Atlasville, 27 Feb 2005

Have just spent 5 nights with my sons, who are visiting from the UK, at the Hotel La Gemma dell’Est on Nungwi beach at the northern tip of Zanzibar. A nice relaxed trip, and it helped that the hotel’s Jetty Bar is one of the best situated bars I’ve seen. It was great to sit and have a sundowner looking west towards Tumbatu Island. I‘d already added a lifer in the hotel gardens, Northern Grey-headed Sparrow.

During our stay we managed to get in some snorkelling on a sandbank off Kwale Island in the far south of Zanzibar. I am not a particularly confident swimmer and this was my first time snorkelling and must say I thoroughly enjoyed it. We also took a leisurely boat ride in Chwaka Bay on the east coast of Zanzibar on a local ngalawa and landed on a sand bar, exposed only at low tide, on which I was able to do a bit of birding. Successful too as I chalked up a couple of lifers with Sooty Gull and Saunders Tern, to add to the two I had seen on a walk along Nungwi beach on our first morning, Dimorphic Egret and House Crow.

On our last day it was another long drive down to the south of Zanzibar Island to the Jozani National Park where we hoped to see the Zanzibar Red Colobus monkey. Actually you could not miss them and we also saw Blue Monkey (or Zanzibar Syke’s Monkey).