One of the excursions that Kassim planned for me was the swimming with the dolphins....
Let me back up...who is Kassim? He was my tour guide and owned his own company, Lipi Adventure. (in swahili, lipi means "what")I found him through the company that organized the safari on the mainland of Tanzania. Kassim was very professional and informative and funny. He kind of looks like Chris Rock. (if you don't know who Chris Rock is, get with it, he is a hilarous comedian) Big huge, white smile.
Ok, the big selling point of these dolphins is that they are not in captivity. You can swim w/ them in the wide open ocean. Well, there are 10 other boats also trying to get their clients to the dolphins as well. The dolphins will surface then all the boats speed over to where they are and we jump in and snorkel around trying to see them. The water was VERY choppy and boats are zooming about. My boat had our driver, a young swimmer that would get into the water w/ us and act as a guide, two girls from Ireland, me and Kassim. I could barely get any pictures of the dolphins, much less see them when I got in the water. Kassim held my bag, camera and dry clothes. By the end of my time in Zanzibar I was calling him Mother bc that is how he took care of me. Only one of the other girls would get in the water, her friend was too scared. Ironically she lives in Donnybrook (suburb of Dublin) which is where I stayed. One time we jumped in and another tourist boat got WAY too close to us girls and almost ran us over, it was really scarey. Our driver was yelling at that boat to keep an eye out for other clients and there was a big fight between our two boats. Spoken all in Swahili of course. So you jump in, try to spot dolphins, climb back up, zoom to the next spot, jump in etc. The last time the dolphins were spotted our driver sped to see them cutting off the boat that pissed him off. He did this intentionally so their clients could not get in the water to see the dolphins. Us girls were like what's going on?! But oh well, it was good to be looked out for and I guess after work the drivers go drink beers together no matter what happened during the day.
Only got to see one dolphin while swimming and he swam below me.
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