So, the last you heard, we were living and working in a dive lodge in Nacala, Northern Mozambique! Paul was training to be a Dive Master and I was managing the lodge. Luckily only a month into the job, we had to take a 10 day holiday to Malawi to re-new our bike import permits….. I mean it wasn’t that we wanted a holiday so soon, it was just unavoidable!!

This trip gave us the opportunity to explorer inland Mozambique, as we were planning to take a dirt road directly west into Malawi, through a tiny border post that would conveniently take us straight into Liwonde National Park, supposedly Malawi’s best game park. Although, the route was only 500kms, the road was pretty rough in parts, so it took us 3 days to get to the border – so we needed a few days in Malawi to recover before heading back to work…honest!

Dirt road action!

It was great to get off the tar (which we have been moaning about since we started the trip) and the bikes really came into their own on the dirt roads and we had great fun…one of us had a little bit too much fun, smashing his number plate and on the 2nd day, I came around a corner to find Paul looking dazed and his bike facing me on the wrong side of the road! My heart sank because I knew he had had a fall and then when I saw him limping towards his bike – I was working out how close we were to a hospital….it didn’t bear thinking about! Luckily, it was just a badly grazed knee…nothing a bit of ibuprofen and anticeptic cream couldn’t sort out, but after that I was the pace setter and we were traveling at a more sedate pace (which I try to persuade Paul allows us to look at the scenery more!).

Paul making friends with donkeys

Paul’s wipe out, which incidentally occurred on a perfectly straight road (!), persuaded us to call it a day early and we stayed in a huge, deserted hotel, well in fact town, in a place called Malema. It was big enough for us to park our bikes inside, which was great and that evening we had a beer in a deserted bar where the owner played Michael Bolton all night, specially for us – us white people love that kind of stuff!

Zoe trying to make friends but about to be beaten with sugar cane instead

The music drove us to an early night and the next day we arrived at the Malawi border. We knew it was a small border, but it turned out to be a railway station in a sand pit at the end of a 50km track. The station attendant wasn’t quite sure what to do, but we managed to get our exit stamps and headed to the gate that would take us to Malawi. The notorious gate attendant was keen to use his metal detector in all our bags before allowing us to cross and it was beeping wildly as he scanned past all our tools and spares in the panniers. I was dreading us having to empty it all out, but luckily it was just delaying tactics while he worked up the courage to ask me for a Fanta Orange! Sadly, I didn’t have any Fanta’s in my bags that day (I usually try and keep a spare crate for just this occasion), so I declined and he let us through! There is something a bit unnerving about a grown man, in uniform with a gun and a metal detector asking for a Fanta, but I out it out of my mind as we entered Malawi for the first time! The Malawi border post was easy except it was lunch time and so we had to sit and wait for an hour, when he returned, the immigration officer was my best friend until he asked me what I had brought him from Mozambique and replied ‘the sunshine’….we didn’t chit chat much after that! As often happens with border posts, the scenery was immediately different and huge grass plains were stretching out ahead of us, with cows everywhere (there are no cows in Mozambique…not sure why?) and after a couple of hours we arrived in Liwonde.

The best thing about arriving in Malawi was the language…everyone speaks English! Now, we have both made a huge effort to learn Portuguese and have done pretty well, but it was such a pleasure to speak English and be actually understood! It was getting late, so we stayed in Liwonde town (parked our bikes in the hotel reception!) and sat in the moonlight watching a huge hippo and her baby grazing on the banks of the Shire river about 5 meters from our room! The room was nice, but as a rule I always use my own sheet…you just never know…Paul has a much more cavalier attitude to hygiene and opted to snuggle down in the sheets and blankets provided. The next day, he could get rid of the…lets say..’earthy’ smell they had deposited onto him and so with his hair smelling like a farm yard we headed for the National Park.

Of course we knew that Liwonde National park had cats and elephants, but we rode up the gate on our bikes and were promptly turned away…for our own safety! Luckily, there was another route into the park via boat, so we headed north towards Lake Malawi and the northern gate of the park. Here they let you ride the 1km through the park to the river, where a boat ferry’s you to the lodge and campsite. The 1 km of park was enough, it was like entering Jurassic Park, with huge trees and thick bush and the promise of an elephant around every corner! Our ‘elephant strategy’ was to try not to meet on because I can’t u-turn at the best of times and luckily it worked and we arrived at the boat unscathed! Unfortunately we had to leave our bikes on the other side of the river, so we untied our dirty bags and muddled our way on the little boat. On the other side of the river, we were greeted with a glass of bucks fizz and it was immediately obvious this wasn’t ‘our’ kind of place! The poor staff that helped us carry our bags probably had to throw away their nice clean uniforms afterwards and we sat dirtying the reception area, sipping the drinks surrounded by lots of clean Europeans staring at us and our big pile of dirty bags, helmets and jackets! Luckily, they had a campsite we set up camp, showered and suddenly blended in a bit more!

The park was beautiful, your classic African game park and lodge, with warthogs eating outside the restaurant and hippos wallowing in the river in front of the bar. We didn’t bring our cooking gear so we had no choice, but to enjoy the luxury of the restaurant, while were there and even had a candle light dinner on the edge of the river one night…very posh! Liwonde is famous for its river safaris, so we decided to splash out – well actually Paul managed to negotiate a shorter, cheaper version…bless him, but it was great and we got up close and personal with the crocs and hippos and the amazing bird life along the waters edge.

If you look really really closely you can see a hippo

Paul became obsessed by the ‘bee-eater’, an unfeasibly small bird, which I grant him is pretty, but didn’t necessarily warrant 2 days of constant tracking and the 2000 photos of a spec in the distance!

Bee Eater

We also decided to do a night drive with Angel our River Safari guide, (who wasn’t talking to us anymore because we didn’t tip him). Despite getting the cold shoulder, it was amazing and we saw elephants and a genet, but even better we heard the parks only lion roaring under the stars!

Night safari

That night we had a restless night listening to the giant hippos grazing next to our tent and couldn’t get up to the loo because both our torches batteries had run out….great timing!

Playing bao at sunset just like the natives do

All in all though our stay in Liwonde was a real treat compared to our usual style of travel and our batteries were fully recharged (if our torches weren’t) when we headed back across the river to pick up our bikes and head to the famous Lake Malawi.

Of course we were heading back to work and it just so happened that Lake Malawi was on the way, so it would have been silly not to stay for a night or two and have a little look!! We camped on the side of the lake and it was difficult to imagine that it wasn’t the sea…it is just so vast. Unfortunately, it was really windy and so it looked even more sea-like with rolling waves crashing onto the beach. In light of the bad weather, we decided to go for a walk in the hills on the edge of the lake. We set off in flip flops and shorts and so after a couple of hours of fighting through the thorny bushes, every inch of our bodies was punctured by something or other – all of them painful – then it started to rain, so we called it a day and decided to sample some of Malawi’s produce instead. We started with Malawi gin, which is cheaper that water and so finished with it as well and suddenly the scratches and cuts didn’t hurt so much!

Eventually we couldn’t put it off any longer and so we said goodbye to Malawi and its gin and headed back to Mozambique! Me pace setting meant it took 4 days not, 3, but with no further injuries we arrived back at Bay Diving, ready for work!

Another month in and we had completed mapping the reef within the Marine Reserve, Paul was now a certified Dive Master and I think it is fair to say I had a ‘full’ understanding of managing a dive lodge, so it was time to move on!

Filling dive cyclinders

Our 2 months there had been great and we had met some great people, learnt Portuguese and really got know Mozambique. Apart from the owner’s psychotic girlfriend, all the staff were amazing and really made it hard to leave!

Some of the guys with todays catch

Long time resident, Helder, entertained us every evening with his never ending repertoire of truly awful jokes and every day Fritz, the bull terrier, would stand in ‘his’ bush next to the pool and get high from the smell of the flowers…too much and he would get depressed, want to be on his own and go off his food for a few days! We tried it, but evidently it doesn’t work on humans!
Anyone who has been to Africa, will know how popular it is with missionaries and Mozambique is no different, so we had a lot of missionaries staying at the lodge while on holiday from their…erm.. missions I guess! They were mostly American and even though they were off duty, usually could help but try to convert the other guests and staff over breakfast, in the toilets or anywhere they could corner you! On one occasion, an unassuming American backpacker, called Ben, was brushing his teeth before bed, when a naked missionary exited the shower behind him with his towel slung over his shoulder! This is disturbing enough, but the naked man then proceeded to ask…’Can you be sure that if you die tonight, you will go to heaven?’ Ben replied, “no, but what I can be sure of, is that I don’t want to talk to you about it now’ and left to go to bed, complaining about the naked man on his way to his room! Over breakfast the same man…dressed now, thank goodness, distributed leaflets to everyone explaining how we might ensure passage to heaven…..you’ve just got to love them!!
Paul had some amazing dive experiences and really got to know all the reefs in Nacala Bay, as if they were his back garden (not that we have really ever had a back garden of course!). He invented the ‘bubble gun’ to ward off pesky sharks (or anything large!) with our resident carpenter Patrick, from Germany, who when we wasn’t in bed with Malaria, was supposed to be making furniture for the lodge’s Dhow!

Paul with dive buddy and bubble gun inventor Parick

And in the last month he was able to take customers out diving on his own…. these always went really well and everyone loved diving with Paul, the only exception being Simon, a fellow English biker traveling around Southern Africa. His approach to traveling was somewhat different to ours…he had set off from South Africa with a second hand chain and second hand tyres and unsurprisingly had had more than a few ‘technical’ issues! This was equally reflected in his diving and as Paul led him off the shore for his first night dive, he stepped on a Moray Eel in the shallows which bit him twice on the foot! He then proceeded to lose his weight belt at 20mts and shot to the surface. When Paul had retrieved him, he then lost it again and this time his air cyclinder fell off as well and Paul had to abort the dive!! On the way out, he stepped on a sea urchin with his good foot and then got bitten by a spider while walking back to his tent! Not the luckiest of chaps and he eventually ended up in hospital in Pemba with septicemia!! Amusingly, Simon wants to start a business taking tourists on biking/diving holidays around Southern Africa, so watch for him if you are booking a holiday because now you know what to expect!!!

Despite the fun and games, we were definitely ready to move on. During our travels, Paul and I had often talked about owning a lodge because it gives you the opportunity to live and work in idyllic settings that wouldn’t otherwise be an option. So working at Bay Diving gave us a valuable insight into what life is like running your own business, in Africa, in the tourism industry, in the middle of nowhere….and lets just say, we won’t be rushing to by a plot of land!

So once again the world was our oyster and we had to decide where to go. Our original plan was to continue north into Tanzania, but Tanzania is all about the game parks and on motorbikes, you just can’t go inside….nor did we want to with all those elephant and lions wandering around. So we decided to head west and go back to Malawi and see the rest of the country properly!

Wow, it has been ages since we gave an update on our adventures in Africa…the last you heard we were in a beautiful place called Tofo on the Mozambique coast, surviving our encounters with whale sharks and nausea! After finally seeing these gentle giants, we were free to continue on and head North towards Tanzania. Not for the first time (in fact the 3rd time) we got up at 5:30 on our day of departure to see the sunrise over the ocean, and not for the first time (in fact the 3rd time) the cloud set in and it started to rain as we sat huddled on the beach with a packet of biscuits for breakfast! We sat it out until we were pretty sure that the sun must have risen behind the murk and then headed out on our travels again….in the rain.

Our next stop was Vilanculos, where you can access the Bazaruto Archipelago, a Dugong (Manatee) Marine Reserve. Unfortunately a cyclone hit the Mozambique coast about 2 months ago and wiped out the islands as well as Vilanculos, so after a day of riding in the rain we arrived in a camp site, which looked like something from Mad Max. Places always look worse in the rain, especially when you are wet through, but poor old Vilanculos was in a bad way! Luckily, it was a bank holiday Monday so everyone in town was out and about getting drunk (it is the same everywhere in the world!) and we managed to sample some local food – chicken knuckle kebab is the best description I can think of! We eventually opted for a dorm room (too soft to camp – or just too wet!) in a place (pretentiously) called Zombie Cucumber and prayed for a reprieve in the weather…it didn’t come and at 6:00am the next morning we woke to find another rainy day…(this was our first night in a dorm and I found out that even if you turn off a mobile phone the alarm still comes on…and on…and on, until you realize after your long shower and have woken up everyone else up!). Now that we had alienated all our fellow travelers we decided not to go and see the Archipelago - sailing on a Dhow in the rain would be miserable and so we decided to ride in the rain – equally miserable, but there is that vain hope that you will see a break in the clouds over the next hill…. there wasn’t, so we had another ‘moist’ day on the road (that was for you Jen!).

Although it rained (did I mention the rainy season is supposed to end init March??) it was a lovely ride in the mountains around Gorongoza (a once famous National Park, which doesn’t have any animals left), the only problem was the tar road…don’t get me wrong it is great that so much of Mozambique has decent tar roads, but we have ‘off-road’ bikes and tyres, and all the tar was wearing them out….we were doing our best to seek out dirt, but even the ‘donkey track’ we followed (according to the Michelin map) turned out to have been recently surfaced by a helpful South African construction company!

View from boring tar road

We stayed the night in a bizarre motel inside a windmill just outside Chimoio and then continued north along another (wet) tar road. It was this fateful day that I realized just how much chameleons look like a leaf blowing in the wind…they look so much like a leaf I actually aimed my front tyre for it…! Luckily, Paul redeemed us by rescuing another wayward chameleon later in the day….what can I say – it really was good at camouflage..!

The chameleon Zoe didn’t murder

Today was also the day a huge unidentified creature with wings flew up my jacket sleeve! I skidded to a halt, flailing my arm around trying to eject the monster….it was also flailing trying to escape and so screaming I jumped off the bike (forgetting it can’t stand up on its own), wripped off my jacket and threw it on the ground …along with my bike (!), to reveal a medium sized locust. What a girl!!

There was a gap in the rain and so we camped on the banks of the Zambezi (giver of devastating floods a couple of months before), with all the mosquitoes in the area – out to drink during the dry spell!

Our map showed a bridge was due to be finished 4 years ago and so we had high hopes for a swift crossing across the river…it seems like bridges can over-run and the little ferry was still running! It was magic though, crossing the river we saw hippos and I momentarily forgot I was soaked to the skin and we were about to run out of petrol!

It is always when the rain is the hardest that you have to ride a lengthy detour for fuel and on this day we detoured in a thunder storm to Quelimane (I am reliably informed is a nice city – couldn’t see it myself). Crossing the Zambezi, we had entered the Zambezia Province, which is the most populous in Mozambique – now this is a grand claim because Mozambique is full of people, but they were right, there were MORE people and even more bicycles in Zambezia. They have really gone for it with the post war baby boom…schools have 3 sittings there are so many kids and people of all ages just line the roads every inch of the way. Then, of course, we have my beloved Chinese to thank for introducing cheap bicycles into Mozambique. So if walking on the road with a table, 3 sacks of charcoal and a couple of chickens wasn’t precarious enough, now people can load up a bicycle with double that…and a goat and wobble their way down the road. This must have made a huge difference to their lives, and there has been a huge take-up - so there is a lot of traffic, but not a lot of skill.

For example, hearing the strange sound of a motorbike, is always worthy of a look, but if it is behind you, craning your neck inevitably ensures you will veer into the middle of the road. The shock of seeing a strange bike can then cause you to fall off into its path or violently change direction and fall off into the verge. Even if you are a skilled bicycle rider and the first motorbike doesn’t cause a fall, the shock and surprise of a second definitely will….So Paul and I have left a trail of bicycle carnage in our wake! Unfortunately the phrase “this will hurt me, more than it will hurt you” rings true on a motorbike and so after a day of surviving the kamikaze bicycles we stopped in a hotel in Mocuba – a town detailed on our map as having a swimming baths – someone obviously felt it was worth a mention on an international map, but take it from me – it isn’t worth a special trip! We heard the swimming baths before we saw them and both assumed the echoing screams were coming from a nearby prison, so happily finished our beer! Later, we realized it was not the sounds of torture, but children screams of joy in the pool!

Mocuba turned out to be town full of screaming and shouting as we found out when our hotel turned into a popular night club after 10:00pm (we were in bed by 8!!!). I believe it was a Tuesday, but it was obviously a good one because they were ‘raving’ (and I don’t use the word lightly) until sun-rise.

So groggy and damp we extracted our bikes from the hotel kitchen (the only place with a lock!) and continued north. Mozambique is absolutely massive. I had never really looked at it on the map before, but it is huge and occupies most of Southern Africa’s eastern coast….it felt like we had crossed a continent by the time we arrived in Nampula – our destination in the north of the country. The trip north had been inland so it was nice to be getting close to the coast again. Most of all it was a relief to stop riding for a day or two - all the rain and a week of daily 8hr rides had taken its toll. This is far too much info to share, but what the hell… I was suffering from a bad bout of something my beautiful god-daughter Arabella might be able to sympathise with …nappy rash! Now I know why babies cry…its bad, not to mention highly unattractive – luckily we were heading to the beach where I would be able to share my bikini clad bottom with the world! For now though I was keeping it covered while we stayed in Nampula and stocked up on supplies and dried out all our things!

Nampula was sunny and welcoming during the day, but we found that our experiences in Mocuba had not been isolated. During the night, the street outside our hotel turned into a scene from the Fast and the Furious. All the local’s lucky enough to have one of the cars stolen from South Africa (!), customized them to make them louder (not better) and then drove up and down the road impressing each other throughout the night…all night. I wasn’t so much impressed by their masculine prowess, but more the charming quirk of physics in the street, which meant that the noise was amplified in our room making it quieter to sleep on the pavement… I was tempted to sleep in the middle of the road so I could be put out of my misery, but instead endured the ridiculous noise levels and hoped it was a special night…it wasn’t, so we only spent 2 nights in Nampula!

2 nights was enough of a rest to be ready to go the short hop to Ilha De Mocambique, the former capital. It is a tiny island (now a UNESCO World Heritage Site), connected to the mainland by a 3.5km single track bridge.

Mozambique island

One side of the island, Stone Town, has the old Portuguese colonial buildings and the other side houses the current residents, all 10,000 of them crammed into half an island 2km long and less than a km wide…lets just say there are a couple of sanitation issues (!), but aside from that it is a window into a past world, with an old fort and grand colonial buildings – a photographers paradise! We were greeted at the end of the bridge by a boy called George, who spoke perfect English and guided us on his bicycle to a local house (on the ‘budget’ side of the island!), where we stayed for a couple of days.

The ‘guesthouse’

Ilha De Mocambique is used to receiving tourists and the children and adults are expert guides! Unfortunately this means you never get a minute of peace and it makes me and Paul want to run away and lock ourselves in our room! We did succumb and let George show us around Stone Town, but when we arrived at the fort, 6 men chanting ’you have to pay’, ’you have to pay’ was the last straw! I joined in chanting to Paul ….needless to say we saved our 50p entrance fee! Some people love places like this, but the history was wasted on us and we couldn’t wait to get back to the open spaces of the mainland – in fact to demonstrate our cretinous attitude to this site of historical importance, our best memory of Ilha was cooking our own garlic calamari (which Paul bargained down from 30 pounds a kilo to 10p!!)

Calamari yum yum

So we were back on the road after our brief dose of culture…and more aptly we were heading for the beach! Our plan was to reach Pemba, in the far north of Mozambique, but to break up the journey we stopped off in Nacala Bay, at a beach called Fernao Veloso. Nacala has the second biggest natural bay in the world and Pemba has the 3rd - a fact they are very proud of here - and the coastline is beautiful. On our way to Fernao Veloso, we were studying the trusty Lonely Planet for directions when a South African voice shouted from a car for us to follow her! So we did, and arrived at Bay Diving! The scuba diving lodge sits within a marine reserve in Nacala Bay and has beautiful quiet beaches and tranquil blue water…the perfect antidote to a crowded island, noisy streets and a wet bum! In fact, we liked it here so much we decided to stay for a little while! By a fortunate turn of events, the lodge needed some help with scuba diving – enter Paul, now a Dive Master in Training – and managing the lodge – enter me, domesticated person in training! Even better, we were there to help study the success of the marine reserve in the bay. And as if it couldn’t get any better, we have our own little house on the beach...not bad for a chance meeting at the side of the road!

View from restuarant

Our home at Bay Diving

Going diving

Before starting our new jobs, we had decided to make it to our original destination, Pemba, which is a popular holiday destination with South Africans, who fly straight in (I mean who would be foolish enough to travel all that way by road?)…it was nice but surprisingly touristy for somewhere so out of way.

Zoe on the beach at Pemba

Exploring Pemba

Obviously it rained on our first day, but it started after I had persuaded Paul to set off with a packed lunch and ‘walk the peninsula’ 8 hrs later we were still walking, it was still raining and our marriage was on the rocks! Things got worse when we finally managed to hail a car, which proceeded to run out of petrol after 5mins – turfing us back out on foot!!

Something about Pemba didn’t agree with us and each night one of us was ill, but on the evening before our departure back to Nacala we ignored the warning signs of the previous nights and went for a meal at a local restaurant. Paul ordered chicken, but I was adventurous and went for prawn curry – it paid off my meal was significantly better than Paul’s and I smugly savoured every mouthful! The next thing I know it is 1:30am and I don’t feel too good…the next 6 hrs were hell and by the time our alarm went off I was finished! We had an 8hr ride to look forward to and so I lay groaning on the ground while Paul packed up all our things. It was 8hrs of torture and deep breathing – no-one wants to be sick (or worse!) while riding a motorbike, but it will teach me to gloat over my food in the future!

Zoe napping on side of road

So we have been here at Bay Diving for about 4 weeks now and it is going well – hopefully by our next entry Paul will be a Dive Master and we will have some stories to tell about living here in Mozambique versus traveling around!

So we were finally heading out of the ease of SA into Mozambique and we were both really excited… The little I know about Mozambique is that it is one of the worlds poorest countries – racked by war for decades, but in the last few years it has started to get back on its feet, with huge land mine retrieval projects and outside investment – in fact it has Africa’s fastest growing economy, which although still tiny, is a great sign. The mines are still around, so we know we wouldn’t be forging our own path and camping in the bush, (I like my limbs), but I couldn’t wait to see what Mozambique was like.

First we had to get into the country! After passing through West Africa, I have a healthy respect for border crossings and although this was a South African border I knew it would be hard work! I was right…this was an African border through and through! On both sides there were thousands of people…none of them crossing the border – just hanging out and adding to the chaos. I do the ‘paperwork’ on our travels so I wandered into the only building to see lots of empty windows, 2 huge queues and about 50 ‘friends’ wanting to help me through the process for a small fee! In fact keeping these guys away from me and out of my pockets was the hardest thing of all, but a couple of hours later we were riding out into the Mozambiquan countryside …on a Toll road of all things! We had heard stories about the terrible roads, but from the SA border to the capital Maputo, was a new road – a Toll road. To put this into perspective, there is really nothing here. Outside the 3 or 4 major cities there isn’t really any buildings, everything is made of reeds, pooh, straw and if you're lucky wood, but here we were passing through a Toll Plaza…bizarre!

Stopping for lunch after the border crossing

The coastline around Maputo is popular with South Africans, and quite a few passed us with their quad bikes and jet ski’s in tow! We were heading north of this nonsense to a town called Maracuene, where we were going to camp out for a few days and acclimatize on a beautiful estuary…

Campsite near estuary - look at Pauls new basher!!

Off the main tar road we had a 4km stretch of deep sand and our first bit of off-roading! The bikes were brilliant (it is such a relief not to have the huge 600cc this time)…can’t say the same about me though! I hate sand, it is so hard to ride on and makes me remember crossing the Sahara! With Paul disappearing into the distance, I had no excuses this time – the bike is light, the luggage is light and I have had a lot more practice – I bit the bullet and got up a bit of speed up instead of walking the whole way…! Only 4kms and I was exhausted – we are following the coast of Mozambique all the way to Tanzania, so I need to get fit…and quick, as there is going to be a lot more sand!

After 3 days of lounging around at Maracuene we headed to Maputo, to visit the Tanzanian Embassy and draw some cash. We purposefully took a dirt track through the swamps and sand which was great fun although I did get self conscious with everyone watching me as I wobbled my way past their villages!

Zoe 'offroading'

We were lucky enough to stay with Chris and Anton, South Africans living and working in Maputo who we met in Maracuene, so it was all very civilized (once we had cleaned up after our wet and muddy ride)! The only hitch being when I tried to draw the equivalent of 100,000 pounds from the ATM!! Like many African countries inflation can be troublesome and so every so often a couple of zero’s get knocked off the currency – this happened recently here and they took 3 zeros off without telling me!!! Luckily, the machine declined politely and said I should try again later!

Maputo, and actually Mozambique in general, is a relaxed place. Everyone is really laid back and people only ask once if you would like to buy something or give them something, if you say no, that’s the end of it – it is a pleasure to travel here. Maputo, is a cool city, nice shady tree lined streets and a great atmoshphere, but with all our ‘city jobs’ done (like stocking up on mosquito repellent, wet wipes and Paul’s new obsession- Benzene for the stove!) we headed North to the famous Mozambique beaches!

Iron building made by the Eiffel Tower guy in Maputo

Along the way we were stopped for speeding, by a chancer of a cop with a speed gun…there was no way I was speeding, no matter what his gun said! Not being able to speak much Portuguese is a real pain, but 10 mins of sign language and stern looks (on both sides) and he gave me my license back and sent us on our way!

Checking the map and having banana sandwiches on the side of the road

We were heading for a place called Tofo – and it didn’t disappoint, it’s a beach paradise, coconut trees, white sand and blue sea! We camped behind the dunes in a place called Bamaboozi Lodge!

Riding the palm highway

On our first night, we pitched the tent in a grass hut for shade, but it turned out to be home to a family of screeching bats, who proceeded to poo a corrosive and staining red poo all over the tent during the night. The next day we moved to another grass hut, which turned out to have magical insulating properties (despite the gale force winds outside) and we were steamed outside until the torrential rain the next night forced us undercover again!!!

Our bat-free home in Bamboozi!

Unlucky with our accommodation, we were lucky with the food… Paul bought us a whole Baracuda from a guy on the beach – his scales said 8kg, but ours said 3.5kg! It took us 4 days to eat it and we still ended up giving some away! We did ‘lightly pan-fried’, curried, curried with coconut and curried with potato AND coconut – there were lots of coconuts falling around the tent!! We also bought a kilo of the famous Mozambiquan prawns (not as big as legend would have us believe - think all the big ones have been caught and shipped to EU supermarkets) from the market in nearby Inhambane and cooked, yep you’ve guessed it a prawn and coconut curry!!! Magic!

Paul about to loose a leg/finger/hand opening a coconut

Zoe in the market - doesnt she blend in well?

The highlight of our week in Tofo was seeing whales sharks! The weather turned…as it does everywhere I go….and so we had to wait the best part of a week for the winds to die down before we could go out on the boat. (In the meantime, we spent our days being whipped by the sand on the beach and eating Barracuda!). When the wind had died down enough, we headed out on the boat to ‘Whale Shark Alley’ about 15 mins off the coast. There is no guarantee you will see them and part of me hoped we wouldn’t as they are absolutely massive! We did though and as soon as the boat stopped everyone started piling out into the open sea following a huge grey shadow! Not wanting to appear soft I also hurled myself from the boat and swam frantically to Pauls side…such a girl! (We had an understanding that at any point I may ‘mount’ him for protection, but luckily it wasn’t necessary!).

Looking down, it was an amazing sight – a beautiful, gentle whale shark only a couple of metres from us – we followed it through the waves and starting to get a bit cocky we got really close…next thing, it turns around and all I can see is its massive mouth getting closer and closer to us! I am not used to using flippers (or fins as people cooler than me call them) and so I was trying to swim backwards away from the mouth, without any success! I had been reliably informed that although they can fit you in their mouth, the throat is very narrow, so you can’t be swallowed – lucky really as I couldn't seem to get anywhere with my stupid flippers. The whale shark was just checking us out and so after seeing I was only a threat to myself, he headed back down into the deep ocean for some peace and quiet!

Back on the boat in the open ocean the swells were still big from the previous weather front and after whale shark no. 3 the scene was quite different….much sicker! Paul and I couldn’t look or talk to each other as we were focused intently on the horizon. An Afrikans guy was hanging over the side and another girl was moaning with her head in her hands!!! We jumped in briefly for number 4, saw it – agreed it was a whale shark and swam straight back to the boat! Paul got back just in time, but I didn’t and fed the fish with my breakfast….the current washed it nicely back over me first though….a beautiful sight!!

So now it was time to move on...Mozambique is a vast country and so we needed to make some ground towards Tanzania and so we headed out to the Northern Provinces