This would be my 21st flight in less than two months, and I was hoping would be my last for a while, possibly until I depart Africa. On approach to Inhambane, the plane was bouncing around a lot in the strong wind. Normally this calms down when you get pretty close to the ground, as the ground exerts some resistance on the wind, and trees etc also block some of the wind strength. There was no ground effect this day, and even at 5m above the tarmac, we were bouncing up and down, as well as side to side. I found that I was once again sitting next to a nervous woman, but unlike the go around when I was heading to Comoros, this time I could tel l by the manic grip she had on the head rest of the seat in front of her, that the only thing which would calm this woman down was being on the deck, and coming safely to a complete stop.
Even being on the runway didn't really improve matters, as it wasn't the smoothest runway I've seen, and the wind was still relentless, and the plane continued to jink and bounce in all directions until we finally did actually come safely to a complete stop. I was glad the woman chose the head rest to grip, and not say, my arm or something. I suspect that the headrest may have permanently been indented with impressions from her grip.
After the hassles of Comoros and Madagascar, I felt I was prepared for anything. Entry to Mozambique simply required patience, I was back to the usual african version of doing things, eventually, slowly, very, very, slowly.
After a short taxi ride and I was in Tofo, and checking into Bamboozi.
My friend Rupert had stayed at Bamboozi when he was passing through Africa, and recommended I stay there. It didn't quite meet expectations, as when he was there it was only 1-2 years old, and approx. 10 years on, it had seen better years, 10 of them in fact, and parts of it were bordering on falling into disrepair.
Actually that picture is of what was once a dive centre attached to the backpackers, but when Bamboozi was bought out a few years earlier the dive shop moved into town. I think that the dive centre was struggling with business being 2km out of town, but I also heard that the dive shop managers just didn't really like the new owners too much. So the old shop was just abandoned.
The rest of the place certainly needed some maintenance work, but was not in such dire risk of collapsing in on itself. My hut is the one on the left behind the palm tree.
Speaking of palm trees, my advice for spending time at Bamboozi, is to beware falling coconuts!!! I saw and heard plenty of them hit the ground. Once an entire branch fell, which dropped 11 coconuts at once, it sounded like a couple of cannons.
I still enjoyed my stay, and within a couple of hours had been upgraded to my own private grass hut, with a double bed, and 50% discount, without even asking. I found out later that with my hut I even got my very own resident rat.
My plans to help Jess with her research didn't last long, her project is about working with the community to stop spearfishing / hunting of turtles, rather than monitoring of nesting turtles, which is the type of turtle work I am familiar with. There is almost no nesting along that stretch of coast, but plenty of turtles live on the reef nearby, and occasionally seem to be hunted. This seems to be opportunistic and likely after an unsuccessful session to spear fish, and well, there is that turtle over there, and I need to feed my family ... You get the idea. So among many many things, I don't want to simplify what she is trying to do in a couple of lines, but one of Jess's focus areas is to understand why turtles are hunted, and try and educate the locals about their importance to prevent it.
I met a number of other marine biologists there too. The reef near Tofo is one of the few places in the world that Manta Rays (both species, reef and giant mantas), and Whale Sharks are in the area for most of the year. Most places in the world they only turn up for a few weeks or months for specific feeding events when coral, crab, fish spawning events mean there is vast amounts of oil / protein / nutrient rich plankton in the water.
I think that the special nature of Tofo is a combination of warm water coming down the coast within the Mozambique channel, and cooler nutrient rich water upwelling from the ocean depths as ocean currents converge around Madagascar and South Africa. I could of course be utterly wrong with that theory.
So after a few days of kicking back and relaxing on the beach, and a bit of running and swimming, I decided to sign up for some scuba diving.
I would definitely recommend Peri-Peri divers to anyone going there, and a special mention to Frida the dive instructor who loves her job so much she never takes time off in case she misses out on a good dive, and makes every visit to the blue a huge amount of fun.
On my first dive I had a giant manta swim a metre over my head, and between all my dives I saw about 8 mantas, leopard sharks, reef sharks, turtles, moray eels, loads and loads of fish, a group of 17 mobula 'devil' rays, and on a snorkelling trip a chance to swim alongside a whale shark a couple of times. Unfortunately despite how cool Frida makes the signal during the briefing, I did not get to see a Bow Mouth Guitar Shark.
Unfortunately I don't have photos of this, because I don't have a camera for diving with me. However if you are on facebook, look up Peri-Peri Divers, and check out their photo album, you may need to request to be friends if you can't view the photos (it's not a fan page you can just like). I hold no responsibility for any avid divers losing their jobs because they spend then next 4 hours looking at diving pics, but I guarantee you will enjoy the photos there.
I would happily have spent all day every day diving, however as a long term traveller, I need to be sensible about my spending, and so after an awesome week of diving I had to stop. I had seen almost everything the area had to offer, and yes I would have loved to see more of it, but there wasn't anything specific (i.e. Whale Shark) that I still needed to see.
Before leaving Tofo I went for a long walk to visit the memorial built to celebrate their independence from Portugal. It looked as worn down as the country was after the next 25 years spent in brutal civil war.
There are still places in Mozambique with land mines from the war, and for a time they knew pretty much where they should avoid. Then in 2000 severe flooding (the worst flood in 50 years) in the southern half of the country killed about 800 people, and also softened the soil, and the plastic cased land mines floated and found new places to settle down as the floods receded. Following the floods there was a period of terrible injuries caused by mines in places that were previously safe. Like other countries I have been to previously with lots of land mines left over from old conflicts, such as Cambodia, there are international programs for removing the mines, but it is slow, tedious, and incredibly dangerous work, and will take many, many more years to complete, especially in Mozambique where they don't know where many of them ended up after the floods. At the time of writing this, southern Mozambique is again experiencing severe flooding caused by the remnants of a tropical cyclone.
The time eventually came to leave Tofo and head south towards my next destinations, Swaziland and Sth Africa. The bus to Maputo was leaving at 4am, requiring me to be up at 3:15am, as it took 20mins to hike to where the bus was leaving from.
After many hours of being squished into the back seat of the bus, the journey came to a sudden jolting stop. This is not what you should do to a bus, at least not one you like, and wish to remain a functioning bus.
What happened was that there was a truck in front of us slowing down, and our drivers first action was to try and overtake. As he pulled out he realised that the truck in front of us was part of a much longer line of vehicles coming to a halt behind a truck broken down which was blocking our direction of travel. There was also a truck coming the other way, as he swerved back our driver realised that he now could not stop in time to avoid running up the back of the truck in front of us, so he continued moving to the left to go around the outside and stop on the road verge.
Unfortunately to prevent vehicles going over the embankment, there were concrete blocks along the side of the road, which had only just started (if you look at the first picture we hit about the 7th block). As we bounced and crunched over this block I could feel and hear that something under the vehicle was no longer capable of performing its job description, and as I looked up and saw an embankment dropping away to my left and a really solid tree, I just hoped that it wasn't the steering that had just been destroyed. Fortunately the steering was OK, we were able to straighten up, get passed the tree and then turn safely down the hill and come to a stop. The engine was still running, but looking at the mess behind us, it would soon seize due to lack of oil if it wasn't switched off. The driver killed the engine (again, pardon the pun), but I suspect that it would likely be beyond repair anyway.
We were then taken the last stretch to our destination in a minibus taxi at no cost to us, the ticket guy from our previous bus paid up, amazingly, but at considerable cost to the driver of the taxi. He was pulled over twice by the police on the way into Maputo, I guess he must of bribed the first cop, but the second one went over his dodgy papers thoroughly and he ended up being fined about 1.5 times the money he'd been paid for collecting us.
After the accident I got to know some of the other backpackers from the bus and found a german couple who had a car at the Sth African border and were going to Swaziland, and were more than happy to give me a lift. We then convinced the driver of the coach to Jo'burg to get us to the border for 40% the asking price. This worked because we were never issued tickets, and the money went straight into his pocket.
We spent the night at a backpackers only a short distance south of Kruger Park, but I'd already been there, and the next day we were off to Swaziland.
