It's actually a miracle we ever made it to Chumbe Island at all. John and I had inadvertently chosen a day during the Tanzanian Elections to visit the sanctuary but in true African fashion, nobody bothered to inform us that there had been political unrest on Zanzibar and that all but one of the one-and-a-half hour long Dar Es Salaam to Zanzibar ferry crossings had been cancelled.

Chumbe Island itself lies - along with her fellow sibling islands - in an Indian Ocean channel between the Tanzanian Coast and Zanzibar.

We had arranged to be at Zanzibar's Mbweni Ruins Hotel slipway by 12.30 p.m. to ensure our seats on the daily crossing to the island, but at exactly that time (I know because I was checking my watch every few minutes!) we were still struggling through the throngs of travellers disembarking at Zanzibar port, desperately trying to find a reliable taxi driver who would violate all speed limits and deliver us to our next port of call.
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Towards the end of the hydrofoil crossing to Zanzibar Island from Dar-es-Salaam, feeling slightly queasy, I stepped out onto the deck for a brief moment, and was momentarily blinded by the brilliance of the turquoise Indian Ocean throwing the rays of the mid-afternoon sun back in my face. Blinking, I saw an island rising out of the waters to starboard, a dazzlingly white lighthouse and a huge palm-thatch roof towering above rocky cliffs and a dark green tangle of forest. It looked like Sydney Opera House on Robinson Crusoe's island.
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