Lazy as a cow on the beach

I don't know if there is such an expression as "lazy as a cow on the beach," but I assume if there were I would have qualified yesterday. I enjoyed a nice breakfast on the balcony of the restaurant, then sat down and did nothing. Oh wait, I did read some!!! Just finished Bill Bryson's "Thunderbolt Kid" and I am now a few dozen pages into "Paula" from Isabel Allende. Both describe their upbringings and both put tears in your eyes. Bryson from laughter and Allende from pain (the autobiographical book describes the dying of her daughter Paula). At one point in her life Allende claims to have lived in Lebanon, but her description of the narrow alleyways, the markets, the spices, the haggling and even the ocean suggests she really was in Zanzibar!!! "Paula" is also nice to read knowing that one of my friends is reading the blog from Santiago de Chile, where Allende used to live. Hola!

Around lunchtime I went for...lunch, before spending the afternoon doing more or less the same as in the morning (nada!). I did go for a short walk to buy some water, though.

Both the first and second evening I did what I couldn't the last two weeks: Going for a run. Due to weight savings restrictions to get me up Mt. Meru as well as space concerns in my backpack I left my running shoes in Moshi. I figured I didn't need to go running while climbing up Meru for exercise and I could get some beach running in at Lake Victoria and Zanzibar. Well, the sand beaches near Mwanza were rather short (as in a few metres), so part one of the plan didn't work.

The planned triathlon training on Zanzibar also failed. I never got around to rent a bicycle (yesterday, as I said I was just plain lazy and today I went for a snorkelling trip, before following the same routine as on "lazy day"). Swimming also proved difficult as the low tide was in the morning and evening. High tide is around 3:00 and 15:00. But even at high tide it seems you can walk to Madagascar, if not to Indonesia w/o getting your head wet. For the snorkelling trip we went to some reef, maybe a couple of kilometres from the shore and at places it was so shallow you could bruise your belly gliding through the water. Running was also not the best barefoot. As mentioned the sand was not only as white but also as dense as a healthy tooth in the commercials. If that alone didn't kill the feet the rocks and shells surely could. I fought through it, sometimes running gingerly. All the while the locals ran barefoot through the sand full blast or were playing football.

The snorkelling was indescribably beautiful, with fish in all kinds of bright colours – except for those of course who didn't want to be seen. There was an eel-like fish that was hard to spot and some white ones that were hanging out over the white sand on the bottom and you had to really open your eyes. The best covered one was a very flat fish (paper-thin...) that was also white like the ground. When I saw the first one only the fin gave it away, as initially it wasn't moving at all. That kind of fish was so well-covered that at some point I accidentally stepped on one. I had gotten water in my goggles (arrgh, I mis-spelled this initially as "googles" – what has the world come to???) and needed to stand up quickly. I then noticed that flat fish being disturbed and move on.

The boat, btw, was a very simple catamaran, entirely made out of wood. Except for the sail and the ropes, of course. Fortunately the Indian Ocean is very calm, we didn't go very far and my cousin wasn't around (every time I go on a boat with my cousin I get sea sick; this has been true on the ferry between Oostende and Dover, on a harbour cruise in Hamburg and going to one of the islands off Santa Barbara).

Yesterday evening I had the fish platter for dinner. It was by far the most expensive meal I had in my two months here, but I reckon that in the US or Europe I would have paid twice the amount of the 25,000 (some 22 or 23 dollars) that it cost, with all kinds of seafoods on the plate. Yumm!

Oh, when I returned from my run yesterday evening I saw a cow grazing in the sand. I have seen cows in weird places before, but usually there was some kind of green patch nearby. Not just shells and salt water. The cow didn't even snorkel, swim or read a book. It was truly lazy as a cow on the beach.