By Land, Air, and Sea (Part Three)

Ah, the sea. What a mysterious, beautiful, and terrifying place. I love boat travel and we try to do it as much as is convenient. Going between Zanzibar and Pemba, we had a choice between a quick flight or a slightly less quick boat trip. As I’m already feeling immense guilt about our carbon footprint, I insisted on taking the boat, thinking it would still be a very pleasant way to travel.

I’ve never been more wrong.

The boat must’ve been my own personal version of hell. It was late, and ok, hakuna matata, that’s fine, whatever, *big deep breath* I can deal with that. There was some confusion over what line we should be in. That was cleared up. We were some of the last ones on, and ok, that’s fine too. When we finally boarded, there were already people all over the aisles, in every other seat, and no two seats were empty next to each other. All right… I can live without him for two hours – no problem.

So I sit to another large stinky man. (Is this a recurring theme, or what?) There are two empty seats, but one is being reserved for his wife, who’s sitting in the aisle of the boat. I later learn this is to help prevent seasickness. I’m sorry to say this little trick doesn’t seem to work.

As we bounced over the gigantic waves, I’ll have to admit it wasn’t what I’d envisioned for my boat trip. I was pretty uncomfortable, but then I wasn’t the only one. At one point I realized that nearly every single person on the boat is vomiting! I wondered if Michael was (turns out he wasn’t). Then I started to wonder if there was something wrong with me – everyone else is puking, maybe I should puke too? I considered it. But I still didn’t feel nauseous.

This wasn’t all. Between the separation, the hoardes of people, and the vomiting, believe me, that wasn’t all. Of all the entertainment in all the world they could be blasting over the television, what is it you think they chose?

If you guessed American professional wrestling, you’ve just won yourself a free boat trip. WWF was turned up full blast on the TVs.  Unbelievable.

After two hours of kicking myself, the man beside me practically knocked me down to get off the boat, and the real chaos ensued. “Please exit the boat in an orderly fashion!” was never announced, so everyone was quite literally pushing, shoving, yelling, and desperately trying to get off the boat. People were even getting on for the next trip before we’d gotten off! I felt claustrophobic and it was then that I really wanted to vomit. Finally, I pushed my way to the daylight of outside, found Michael, and walked as fast as I could off the dock. *whew* We made it. And I crossed my fingers that this would be the last boat trip we have planned for a long, long time.