Shim's Surgical Adventures : Zanzibar

Up on the north of the island, the focus of the last few days has been diving. Opposite the well known Mnemba island dive sites, it might have been considered rude not to go. On Monday afternoon we were picked up and taken by boat to the dive centre a little further up the coast for a pool session. Whilst my wife and I are PADI certified, it has been many years since either of us had dived (children do that to you) and we both felt that a refresher would be a good idea. Also, our eldest daughter was old enough to do an ‘Introduction to diving’ course which meant that after a short pool based tutorial she would be able to dive with us on the reef too! This is not a PADI certification as such and means that in the water she has to be buddied with a dive master or certified instructor and is limited to 12m in depth. Whilst technically this limited what we could do, neither of us minded as the opportunity for her seemed too good to miss (there can’t be many 11 year olds that have actually dived on a coral reef).

Also, my brilliant wife had discovered that there is a diving taster that our middle daughter could do; “Bubble-blower” who knew there was such a thing. This meant that she had an hour in the pool learning to dive. Fantastic. The team there were very sweet and at the end of this pool session they put a child’s mouthpiece on my spare regulator and let our youngest daughter swim with me on the surface with her head in the water breathing through the regulator to get an experience too. All three of them were absolutely thrilled!

Middle daughter learning. Older two in the deep end playing with the instructor. Our youngest loving it too!

Our original plan had been to go diving together on the Tuesday, but both of us had independently woken up in the night and decided that we could not leave our younger two children in the care of the hotel staff. Whilst they were lovely, it just did not feel right to either of us. So on Tuesday my wife and eldest went off for an amazing diving experience together. I had a fun time with the younger two in the three hotel pools – tough I know!

Having returned extolling the amazing experience that they’d had (including two dolphins that came to them underwater), it was arranged that I should go on Wednesday. I was not to be disappointed. I was treated to an amazing array of fish (lion, angel, stone, puffer, moray, flat and a host of others that I cannot name – including some incredible camouflage experts) as well as some pretty good coral (it was good to see the reef alive, if not thriving). Somehow, in all of that, my eldest daughter managed to negotiate a second day of diving, which meant that she spent nearly 4 hours underwater in total.