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 :)

Safari!

One of the main goals of the African leg was obviously to partake in a safari. To do this, we contacted an agency dealing the trips and got one organized three weeks before while still in the Philippines. We knew little about the safaris in the area and requested a standard Kruger safari which we didn't get because all of them were full. But then it turned out this was a good thing as they recommended us to take a look at private game lodges in the Greater Kruger Area. They do similar safaris but are not restricted to sticking to the roads and there are no masses of tourists around. The other main difference is the price; the private ones charge more, but then you get to stay in a 4-star accommodation where I definitely feel very out of place. But I guess a bit of luxury once a trip doesn't hurt.. we did sleep on the airport floor on the way here just to retain our backpacker credibility. :p

After an early departure from Jo'burg airport we'd drive for 5 hours on two different minibuses to the game lodge, have lunch and set off for our first game drive adventure. And only 20 minutes into the drive we find a bunch of elephants. We turn off the engine and wait for them to surround us, and just stare awestruck as 15+ big animals (and a few tiny ones) flap their ears at us and munch at the vegetation no more than 3 meters away. After the elephants we find a sleepy lioness that won't be bothered by our presence much. At sunset we stop at a viewpoint for drinks - white wine from an icebox - and continue for two more hours after dark, locating promising animal tracks and seeing the African Buffalo for the first time. Score for the first afternoon/night: 3/5 of the Big Five and countless jackals, antillopes and birds seen. Also our lodge has a nice grassy area from where you can look down to a plain with a water hole, where all kinds of animals from crocodiles, zebras and giraffes congretate. And this is while sipping on an icy cold drink.

The next morning we get up at 0530 and head off in the insanely comfy elevated Land Rover and go looking for the leopard & buffaloes. And after a while we come across a herd of 100+ buffaloes. Here we descend from the vehicle and do a small bush walk. Our tracker & ranger had been receiving tips about lion tracks, so we go take a peek and are the first vehicle to find the lion pride. With 10 animals, this is one amazing thing to see. Sitting quietly in the vehicle with cameras rolling we get to see the lions hunting a Kudu antillope, not more than 20 meters from us. So far, the amount of animals we've already seen is just so unreal that I'm getting a bit suspicious even heheh. We finish the morning's drive with an hour long bush walk back to the lodge, and come across some more zebras and giraffes very close up.

On the evening drive we first did a bushwalk with elephants and then set out to find lions again; another big pride had been spotted in the area and it was best to make the most of it. Come dark, we'd soon find them and watched them hunting for a good hour, slowly following them in their midst. Quite intense to see crouching lions from a distance of 2-3 meters in an open vehicle. Later we ran into them again, this time to find them resting in the bushes as a big pile of sleepy cats. We didn't have time to look for rhinos, but that was covered the next morning when we spent 3 hours looking for them on both the Land Rover as on foot, and finally found 2 white rhinos in a thicket, too far and too quick for pictures. So that's 4/5 of the Big Five done and 2 game drives to go! Come on, leopard!

When returning from the last afternoon/night drive we came back to the lodge to find the local crocodile in the swimming pool of the lodge! The reptile would just swim around happily in the water that had mysteriously turned greenish yellow earlier in the day, as if to welcome the scaly fellow for a skinny dip. And after yet another dinner feast and a good night's sleep we went out for our last drive and found two male lions with their great manes sleeping and lazily trotting around, and made a visit to a dam that a hippo calls home. And despite the best efforts of the ranger team we could not find the leopard. We came so close a couple of times, finding half eaten impala carcasses that had been hunted down by the elusive feline, but didn't get a sighting. Nonetheless the safari exceeded all our expectations and we could start our journey back to Jo'burg with big grins on our faces.

See all the safari pictures here!

A Splash With Great White Sharks

After a couple of leisurely days of touring the wineyards and sampling their product quite effectively, it was high time to get some adrenaline pumping again and booked ourselves a full day trip to see the Great Whites up close and personal. So we went to do a "cage dive" some 2 hours by bus outside of Cape Town to "Shark Alley" outside Gaanbai, a place known for its largest white shark concentration in the world. Now, this activity has nothing to do with actual diving; you put on a wet suit and stand in a cage while the boat staff chums the waters around the cage and try to lure the white sharks to the surface using a bait (heads of yellowfin tunas, in our case). End result is that you get to view these animals made famous by the movie Jaws from a distance of under half a meter - and occasionally they'd even brush against the cage, extracting a nice cheer of "HOOLY F*CK! SH*T!" etc from the people occupying the cage ;)

The water was rather chilly at 15C but the long hooded wetsuit would work wonders and we didn't get cold at all during the adrenaline filled 15 minute time windows you got in the cage. I was really hoping to get nice underwater shots of these magnificent hunters, but the water was really murky with viz under 1.5-2 meters, and none turned out proper. I had a few chances for a nice headshot of an approaching shark, but missed both shots. Luckily the sharks would show themselves on the surface a lot, a couple of them jumping half out of the water a couple of times, smacking the cage and the boat around a bit. Quite a sight to see. We had 5 distinct sharks around the boat, largest of them being about 3.5 meters long.

We went with a company called White Shark Ecoventures, a pioneer bunch that have done a good job advocating the need to protect these creatures. Based in Gaanbai, they've been in the industry since the early 90s. They seemed to be pretty good in luring the sharks to pass the cage several times with every bait and had very accurate information about the area and the animals. One funny thing was that the seas around the Shark Alley seem to have a peculiar wave pattern, and 2/3 of the people on the boat were throwing up over the side. And they said sometimes it is everyone. But not us! All in all, what a day, money well spent!

See all the South Africa pictures here!

South Africa

This is it then, the last leg of our trip - Africa. Sort of a final frontier for us, with neither of us having never been to the continent. After 14 hours on the plane, having watched 5-6 movies and played some nethack we arrived to Johannesburg. Stayed quickly overnight in a hostel near the airport and come the next morning, hopped on a Kulula flight down to Cape Town where the weather was perfect and activities were plentiful. Not wanting to risk getting cloudy skies the next day, we took to the Table Mountain right after arriving downtown and enjoyed the views over the city for a few hours. Even beer tastes better when you have a splendid view!

Now, Cape Town is not exactly what I had imagined an African city to be like. European style cafes and bars all around - and where the hell are all the zebras, rhinos and huts made out of dung!? Anyhow, what a magnificent city it is; prices surprisingly low and indeed so much to do. It's not exactly Rio de Janeiro but good anyway. We explored the city on a taxi a bit and the second day went to do what all the good tourists do and visited the Cape of Good Hope and the penguin colony on the Indian Ocean side. Those little buggers in their tuxes get me in a great mood every time we see them. Also got to see some baboons in the wild around the Cape Point. It seems these guys aren't bothered about a crowd watching and taking pictures while they masturbate.

There's a lot of talk about how dangerous South Africa and especially Jo'burg and Cape Town are, but pfft, I don't think they would compare to some haunts in latin America. It's just that there's so many ignorant tourists here prancing around with cameras and thick wallets visible that there's bound to be trouble. Economic differences are still huge among the population even though Apartheid is long gone. And everyone seems to be a big comedian, even the staff on the Kulula flight (stuff like "Smoking and complaining are prohibited throughout the flight" being announced on the PA).

After a few days soaking up the city life we splurged whole 1.3e on first class tickets for a train and ended up one hour later in Stellenbosch, the wine capitol of SA. With some 365 wineries packed in a very tiny area, they boast thousands of different wines, some of which very nice. A wine tour we did included tasting 23 wines as well as a variety of local cheeses. Talk about good times! Naturally we did our best to do more sampling on our own, after all the small town is full of wine bars and shops both big and small. Very smooth time for 2 days. Really good value for money here, thumbs up from Fonzie for this place. But, the traveler in me wants to see something less civilized, so it is about time to move on.