DAY 61 - Minibus market study vol 3 - Mozambique edition.
First of all, the minibuses are bigger. Then, at the bus station itself, there's a well furnished Supermarket and it even comes into the minibus to simplify your shopping. They also take car of packages delivery but they come better packaged than in Ethiopia. We leave at 6am for about 500km of fun. The road is very good and we hardly believe it when the gps tells us we're going at 100 km/h. Our enthusiasm is dampened when we come across a scary accident. It looks like it happen less than an hour ago. A small truck carrying oranges is interlocked with a big trailer truck lying on its side in the middle of the road. The oranges are scattered all over the place, adding to the drama. We got used to it in Madagascar and it's the same here, the police stops all the time. Officially to check the papers of the bus but I suspect they're looking for the smallest non-compliance to get a bribe.
Inhambane is beautiful beach town, clean and much better kept than the capital. It's on a peninsula and we have a hotel by the sea. It's low tide and the water withdrew so much I feel like I'm in Normandy. The tides are big here and the bottom of the sea is a very gentle slope. A surprising sight is to see trees growing on the sand. The region is special, when Vasco de Gama arrived here in 1498 he was welcomed and helped. That tradition of hospitality continued to this day, keeping the name "terra da boa gente" (Land of good people) true. There was a text about why it's quiet and peaceful in one of the restaurant, very moving. We don't miss the sunset on the beach since the town is facing West.
DAY 62
We stroll around town to and from breakfast then take a "chapa" to Tofo. It's a minibus of the same kind of the ones we had in Ethiopia. We are 25 in it, as much as yesterday and it's twice as small! Hopefully it's just one hour away. Before talking over our new home in Tofinho for the next 8 days (yeah! No more moving around every other day), we do some serious groceries shopping (yeah! We can cook for ourselves) in Tofo. The sun is setting behind the dunes when we hit the beach.
DAY 63-70
To summarize, it was awesome ;) To have a house 2 min away from the beach where you can see the whales from the patio, where the fishermen come in the morning to your doorstep to sell their catch of the day (Mar is having fun haggling with them in Portuguese; I understand most of it but I talk to them in Spanish... Which works)... It's heaven. Everyone is chill and friendly. Even the dogs come say hello on the beach and hang out with you a while, happy to ply with you but happy to just hang out too. Even the rain we had was not a bother. It felt so good to have a home again, even if only for a week. Our only concern was to decide what to buy from the fisherman. We went for spiny lobsters, a 5kg fish who was enough for two meals and a fish soup and large shrimps (or prawns or gambas... All the different language use very confusing words, borrowed from each other to name all the different kinds and sizes of shrimps). And to alternate, we had a barbecue to grill some steaks and sausage... Tough life! Once food was ready, we would sit on the patio, facing the sea, with the binoculars handy and watch the festival of tails, flippers and breaches brought to us by the big whale community hanging out offshore... Tough life I said. The only annoyance was the lack of an ATM in town. The closest one is 5km away on the road to Inhambane. It does not make any sense but that's where they put it. We were lucky though because we could hitch a hike back to town.
Another reason this place is heaven is its diving and we were ready to talk advantage of it. After all the gopro had been sitting in the bag for a while now and was eager for some action. I started by familiarizing myself with it since it's impractical to start reading the manual underwater, except it wouldn't turn on. Thinking the battery was discharged, I left it to charge all night. The following morning it wouldn't turn on either. So much for underwater photography. Maybe it's a defective battery... But I should have known better. In IT we know the majority of the problems don't come from the machine but from the user. It was no different here. There's only 3 buttons on the gopro and I was not using the right one to turn it on... Brain fart! The first time we were scheduled for diving was canceled due to bad sea conditions but we could go the next day. Our first go was what they call an ocean safari. It's a snorkeling expedition to swim with whale sharks and manta rays. We got many whale sharks and no manta rays. It's impressive to swim along these huge but peaceful creatures. They are beautiful. We even had a couple of Dolphins showing up on our way back. Back to the shop, we gear up for the shallow dive and went to the site - Marble Archs. We have a close encounter with two whales on the way there. They were 10-15 away from the boat and dove under us slowly. It was a mother and her baby. It's too dangerous to snorkel with them that time of the year because of that. You wouldn't want to find yourself in between a whale and its child. The dive was very nice. An interesting landscape with canyons and tunnels and a boatload of marine life. My favorite were the lion fish. Learning from my mistake, I changed the way I used the gopro and took only picture this time. The video of the whale sharks were all badly framed :( on our way up, we could hear the whales singing... Except I heard nothing, I take Mar's word for it ;)
(That's all I could salvage from the disastrous video...shamefull)
The next day was time for us to do our first adventure dive. All the interesting sites here require a deep dive (30m). We prepared for the mini-exam the night before and passed it easily. Today's site is called Giant's castle. It's just the two of us and a bunch of people getting their dive master certificate. It's their last dive so they wear pajamas on top of their wet-suit. Don't ask me why, I'm just in charge of talking pictures of this funny lot. Once down there we pass the underwater counting test too. The goal is to figure out if the depth is messing with our brains. But we felt nothing funky and were still able to do simple math. We were expecting to see manta rays on that site but they seem to be hiding from us. Sad but we had plenty of Lobsters, lion fish, morays, potato grouper, and so many more. On the way up we spot two Dolphins in the distance and a shade that we'll learn later, back on the boat, was a whale. The nasty Jellyfish are waiting for us in the shallow water and manage to sting the few pieces of skin exposed... Bastards! During the safety stop at 5m, the students have a banana and it's already the end of the dive. My photography technique underwater with the GoPro improved drastically after that embarrassing failure with the whale sharks. It'd be tempting to get a real underwater camera after that... ;)