End of the Road

After a nice 7-8 hours of taking bus - boat - minibus combo up north from Tofo we'd end up in Vilanculos, the main tourism destination in the country, and got to be with a backpacker crowd again at the awesome Baobab Beach Backpackers camp. We got a nice hut right at the beach and just mingled with the people for days before embarking on our first diving trip to the local main site 2 Mile Reef. Slight improvement over Tofo in visibility, the reef is facing the open seas and proved quite nice place for a day of sand and diving. And sand there is enough of; huge dunes cover the islands of the Bazaruto Archipelago, famous for its resident Dugong population.

Some days later we met Dave from Sailaway Dhow Safaris at our bar and got talking about the snorkeling daytrips to the islands and another day later we'd sail across the lagoon once more and spend a very pleasant day on the sand enjoying cold Manica lagers and a tasty seafood lunch. Despite our efforts, no Dugongs yet :/ Elusive creatures as they are, they are not very commonly seen as they are quite wary of us noisy humans. But several huge Potato Groupers did make their appearance, and they're just a sight to see with their enormous heads and thick lips. The boat crew stay busy while we're diving, driving the dive boat out to meet the fishing vessels and they buy heaps of fish to sell back at the shore to various establishments.

Another couple days down the road we finally got a group together to visit the flagship reef of the area, the Sao Sebastian Amphitheatre. Right at the open sea, it's the best place to view large pelagics as well as a dense reef fish population. And here we got to see a giant guitarfish rather close up. Great diving with good visibility, and the trip to the site was exciting, with having to push through what the locals call "the washing machine", a channel where the huge ocean swells meet the sand banks and come crashing down at 3 meters tall or more. And that night would continue with a Full Moon Party down the beach.

On our last day we of course went out to dive some more, visiting 2 Mile Reef once more with very nice British and German people taking their Open Water Course. And with that, our trip of almost 7 months is coming to an end. Today we'll hope to catch a Federale Air flight down to Joburg and from there make our way back home through Madrid. Cold and dark of Finland await us once more, but certainly few places on the planet would have been nicer pick for spending the last days of the adventure than the Bazaruto Islands. The mental image of the azure ocean within the enormous sandbanks should get us through what little is left of the winter. And seeing all the friends again doesn't sound too shabby either :) We're on our way!

See all the Mozambique photos here!

Tofo - Home of the Marine Megafauna

 What a couple of weeks has it been! First we were face to face with great whites, then saw the big savannah animals and now we're here in the whale shark / manta ray capitol of the world, Tofo beach in Mozambique. We arrived without any luggage as LAM - Air Mozambique - had decided that it's ok to leave all of that extra weight in Johannesburg (looks like I found my "real Africa"..) and found a pricey yet cozy residence on the beach right next door to the Marine MegaFauna Foundation that do research on whale sharks and manta rays in the area. It was said that out of the 1000 or so whale sharks identified world wide, a whopping 300-400 are from Mozambiques coasts. We'd dive and hang around the researchers quite a bit, them having thrice weekly presentations & talks about the animals, and ended up learning a lot about these big creatures that have fascinated divers for ages.

Diving is obviously what draws people here, and about half the tourists seemed to be divers from all over. Diving itself seemed a bit poor in my opinion, with the seriously high amount of plankton in the water kills the visibility down to only 10 meters some days. Then again the amount of big things you see on every dive is staggering; we saw at least guitarfish (a prehistoric looking shark-ray), potato groupers of 2m in size, leopard sharks, manta rays and of course the good old whale shark. The other half of the tourists are families from South Africa (South Africans seem to run the place anyway) and where families go, prices climb and nightlife is nonexistant. Surprisingly very few backpackers are around.

The beach is just fantastic. Really wide (50-100 meters easily at low tide) stretch of packed squeky blonde sand so hard that people actually play golf on it in the mornings. And it better be, as there is little to do when not diving but to slouch around the excellent Dino's bar by the beach and look at the seas rumble. There's even a couple of surfers here, and the surf certainly doesn't look too shabby on the windy days. All in all it's been one good leisurely 8 days despite all the luggage hassle, occasional bad weather and my encounter with a throat infection which included 2-3 days bedridden feverish and unable to eat and a visit to a hospital. All part of the travel experience, I guess. Since even swallowing my own saliva hurt blindingly lot, I had to learn to drool it out onto the pillow to be able to sleep. Luckily I'm traveling with a Jedi Master of that art, so it was just the case of watching and learning :)