt pretty bad, but we went back to the sand island for lunch. Luckily, laying out in the sun must've helped my back because it started to feel a little better after awhile. We ate lunch and then journeyed back to the resort.

All in all, this weekend was an adventure. It was really fun to relax with the girls in the program, but getting stung by a jellyfish wasn't the best thing in the world. We took another bus back last night and the trip only took seven hours this time. The second bus we took didn't stop every five minutes to pull over to the side of the road and ask people if they wanted to get on. It felt good to be home and to sleep in a familiar bed.