Voyage of the Peace Corps: Stuck on a Tropical Beach with Too Much Money

When I imagined a tropical island pre-Peace Corps, it looked just about exactly like the coasts of Tanzania and the Zanzibar Archipelago.  One might say that the beaches of Zanzibar are the platonic tropical beaches.  The Indian ocean is very blue and very clear.  The water is warm, the sand is sandy.  If you are a tourist, you can go sit at a resort beach, and they bring you comfy chairs, wine, and sushi, to while away the unbearable idleness of a tropical beach.

I spent a very productive hour trying to make a sandcastle with
neither shovel nor plastic bucket.  Coconut shell halves work sorta ok to dig with.

The crab shell at the top represents Cthulhu.

Jaro and I went on an entire dolphin tour, which involved getting ferried about the Indian ocean on a boat looking for dolphins.  We only got close to one and he didn't appear interested in swimming with people.  Such hardship!

The water actually does have these patches of aquamarine.

Boats full of white people trying to get close to the dolphin.

After chasing the dolphin around for a while we got to snorkel above coral patches.  I don't have pictures, not having an underwater camera, but I was unprepared for how lovely coral is.  There are these little mountains of coral rising above forests of seaweed.  The coral we saw was muted pinks and oranges with lots of little zebra striped or neon-colored fish swimming in and out.

After, we went for a walk on the beach at low tide.

Photogenic dead crab!

Peace Corps is NOT analogous to that stupid story about the
man throwing starfish back into the ocean.  By the time starfish wash
up on a beach, they are dead, and also some of them have poison spines
so you don't really want to touch them.  

Cool cliffs that seem to be formed of dead coral.

Next: we go to a museum and learn things!