Post #7- Mozambique

Hello Everybody,

From the northern Mozambican city of Tete, we endured another two tough days of overland travel before finally making Vilankulos, our first destination. Both of these days saw us wake up at 2:30am for 3am buses. This is the case all over Mozambique, but we’re not sure why. Either way we’re now well over two thousand miles, mostly south, from Moshi.

Entering Vilankulos, we found our hostel to be completely under renovation. The owners didn’t mind if we looked for other accommodation. It’s the absolute dead season for them, and this is the only time they can do repairs/renovations. We scoured the city and found Beach Village, relatively new backpackers next to Baobab Beach, the established party backpackers. Not only was Beach Village much cheaper, it was much nicer. It had a beautiful pool overlooking the beach, where Baobab had neither. To top it off, we happened to roll in the weekend that all Mozambican Peace Corps volunteers rolled into Baobab Beach to party for the weekend. They didn’t stop for forty-eight hours, we heard them, and we were thankful to have the peace of Beach Village. Moyneen, the South African women running the joint, treated us very well. Seeing Peace Corps was a trip. We’ve had relatively few encounters with Americans since leaving Moshi, and all of a sudden we seemed to be plunged stateside back into college. Once they left, however, we had a very relaxing time and enjoyed Vilankulos very much. We ended up staying a week, making several friends, both local and international. We spent a lot of time with Gaia and Ben from Belgium. Gaia is working with Doctors Without Borders in Mozambique while Ben is a lawyer, visiting her for a few weeks. We went with them and a few others to the Bazaruto Archipelago, a beautiful stretch of islands just off the coast. We took a dhow, actually sailing there and back. The snorkelling was terrific, and they cooked us fish for lunch on the boat. It didn’t seen safe to have a fire on a small wooden boat, but somehow they made it work. The beaches on the islands are quite perfect as well, and there are several five-star resorts scattered throughout the archipelago. We didn’t get to see them, they start at about USD600 a night, but it would be a spectacular honeymoon spot for a very rich couple. Back on the mainland, we went to our friend Dave’s house, along with his gf Elsa, for an authentic Mozambican dinner. We sat on the ground around a small fire and ate barracuda with rice and beans. We ended staying until well past midnight just talking, meeting a lot of cool locals. These included Gil, who ran our day trip to the islands, and Genni. Mostly we just relaxed by the pool, read, took walks along the beach, and had drinks with everyone each evening. The only draw back was that we had no hot water, but beggars cannot be choosers.

We only planned on five days in Vilankulos, so after seven we had to move on to Tofo, our other beach destination in MZ. We hitched a ride, again at 4am, with our new friend Genni. She offered us the cab of her pick-up, and we said yes. She supplied a mattress and blanket, so it was fairly luxurious. We were surprised to learn that Mozambique gets rather chilly at night during their cold season. That might sound ridiculous, but we assumed it stayed hot all year round. The temperature was still nice during the day, but we needed our fleeces once the sun went down. Our point is that even with Genni’s blanket, we were still cold moving down the highway at 4am. We were grateful not to deal with public transport for once, and it was pretty cool to add another form of transportation to our list, though we didn’t think that was possible. Once in Tofo, we immediately fell in love with it. We’ve heard it gets rather annoying during the high season, but for us it was perfect. Tofo is a tiny beach town about an hour away from the town of Inhambane. A perfect semi-circle beach provides amazing waves while not being too overpowering. The water itself is completely clear and azure in color. There is fantastic diving just off the coast, and the number of expats assures Tofo plenty of good food. All of this has made Tofo a legendary spot on the East African coast, but as we said, at least during the off-season it’s paradise. We ended up sacrificing the Mozambican capital of Maputo to stay longer, but we feel it was well worth it. We lucked out in getting the nicest bungalow at Fatima’s, our hostel, being directly on the beach. We had a balcony much like the one in Don Det in Laos, except instead of looking over the Mekong, we were looking at a pristine beach and Indian Ocean. We spent five days here, and we needed all five. Unfortunately Shauna got the worst stomach bug either of us has experienced on the entire trip. Some sort of amoeba attacked her insides, and she was in pain, especially after meals, for a full FIVE days. It was not pretty, and we contemplated going to the hospital several times, until we got lucky. Gaia and Ben were in Tofo as well at this point, and Pat went to the full moon party at Dino’s to meet them and say good bye as it was their last night. While there he ran into a Doctors Without Borders doctor, as Gaia was in administration, and she agreed to look at Shauna the following day. True to her word, Sylvia showed up and gave Shauna a personal exam in our bungalow. She concluded it was indeed an amoeba of some sort and not Malaria or anything else more serious. While relieved, it didn’t help Shauna too much for the following three days it lasted. Thankfully she didn’t have to do much but sit in the sun on the beach, staying as close as possible to a bathroom. While Shauna recovered, Pat took the opportunity to finally dive after passing on so many other fantastic spots. The price was incredible, and he couldn’t resist going out to look for the famous whale sharks and manta rays and sting rays of the Mozambican coast. After a refresher course, Pat took three dives over two days, two being deep dives of about one hundred feet. The dives were amazing; the coral was in decent shape, there were too many types of fish to remember, and he saw a white-tipped reef shark and the biggest sting ray found on earth. Alas - no whale sharks, but again - beggars cannot be choosers.

Thankfully Shauna finally felt better the day before we HAD to leave and we booked our bus for 4am the following morning to Maputo. For the first time in almost a year and a half we both slept through the alarm and we missed the bus. Initially we freaked out: we had already booked our bus from Maputo to Jo’burg, South Africa for the next day and our flight to Livingstone, Zambia for the day after that was also finalized. We simply HAD to get to Maputo. Transportation is not easy in Mozambique, and we thought a significant amount of money was wasted because of our mistake. We made Maputo, but instead of a seven hour bus ride we had a thirteen hour day, getting into our hostel at 9pm. It was an extremely long day, but the most important thing was that we arrived. After a quick sleep in Maputo we caught our 7:45am bus to Johannesburg, South Africa. This was another long ride at eight hours, but it was a proper luxury bus, and we realized we forgot what it was like to travel in the west. The bus even had a clean bathroom in it. We are interested to see South Africa in depth. On the one hand, you have buses like ours and proper highways, super markets, fast food chains and everything else every other African nation does not and every Western nation does. On the other you have what you hear about in the news since Apartheid. We realized how strange the nation is once we reached our hostel in what seemed to be an affluent Jo’burg neighbourhood close to the airport. There were ugly shopping centers you would find in any suburban area of the United States, complete with the housing development of what would be upper middle class Americans. At the same time every house was like its own compound, with foreboding walls and pointy fences around it, with ADT posters on them warning of twenty-four hour armed responses. We’ll leave South Africa for a South African blog, but the strangeness could not be ignored.

We had a great night’s sleep in Jo’burg and got on our short flight up to Livingstone, Zambia. Tomorrow, Mother’s Day in the good ole’ US of A, we’ll be visiting one of the seven natural wonders of the world - Victoria Falls. Regardless to say we’re excited. We’ll leave this for our next blog, and for now we would just like to wish our mother’s – Alisa, aka Lupa, and Anne, as well as our living grandmother’s – Winnie and Nanny, a very Happy Mother’s Day. We love you all very much.  

Until next time,

SP