Paradise lost: when a dream adventure turns into a holiday in hell
As she surveyed the white beaches on the palm-fringed shore she thought she had landed in paradise.
A little over 24 hours later, she lay on the ground of her campsite, writhing in agony as a bullet tore through her back just inches from her spine.
Eighteen-year-old Grace was among a group of 24 volunteers who had each paid stg£2,000 (E3,000) for a marine conservation trip. It was to be part of their broader education before going to university.
What the organisers, Frontier Travel, had not mentioned was that the islands off Tanzania are a haven for pirates who attack boats, volunteer campsites and holiday huts of westerners looking for adventure.
As the teenagers lay around a campfire eating and chatting, heavily armed bandits swept through the campsite wielding pistols, kicking over kerosene lamps and ordering the group to lie on the ground.
"I heard a shot like an explosion and literally felt the blood running through me," Grace said.
Brandishing pistols and machetes, the seven pirates beat the male volunteers with the handles of their weapons and then stripped girls of their trousers and threatened to rape them. After an hour of torture, the bandits left, having robbed the students of their money and valuables.
The volunteers consider themselves lucky to have escaped with their lives.
Like many Irish and British teenagers, Grace, from Cambridgeshire in England, wanted to do something different before going to college. Every year thousands of 18-year-olds from Ireland and Britain go to volunteer in parts of the world where more seasoned travelers would fear to tread.
The travel website for USIT, the union of students in Ireland, even offers a safari trip to East Africa, including "time for relaxation with three days on the tropical island of Zanzibar" which lies to the north of Pemba where Grace and her friends were brutally attacked.
The Department of Foreign Affairs has issued guidelines for travel safety. However, a spokesman said yesterday that while they kept abreast of changing circumstances in danger areas, they had to be careful of advising against going to a particular country. Their main advice to adventurers was to be sensible and tell friends and family where you are going.
Frightening attacks on travellers are enough to make anyone think twice about venturing far from home, particularly to destinations with dangerous reputations. But while a certain amount of risk is inherent in travel, experts say it's no reason to stifle that wanderlust.
"People are terrified about a lot of things that will never happen to them," said Robert Young Pelton, author of The World's Most Dangerous Places and Come Back Alive. Pelton has written a number of books on travelling in dangerous places and his hard-won experience came in handy last year.
In January 2003 Pelton and two hiking companions were kidnapped by right-wing Colombian paramilitaries in the Darién Gap a lawless jungle along the Panama-Colombia border. After 10 nervous days, they were released unharmed. "The Darién Gap used to be sort of an Everest of backpacking one of the world's last wild places. But in the last five years it's become a no-go zone," he said. "Rebels, criminals, thorns, wasps, snakes you name it, everything that's bad for you is in there. Which, of course, is what attracted me." However, he had taken the precaution of informing colleagues and friends of his movements and even sent emails to the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, FARC left-wing guerrillas.
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