We were woken at 6, but no tea and biccies. We got driven into Nungwi village to where our boat "Countdown" was moored. A few villagers were walking up to work in the hotel, but most, judging by the closed up huts, were still in bed asleep.
We seem them walking along our beach - the men going spear fishing in the lagoon and the women carrying all manner of things to and fro - e.g. firewood - often on their heads. Sometimes we see children, singing as they look in the rock pools for food.
Nungwi village comprises small grey square stone huts with corrugated tin or thatched roofs. How can somewhere so beautiful from the beach have such a drab interior?
We were taken out to the boat by tender. We took a packed "brunch" on board, provided by the hotel in a huge cool box. No idea what was in there.
Captain Ali and his boys - Alis and Joshua - didn't talked much but showed us the basics of how to reel fish in. We sat on top of the boat. It was pretty rough as we moved into the Pemba channel. I kept focusing on the horizon, wondering how on earth I was going to be able to keep doing so for 6 hours. Apart from being boring, it actually took a fair deal of concentration and I'm not convinced it helped much with the sea sickness.
We saw two big schools of dolphin on the way out - we were headed for the deep channel between Zanzibar and Pemba islands. Shortly after hitting deep blue sea one of the lines went up. Unfortunately this one got away. Bad technique or bad luck? Off we went again, and soon after another bite. Ali said it was going to be a small fish. Roy brought it in but it was only a half fish - something else had eaten the body of the fish and we got the head. Deja vu from when this happened to him in the Maldives! At least an hour went by before the next bite. This time, it was a pretty big Barracuda. As he was hauled out of the water they hit him over the head with a big wooden stick. Poor thing! We'll be eating this tonight at dinner.
Out in the channel we "trawled" round in circles. The endless swells, and a feeling of going nowhere were making me feel ill. Eventually, we asked Captain Ali to take us back in, slowly. It was boring as hell when there were no fish biting. Nothing to concentrate on. Even Roy was feeling queasy. On the way back in we had some minor excitement when we caught a small dorado. Ali claimed this as the crew's dinner. Fair enough!
We arrived back just an hour before the trip was officially due to end. When we got back to the hotel, we were hungry and decided to retrieve our brunch (we'd been too seasick to eat it on the boat and hadn't had a thing all day). Gone! Every morsel apart from the ham croissants! The crew took everything else. So we went to lunch in the hotel restaurant and then to the pool where I promptly fell asleep. I was woken by heavy rain and so went back to the room and slept for 1.5 hours. We ordered tea and cake when we woke up - well, we had missed breakfast!
We lazed around until dinner. Tonight, chef Lars came to see us in the bar and advised that he would serve up our Barracuda in five different ways - sashimi, poached in coconut milk and lime (my fave), plain grilled, coated with mustard, coated with basil pesto. All were lovely, and came served on a huge platter as well as our normal menu! Which was samosas with chutney, soup (which we skipped!), lobster satay with saffron rice. Oh and chocolate mousse. We chatted with a Norwegian family this evening who told us that there had been bombings in London on the tube, killing 50 people. This was a shock - after no news for a week we'd had no idea about it. We also emailed home tonight to let people know that all was well. We were in bed by 10, which is why I'm writing this at 6.45 next morning, watching the sun rise as fishing dhows make their way past our balcony.
