Slipping into Africa by the Backdoor: A Cruise on the Swan Hellenic Diana

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Some travels are a fever dream in which you can’t be sure which parts are real or fantasy.

A cruise through the Seychelles, then to Zanzibar, Lamu, and Mombasa, is that way, except every bit of it is genuine—the giant tortoises, the ancient Portuguese forts, the spontaneous percussion-powered singing sessions at roadside rest stops, the veiled women in narrow-alley markets, the multi-colored angelfish as big as dinner plates.

Whenever I think back on the nearly two-week journey, I recall something fresh. Tall coconut palms whose fringed branches appeared soft enough to sleep on. Red colobus monkeys leaping nimbly from tree to tree, their babes clinging tightly to their mother’s chest.

A dozen Black men in a row, dressed all in white, holding conjoined canes as they swayed and chanted to the incessant rhythms of delirious drummers.

But wait, was this part a dream? I stopped at an idyllic atoll, the second largest coral atoll on earth, to find that rats and cats infested the islands. Or this? I saw the unlikely house where singer Freddie Mercury was born, in a commercial street on Unguja Island, Zanzibar.

Or this? At Lamu, I drank Tusker lager to cool my mouth after eating unexpectedly spicy fries at a waterfront café while a man on the nearby street beat his donkeys with a stick.

Learning the Language

To show respect, I learned some Swahili: Jambo/Hujambo/Sijambo (hello/how are you?/I’m fine). Polepole (slowly, slowly). Asante (thank you). Hakuna matata (no worries). Rafiki (friend). And the word that I heard more than any other: Karibu.

Welcome.

Shoving Off on the Swan Hellenic Diana

The silhouette of the Swan Hellenic Diana, with its distinctive teal hull, may not win any beauty contests, but she’s everything you’d want in a sturdy, luxury expedition ship. The Diana is a polar-class (PC6) vessel, meaning she’s qualified for ice-covered polar expeditions thanks to her hull construction and engine power. Not that we’d be needing such power on this tropical journey.

Our blond Norwegian captain, Svein Rune Strømnes, is a lifelong mariner. When I spoke to him soon after our departure, I asked about the seas we’d sail.

This is a man who knows the ice-choked Arctic like his own backyard, who has sailed often through the treacherous Drake Passage to Antarctica, and who had recently brought the Diana to the Indian Ocean through the Red Sea war zone with a skeleton crew and four armed guards.

Not much bothers him. He waved an arm lazily toward the calm tropical seas all about us. “Here,” he said, with an indulgent smile, “it’s easy sailing.”

When I came aboard the Diana, she was docked in Victoria, the diminutive port capital of the Seychelles, a literal backwater. I’ve sailed on ships as small as 18 passengers and as large as 3,000-plus. The Diana comes in at 196 guests, a sweet spot for adventure travelers.

Marketed as a five-star ship on par with anything Seabourn, Regent Seven Seas, or Silversea has to offer, the Diana and its sister ships Vega and Minerva stand up well to the competition. (The Minerva is currently out of service while ownership issues are sorted out.)

My balcony stateroom, like those on many small upscale cruise ships, had a bedroom that could be curtained off from a generous sitting area with a full-size sofa, coffee table, desk with a fold-up lighted makeup mirror, and a 42-inch TV mounted on the wall with a good selection of English-language news and entertainment channels.

The strange perk that most distinguished the room was the faux fireplace, complete with crackling sounds, near the foot of the bed, which I found charming. I left it “burning” all night and was comforted by its glow whenever the rolling ocean woke me in the darkened after-hours.

Into the Outer Islands

The Seychelles, some 1,200 miles east of Kenya, is an archipelago of 115 islands, split between the mountainous Mahé group and the four flat coral groups called the Outer Islands. The vast majority of the Seychelles’ 120,000 residents live in the first group (on Mahé, Praslin, and Le Digue), while the Outer Islands are largely uninhabited.

The Seychelles Outer Islands are among the most pristine lands on earth. The outer islands and atolls are so remote and waterless that no one would choose to live there. But for sheer tropical beauty, a traveler could hardly find a place with such heart-stopping lushness, thanks to the November-April rainy season.

The expedition plan was to anchor offshore of these islands and bring in the passengers for snorkeling via Zodiacs. (Technically, we never actually anchored. Instead, the ship’s Dynamic Positioning System allowed the Diana to remain in place without using an anchor, which might damage the sea bed.)

Our first call was at a skerry called Bijoutier, so minuscule you could circumnavigate the entire islet by foot in less than 15 minutes. For centuries, schooners would sail from island to island, collecting tortoiseshell, coconuts, green sea snails, guano, and dried sea cucumbers. The rare visitor today is more interested in snorkeling than in collecting bird poop.

Assumption Island, with its uninterrupted miles of white-sand beach backed by coconut palms, gave us our best snorkeling. The fish-rich coral reef lay less than 50 yards from shore, the perfect snorkeling venue for less-than-strong swimmers.

Off Astove Island, in the same island group, we snorkeled a half-mile from shore alongside sea turtles, wrasses, surgeonfish, and groupers.

While deep-water snorkeling, our group was nearly surrounded by expedition team members in Zodiacs, ready to rush to our sides and bring us aboard if we were tired or (as, fortunately, didn’t happen) in trouble.

Some snorkelers swam in their bathing suits; the less certain among us wore lime-green life vests to stay comfortably afloat.

Abracadabra: Magical Aldabra

The highlight of the Outer Islands, though, was Aldabra Atoll, so ecologically rich in wildlife and vegetation that it was named a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve in 1982. The atoll, comprising 13 islands surrounding an ice-blue lagoon, is a marvel of fauna and plant life.

Chief among its distinctions, Aldabra is home to the world’s largest group of giant tortoises, more than 100,000 of them. Aldabran drongos and pink flamingos, green turtles and hawksbill turtles, manta rays and tiger sharks, geckos and skinks, and an abundance of flowering plants, coconut palms, and countless seabirds all make their home on Aldabra.

We made a wet landing on Aldabra that afternoon, sliding off the rails of our Zodiacs into 18 or so inches of water. We were met by a handsome Frenchman, Martin Cagnato, who was a research volunteer. “I just help a bit the team,” he said modestly.

As he led us on a hike, Martin pointed out giant tortoises, spiders the size of my outspread hand, scores of bird species (Malagasy coucals, white-throated rails, frigatebirds, red-footed boobies), and coconut crabs so big they could steal lunch off your table when you weren’t looking.

“One day I was sleeping and heard a noise,” Martin recalled. “One of the coconut crabs had my shoe and was taking it to his nest. They’ll take water bottles, clothing, anything. It’s terrible!”

Before we returned to our Zodiacs, I gazed across the ocean toward Assumption Island, just 16 miles from where I stood. A Qatari developer planned to build a 37-villa resort (to be managed by the Rosewood Resorts Group) with four restaurants, support structures, and housing for some 300 employees.

The resort would take up five percent of the entire island. The existing, little-used airport runway has been extended so that a range of private aircraft can land there.

Then I looked behind me at the protected shores and waters of Aldabra Atoll, one of the most uncontaminated places on the planet. Really, I thought. You can’t find another spot in the entire Indian Ocean for your resort? The plan has yet to be approved by the Seychelles government (as of November 2024).

A Day at Sea

There are three main components to a day at sea (as we had after our stop at Aldabra): the public spaces, the meals, and the other guests. Fortunately, the Diana ranked high in all those.

Deck 7 (of the nine-deck ship) was the hub of daily activity. A small but functional infinity-edge swimming pool aft of the ship anchored the Pool Bar and Grill, which was especially popular at lunch. The Grill had a simple menu: Think burgers, shrimp skewers, pizza, sandwiches, and whatever fresh fish was caught that day.

The adjacent Club Lounge was attractive to sleepy heads because it served a light breakfast until 11 a.m., followed by a help-yourself buffet at lunch.

Dinner was served in the Swan Restaurant on Deck 4, usually with at least three main-course options (like surf and turf, herb-crusted rack of lamb, and maple-glazed salmon) and at least one meatless entrée each night (grilled aubergine with miso, chili oil, and garlic or risotto Barbabietola with beetroot puree and gorgonzola cheese, for just two examples).

Rounding out the main public areas was the Wellness Center on Deck 8 with a small spa, hair salon, and a gym with wide-open ocean views. There’s also a hot tub just outside the spa zone where you would often find me, soaking, with a glass of Pinot Grigio near at hand.

Swan Hellenic is an all-inclusive line. Alcohol, gratuities, and most excursions are included in the fare. As a result, wine, beer, and cocktails flowed generously throughout much of the day and into the evening. But make no mistake: the upscale passengers were anything but a party crowd.

Skewing older (mainly fifties through seventies), they were as a whole curious, educated, successful, jovial, and highly social people. I had drinks and/or dinner with different people nearly every night.

After the evening meal, most guests gathered in the living-room-like Observation Lounge for postprandial cocktails and to hear the piano stylings of Emilio Madrona, who has a repertoire of more than 600 popular songs, from Sixties and Seventies classics to today’s hits.

By 11 p.m., almost everyone was back in their staterooms, trying to figure out how to turn off their faux fireplaces.

Next Stop: Zanzibar

There are a handful of destinations that will make your neighbors drop their jaws and say in awe, “You actually went there?!” Timbuktu. Machu Picchu. Easter Island. Samarkand.

And Zanzibar.

Vasco da Gama called here. David Livingstone fought the slave trade here. Zanzibar is at the heart of the Swahili Coast. Its very name, spoken aloud, washes over a traveler’s soul like a warm bath.

I awoke before sun-up so I could stand on my balcony for our arrival at Zanzibar, the archipelago whose name is the zan in Tanzania. (Tanganyika and Zanzibar united to form the nation of Tanzania in 1964 after the British left peacefully and the Sultanate of Zanzibar was violently overthrown.)

Filling the harbor were scores of small vessels: wherries, two-man wooden fishing boats, traditional dhows, leaky open-deck ferries, and more.

On our arrival, a group of drummers, reed-horn players, and energetic dancers entertained us on the dock even before the first passenger disembarked. (This became common in the ports that followed: Pemba Island, Lamu, and Mombasa.)

Stone Town

Stone Town, the island’s original settlement, was within walking distance of our berth and is the heart of Zanzibar. Its name comes from the primary building material, coral stone. But its magic comes from the people and their history.

Stone Town is the stuff of dreams. Women in their colorful ankle-length cotton-cloth kanga dresses walked side by side with men in their white gowns called kanzus. I was especially struck by the variety of headdresses of the Muslim women.

Some wore a simple hijab, little more than a scarf draped over the head and around the neck and leaving the face clear. Some wore a chador, an ankle-length gown that drapes over the head but may or may not cover the face.

Others preferred a jilbab, which sits on the head and fits snugly around the face like a snood. There were even differences among the veils, or burqas, used by especially modest women. The most common was the Omani-style veil that goes almost up to the eyes.

There was so much to take in! Doors were built by Muslims in the Arabic style and by Hindus in the Indian style, the latter complete with brass studs to repel elephants, despite the fact that there were no elephants in Zanzibar.

The Old Fort, built by the Omani Arabs after they expelled the Portuguese in 1699, loomed over the seafront and still looked menacing. The fruit, meat, and fish market, where blood dripped onto the walkways, and red bananas hung in bunches, was a festival of the senses.

I even accidentally passed by the gracious white house, where singer Freddie Mercury was born in 1946, when his father was stationed here for work.

A Haunting Glimpse into Zanzibar’s Slave Trade History

But the single memory that will forever stand out was the underground slave quarters. Zanzibar was the center of East Africa’s slave trade, operated by Arabs, Europeans, Indians, and the coastal Africans themselves. Even successful slaves were able to buy their own slaves. There’s plenty of blame to spread around.

Hundreds of thousands of victims passed through the slave market in Stone Town over decades. Although the morbid trading center has since been torn down and replaced by a church, two dark subterranean rooms remain as a testament to the horrors suffered by the captives.

I went inside one of the dank cells, where chains were still anchored to the stone floor.

The sweatbox was barely high enough for a man to stand without bending his neck. It was a tiny, hot, tight space into which hundreds of terrified people were jammed at a time until being dragged into the harsh sunlight and auctioned off to the highest bidder in the beastly bourse of the enslaved.

Although the Omani Arabs who ruled Zanzibar outlawed slavery in 1873, the trade continued, with a wink and a nod, until 1909.

Flying Foxes, a Call at Lamu, and a Step Back in Time

The island most people know as Zanzibar is formally called Unguja, the capital of the autonomous archipelago properly called Zanzibar. One of the larger sister islands is Pemba, known primarily for its huge forest bats whose heads resemble that of a fox—and thus the name flying foxes.

With wingspans up to five feet and weighing as much as a full pound, these are substantial animals. I was glad to learn that they eat little more than fruit.

Frankly, the bats creeped me out. Not a fan of bats. And to see hundreds of them hanging upside down in upas trees in the forests of Pemba’s Kidike Flying Fox Sanctuary was, to me, like staring into a barrelful of rats. You can have ’em.

A group of us from the Diana were led through the Pemba forest while a guide’s assistant made loud clapping noises to disturb the bats from their daytime rest, causing them to fly en masse over our heads.

“If I get a pee-pee from the Pemba flying fox,” said my guide, Omar, “I am so lucky! We really believe that.” And since Omar was raised in nearby Mjini Ole village, I had no reason to doubt him. I’m thrilled to say, though, that I had no luck that afternoon.

Far more than flying foxes (and the delightful Zanzabari children who came out to greet us, insisting on shaking hands with everyone), I was eager for our next port of call.

The Island of Lamu

Lamu (accent on the first syllable) is an island off the coast of Kenya, but so removed that the only way to visit there until about 50 or 60 years ago was by dhow.

The result was a lack of development, an unintentional conservation of its photogenic buildings, and the preservation of a deep cultural heritage that went unchanged for centuries.

Today, it is the best-preserved Swahili settlement in East Africa. The architecture is largely made of coral stone or wattle-and-daub plastered over mangrove poles. There are no cars on Lamu because the streets aren’t wide enough to support them.

You’ll find plenty of motor scooters, but the primary method of transporting goods is probably standing right next to you: donkeys.

A Grand Arrival: Welcomed with Tradition

The Diana positioned itself well offshore because Lamu’s dock was barely large enough to support a cabin cruiser, let alone a cruise ship. We motored into port via the ship’s enclosed tenders, pulling up to the dock where the locals welcomed us with coconuts and pastries.

A group of men all in white danced an age-old step against the rhythms of a percussion band shaking rattles and pounding goatskin-head drums. At the landside end of the pier was an archway to the town that proudly proclaimed the island’s UNESCO designation.

Unexpectedly, the town had literally laid out a red carpet for our arrival. I prefer to arrive almost anywhere without making a splash. The red carpet, the refreshments, the musicians and dancers, it was all too much.

But the people of Lamu were authentically pleased by our visit. Cruise ship passengers debarking here are all too rare. The locals would like to see more (and, of course, more of their money).

Lamu Island, population 25,000, is an increasingly popular tourist site, yet it received only 47,000 visitors in 2023. (For comparison, Key West, Florida, has a similar population and gets more than 10,000 tourists per day.) Put it this way: Lamu is delighted that you are coming to visit.

People on the skinny dirt streets seemed glad to see me. “White man!” they called in English with a smile. “Mzungu” (which means “white man” in Swahili). Thanks to my gray beard, dozens of them called me “Baba” (father).

“Jambo, Baba!” “Karibu, Baba.”

I was led through the streets by a local man named Nsuo. In Government Square, there was a stone-walled movie screen on the side of a building, where the national news was broadcast each evening for those who didn’t have their own TV.

Across the plaza was the ochre-colored 17th-century Portuguese fort from whose battlements I could gaze across the rooftops of Lamu to the turquoise ocean. We passed the green-domed Riyadha mosque and Islamic Center. “Very important,” said Nsuo. “People come from all over Africa to study here.”

The Donkeys of Lamu

But the Lamu memory I’ll carry with me more than any other is the donkeys. They are beasts of burden in the truest sense and not in a good way. Everywhere you turn, there’s a donkey loaded down with sacks of grain, bricks, or sand.

When they aren’t lugging heavy cargo, they’re being ridden by their masters through the streets, sidesaddle. In one back alley, with walls so high on either side the sun never penetrated, I was rushed by a half-dozen donkeys burdened with bricks and their master riding a seventh.

The alleyway was so narrow there was no way they could have passed me until I leaped into a recessed doorway and let them canter by.

Everyone with a donkey beats their animals with a stick. It’s the animal-owning equivalent of a verbal tic: Own a donkey, beat it with a stick without even thinking about it. I visited a donkey hospital and had a good idea why many of the poor brutes were there.

A Day of Contrasts

I finished my ambles through Lamu at a harborside restaurant, where I ate chips masala (very hot french fries) and drank a large Tusker lager. On the waterfront, just beyond the terrace where I drank my beer, a man beat his donkey with a stick.

What could I say or do? I couldn’t reverse centuries of mistreatment in an afternoon. From a nearby minaret, a muezzin, sounding angry, called the faithful to prayer.

Back on the tender, returning to the Diana, I began to doubt my memory. Did that really happen?! Did I really see what I thought I saw?

After a sauna on the ship, a shower, and a change into fresh clothes, I sashayed over to the bar in the Observation Lounge, where I ordered a martini (gin, very dry, three olives) and chatted with some of my fellow passengers.

Then it occurred to me: Over a handful of hours that day, I had traveled from 2024 to 1624 and back again. I began to doubt my sanity.

Good-bye to the Diana in Mombasa

I adventured through Mombasa, our final port, on my own. What a chaotic place! Thousands of tuk-tuks hammered through the narrow roads of the Old City. The aromas, the odors, were almost more present than visual stimuli, of which there were plenty.

The crowds could be so dense as to be unnerving. I found myself walking down a narrow lane that grew narrower, with fewer people and darker corners, until my travel radar started pinging like a teenager’s cellphone. I shouldn’t be here!

There have been reports of tourist robberies in Mombasa, but they’ve occurred mainly at night in places where you shouldn’t go. I felt safe, especially when the Mombasans greeted me with wide smiles and friendly eyes.

Yes, I would miss the comforts of the Swan Hellenic Diana. I’d regret not having more time for supper conversations with my erudite and charming fellow passengers. But here in Mombasa, I was reveling in my final exotic place before my long flights home.

And besides, how can you feel anything other than acute joy when a stranger greets you on the streets of Old Mombasa with a gracious, “Jambo, Baba! Karibu.”

I looked at the man and smiled in return. “Sijambo,” I replied, returning his smile. “Asante!”

The Swan Hellenic Diana sails an eclectic itinerary ranging from the Arctic to the Antarctic, mainly keeping to the Eastern Hemisphere (U.K., Mediterranean, Africa), but rarely calling at any one port more than a few times a year. Other cruise lines that sail on the Seychelles-Mombasa route or similar include Crystal, Norwegian Cruise Line, Seabourn, and Ponant.

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Author Bio: Mark Orwoll is a veteran journalist and freelance travel writer. His memoir, “Just One Little Hitch” (Pleasant Villain Press, November 2024), recalls the glory days of hippie hitchhiking in Europe and Morocco in the 1970s. Orwoll was on the staff of Travel + Leisure for 30 years, where he was the International Editor.