Animals: Kind and Cruel

We've already covered many of the animals we saw while on Safari in Tarangire and Lake Manyara, but we also saw a few animals in Zanzibar. After reading a paragraph in the Rough Guide about Changuu Island (also known as Prisoner Island) and the family of giant tortoises that live there, Wabes and I made it a mission to get to the island. So on our second day in Zanzibar we arranged for a fishing boat to take us out to Changuu and then out to the reef for some snorkelling.

After traveling about a mile from Stone Town's shore (through very choppy waters) we hopped off the boar at Changuu and ran up to the tortoise preserve. At first it appeared that the tortoises were in enclosures and that we could only look at them from marked paths. But it became clear that the paths were merely for our convenience when the tortoise keeper handed us a handful of spinach and told us there was no danger of being bitten (tortoises apparently have no teeth). So we wandered off the path into the enclosures and later into the woods where the less social tortoises overcame their shyness in order to eat spinach from our hands. The eldest tortoise (the baba kubwa, "big grandpa"), is supposedly 175 years old. He hung out near the entrance to the preserve and was clearly use to humans. He must have been one of the first tortoises to arrive in Zanzibar, when someone from the Seychelles gifted four of the animals to the British Consulate in Zanzibar. Now there are literally scores of tortoises on the island.

It's hard to describe why this was so cool so we'll let the pictures speak for themselves. In any case, tortoises have always be one of my (Kolz) favorite animals and this experienced pretty much confirmed that status.


We left Changuu for the reef at about 10:45 to get some snorkeling in before high sun. The reef and the fish were amazing but I somehow managed to catch my toes (the centimeter or so that remained exposed by the flippers) on a sea urchin. And unfortunately, sea urchins here are huge. It left a handful spine tips in my toes, but after getting out and being told it would be fine and that the pain would subside, I got back in with Wabes for a little more snorkeling. We then returned to Changuu where Wabes asked at the fancy island resort whether they could provide anything for the pain. A hotel employee cut off a branch of papaya tee and told her to apply the sap to the wounds. Not sure it worked, but it was interesting nonetheless. The epilogue is that the pain was gone by the evening but the tiny dots of purple spine remain in my toes. Another souvenir I guess...