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 :)
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