DAY 210: A German ex-pat named Thomas living and doing PhD. research in the other main Zanzibar island of Pemba was sitting in the back seat of a minivan. With him was only his visiting friend Volker from their hometown of Heidelburg, until I arrived. The three of us had signed up for the Dolphin Tour from different tour agencies, but it being the low season, we had been pooled together for efficiency. Our driver and guide drove us to the south east of Unguja Island for the beginning of a day full of Dolphins, Monkeys and Queen.

Our destination was the shore town of Kizimkazi, where local boat captains took the passengers of minivans from the city on their vessels around the bay to search for dolphins so that clients could jump in and swim in with them and re-enact their favorite scenes of Flipper. After the 90-minute drive, Thomas, Volker and I rented snorkeling gear from local boys for about three bucks and then walked out to the ocean, wading the shallow waters alongside fishermen and little children, wary of sea urchin spines on the ocean bed. We boarded a motor-powered wooden boat, which someone had cleverly handwritten "Jumbo Jet 747," and took off passed the dhows.

I don't quite remember the name of our boat guide. All I do remember was that he was a friendly guy who had elephantiasis in his right leg and foot. (How could you forget that?) It didn't inhibit him from steering the boat around the bay, and we were in good hands at least. He told us that it could take anywhere from fifteen minutes to an hour before we'd find any dolphins. Half an hour went by and there was nothing -- nothing but other similar wooden boats looking for the same thing. Another half hour went by and a sighting of dorsal fins had been found by one of the other boats, causing our boat and the four others to go rush over.

Keeping track of the school of eight dolphins was hard to do because this particular one wasn't as playful as the ones you might have seen at Sea World. These wild dolphins just swam about their own business, the business of diving for food and coming up for air in a slow but rhythmic pattern. They really didn't interact with the boats or its passengers, probably because the novelty of seeing them wore off years ago when the Dolphin Tour was popularized.

"Go there, there are right there!" The Friendly Elephantitis Man told us. Thomas, Volker and I put on our snorkels, masks and flippers and jumped in to see the other "flippers." There were ten other snorkelers from the other boats swimming towards the school (picture above).

Ascend. Breathe. Descend. Ascend. Breathe. The pattern went on and on for the marine mammals, although it was hard to follow their actual path when they were submerged for minutes at a time. After one breathe sighting, they'd disappear and then reappear in a different location like a Whack-A-Mole game. And when they did appear, they were far faster than any swimmer.

"It's impossible to keep up with them," one guy said.

No one person could keep up with the dolphins' undulating pattern, but everyone, including myself, at least got to swim behind them as they came up for air and above them as they were submerged. From near the surface, the shadows of the eight creatures looked like a squadron of fighter planes without wings.

AFTER LUNCH BACK ON SHORE, our driver took us to the Jozani Forest, a national park on the way back to Stone Town. Although not a part of the Dolphin Tour, drivers stop here for anyone wishing to pay the TSh 8000 park fee to see the rainforest's main attraction: the rare red colobus monkey. All three of us with our cameras plunked down the TSh 24,000 and a park ranger guide took us around.

I don't quite remember the name of our forest guide. And he didn't have elephantiasis either. He led us on the main trail through the Jozani Forest, a relatively new forest with trees only about fifty years old since it had been planted after the area had been once cleared for a village. The forest now inhabits the land with a variety of species of palm and ficus trees, and it is the young leaves of these trees that attract the big groups of feisty red colobus monkeys that weren't hard to find at all. Our guide took us to one section of the trail where the rustling of leaves was heard almost as soon as we arrived. Suddenly, one by one, red colobus monkeys jumped from tree to tree like little 18-inch trapeeze artists. One monkey even looked like he was doing a countdown in his head: "Okay, you can do this. One... Two... Three.. JUMP!"

We spent a good half hour with the monkeys as they jumped from branch to branch around us, climbing up and down trees to feed on the leaves. After a while it got to be a little tiresome -- even with the female with the saggy nipples -- and we went off to see the mangroves on the otherside of the forest. Our guide showed us the slender seeds of mangrove trees, which had a strikingly similar shape to saggy colobus nipples, and planted them into the swampy water for another generation to be born.

I FELL ASLEEP in the van. When I woke up we were back at my stop in Stone Town and I groggily walked back to the Jambo Guesthouse. When I got my bearing, I wandered to the otherside of town meet Thomas and Volker for cocktails and bumped into Willie on the main tourist alley. He was on his way home from work, but I asked him if I could book a Spice Tour the next day anyway, which he was happy to do. No longer would I wait for Yvonne (from Nkhata Bay, Malawi and Arusha) or Philippa and Alyson (from Moshi) to arrive in Stone Town; I had e-mailed them all before to see if they were interested in the toor, only I hadn't gotten a reply, nor knew when exactly their party was to arrive in Stone Town.

Sorting out the tour delayed me from my meeting with the Germans at the Africa House terrace at sunset, but I managed to find him upstairs at the restaurant, where I joined them for dinner; the food wasn't as expensive as I thought it would be. Afterwards we decided to have drinks at the haunt of most travelers and every diehard Queen fan in the world: Mercury's, named after lead singer Freddie Mercury who had been born and raised in Zanzibar until about the age of nine. Mercury's was fairly empty since it was the low season; only a handful of people were sitting scattered across the establishment on an outdoor deck near the ferry port. The Germans and I sat at a table overlooking the candles someone had laid out on the beach nearby and drank under the stars and talked about travelly things. On the speakers, it was all Queen, all the time and I could have sang along if I felt like it -- but I think the still vivid image of elephantiasis of the leg was occupying my mind.