08-09APR2007 "Shimoni Gardens & sleeping sea turtles"

We decided to make our last dive of the season, before the winds turned and the rains started, stirring up the ocean floor and ruining visibility. Kisite marine park, just off the coast of Wasini island, came highly recommended so we headed down there for a long weekend with Alice, Eddie and Suki.

The four of us (Wendy, Alice, Eddie and Suki) drove down past Mombasa on Saturday to meet Patrick at Tiwi Beach. (Patrick was already there at a Palmwood Users Group Conference sponsored by Danida - more on that later). We drove another two hours to Shimoni, a tiny town on the coast across from Wasini island, just north of the border with Tanzania. It was getting dark and we were very low on fuel. We briefly considered turning around until we finally found Shimoni gardens. Suki used her best international canine diplomacy on the pack of 7 local dogs resident at the lodge, while Alice and Eddie set up a tent in the garden. Patrick and I opted for one of the tiny cabins.

The next morning we left Suki in the charge of one of the staff members who was designated to spend all day watching her (!), which meant wandering around with her on the leash. A small canoe picked us up at the beachfront and we joined the snorkeling dhows at the main pier. We were a bit early and picked the prime seats on one of the five gorgeous wooden sailboats. We wondered where all the tourists were hiding. There weren’t enough hotels in all of Shimoni to fill half of the boats. Suddenly, we heard a huge commotion on the pier and looked up in time to see a caravan of buses pull up and disgorge dozens of sunburnt, overweight tourists onto the pier. They streamed onto the waiting dhows until we were well packed in. We were slightly disenchanted…

When we arrived at the snorkeling site, there were at least 15 other dhows anchored. The tide was going out so the reef was very shallow. The captain mentioned briefly in passing to avoid damaging the coral and don’t pick anything up. Several times we scolded people who were standing on the reef in knee deep water. The snorkeling was OK, but we didn’t see the turtles and octopi that Nathan and Caroline bragged about. When we got back on the boat, we saw other tourists getting on with shells and bits of coral. I nearly lost my cool and yelled at the boat captain who promised he would make them put it back. Too little too late.

The next day, we dropped Alice and Eddie at the matatu stage so they could get back to Mombasa in time to meet Eddie’s parents at the airport. We met the same canoe which took us to the same pier and we were again the first ones on the dhow. The captain seemed ready to wait around to see if more people would join us. We told him that we needed to be back by 1pm, so if we waited around we would only do one dive and he would get paid half as much. We left 3 minutes later. We had the whole boat to ourselves and a personal scuba guide. In fact, since it was the end of the holiday weekend, the whole marine park seemed deserted compared to the day before.

The diving was absolutely spectacular and more than made up for the disappointing snorkeling the day before. The first dive was along a huge coral cliff where tiny fishes of every color and description were nearly out-done by the amazing color and diversity of the coral, hard and soft. Larger fish lurked towards the deeper edge of the cliff as it met the sea floor. We saw a huge rubber-lipped snapper that was >1-1/2m long, lionfish, thorny pufferfish that were more than 18 inches, many eels, and some very cool looking nudi branch. After about 40 minutes of exploring and enjoying every little new and incredible creature, the guide started to hurry us up a bit. I thought maybe he was bored. But suddenly there were some nooks in the coral cliff and four or five giant sea turtles (about 1 meter long) sleeping in the shallow caves. Each opened one eye and glanced at us with mild curiosity. One decided to take an oxygen break and glided past our heads as it ascended. It was all I could do to keep from dropping the regulator out of my mouth.

The second dive was just as amazing, but completely different. We visited a small bit of reef that was completely covered with purple and pink soft coral. It was stunning beyond words. We weren’t even a little disappointed that we didn’t see any dolphins. We won’t mind going back to try again! The divemaster was a great guide and he was also impressed with us. He couldn’t believe that it was only our fourth dive because we seemed so comfortable underwater. He said he often holds people’s hands when they are on their tenth dive. He had estimated that we had done 20 or so. A nice compliment!

We talked the diving company into bringing us a small jerry can of fuel to make sure that we could get back to a gas station. We started to get a little nervous after the third gas station told us that they were out of gas. We should probably invest in a jerry can.