We went to a place called Tofo (pronounced Tofu) beach. If there's any place that I've been to so far that could be called touristy, this could well be it. Mind you, Mozambican-touristy comes nowhere near any of the touristy places I've been before. I mean, there are market sellers offering the few tourists that there are; shells, shorts (which I bought, they're patchwork and I didn't feel that I could miss the opportunity), t-shirts with various logos relating to Mozambique and fruit and veg. They do also hassle more than you'd like, but five or so "no"s later they get the idea.
Other than that, Tofo beach is pretty quiet, small and surprisingly empty - it's not quite the tourist season yet. In high season, apparently there are quite a lot of South Africans and backpackers after a bit of sun and sea.
p.s. On the shorts front, if there's anyone with smaller thighs and bum than me (Titch? Ruth?), then I've got a pair that you might be interested in. The sizing system at the market isn't quite uniform, you see!
Getting to Tofo was quite a journey. We hadn't been on a chapper without Francis or a grasp of Portuguese before. It turned out not to have been as bad as we'd expected. Not too bad, except for the major safety concerns. The chappers that travel on the main road are kind of like slightly larger people carriers from England. There is a sign on all of the chappers stating a maximum of 15 people. By my rough count, at the worst - or best if you own the chapper - of times there was something around 23. Fitting 23 people into one of these things involves cramming 4 people on each 3-seater bench and making your own standing room up.
Fortunately, if there were to be one of their popular head-on collisions, we were at the back by a window. Oh actually, that's not quite right, the windows have bars on and the boot was held tightly shut by rope. We might have survived the initial impact!
Upon arrival, we found that we were staying in a place called 'John's Place'. John's Place was a hostel with dorms and separate rooms (I opted for the cheaper 250mt rooms). John is an old white guy who loves his old music and films. He's a pretty interesting guy, born and bred in Mozambique to a Scottish mother and Spanish father. It's very interesting to talk to someone with English nuances and English as a first language, but that knows so much about the country (which I may tell you about in a later edition).
Anyway, I won't bore you with the four-day holiday details, but I will tell you about an interesting experience I unwittingly got involved in. Maybe I'll tell you what I got up to a bit later.
So, on the first day, as well as somehow managing to watch Reading vs. Swansea at a local restaurant, I met a guy and girl from France and a girl from Portugal at the hostel. They seemed friendly enough and asked if I wanted to wander round to find some food. In the spirit of a book I'm reading (thanks Hannah), I said Yes and off we went.
Amandine (27) and Vincent (29) weren't a couple but had been traveling together for a while. Sue and I agreed that they seemed really nice, Vincent is a fireman and Amandine, I'm not too sure, but she played guitar. They're English was pretty good too. They met Carla (36 a biologist and her English was better than mine) at the island they'd visited and decided to travel together to Tofo. So to cut a long story short, we had some food at the market, it was not nice. It was some kind of fish with cabbage and rice, I'm not sure if they throw in extra fish bones for the tourists, but none of us finished it. Off we trundled to a more respectable restaurant for a bit more grub. All going swimmingly so far right? Nothing weird going on at all.
Carla spotted a kayaking trip that we would all be interested in trying, so she counted her money to see if she had enough. What's this? Oh, it's only 1100mts (£23) missing from Carla's purse!! After the obligatory 'are you sure?’ 'Where did you leave it?' and 'could you have dropped it?' questions, it was decided that, yes, it had indeed been lost.
To cut another long story short, Carla worked out that the only time she'd left her purse alone was at the dorm with Amandine. To make things worse, Carla texted the previous girl they'd stayed with, who also had a hunch that she'd had some money missing too. Fortunately, they didn't decide to blame the new guy, I was quite worried that they might!
The following morning was filled with Carla confronting Amandine, breakfast with Sue, Carla and I and an awkward conversation between Carla and Vincent over said breakfast, Sue and I sat quietly.
We invited Carla to spend the day with us and to use Sue's double room for storage, to which she agreed. Carla ended up spending most of her time with us, as it was more than a little awkward with the French.
I'm not pointing any fingers here, but it's all very weird. When Carla left, I spent some time with the French guys and they were absolutely fine, no money went missing and they didn't even nick my clothes when I went snorkeling! Amandine lives in Paris, works for an NGO, apparently has enough money, wears a bindi and is a Buddhist. So, you decide. Sue and I suspect it was probably Amandine, given the facts, but we were and still are pretty stumped. Is Carla just clumsy? Could she possibly have dropped two notes unwittingly? Do Buddhists steal? And isn't it Hindus that wear bindis?!
Right. Now I've got that off my chest, I can tell you a bit about what we got up to. There's a beach. A beach that most people go to; with waves to play around and surf a bit in. But there's also an inexplicably much lesser used (usually deserted) beach around the other end of the bay, which is unsurprisingly where we spent most of our beach time.
I'm not sure if a blog is for standard holiday snaps, but you're going to get some now. Here's the main beach:
And the lesser used beach:
There was food too! Proper beef, chicken, fish, prawns, meat! I don't need to tell you how much we ate, but it was a lot and it was always polished off. Having been at the village, I was worried that I wouldn't have half the stomach capacity that I did. So to find out, I had the cheapest and biggest T-bone steak that I've ever eaten. It equated to around £4.70 and it was huuuuuge, there are two layers to it too!!
One of the many local pet dogs took a fancy to it too.
On the second day, with our new friend Carla and some wild dogs for company, we went for a walk to a viewpoint where you can apparently catch glimpses of whales and other things. We probably went at the hottest point in the day but don't worry Mum, I had proper sunblock and a hat, you'd be proud.
The good news is that the view was very pleasant, over 180° of sea and blue sky and we managed to spot some dolphins. The bad news is that we only saw a couple of distant glances of some splashing, which was definitely a whale. No major photo opportunities there.
On the way back, we saw something that none of us had ever dreamed we'd see in Mozambique. It was a recycling centre!!! The people that drop they're litter as soon as they're done with it, have a tip? Let alone somewhere to recycle the millions of tons of plastic they drop all over they're country.
Having said all that whale stuff. On our penultimate day in Tofo we were just leaving our favourite lesser-used beach when I looked up to clearly see a blue whale jumping out of the water!!! You could see it's white underbelly and fins and everything!! It turned out that there wasn't just one whale either, there were loads of them and they were travelling close and parallel to the beach!! I tried to get a good picture, but it's an iPhone with little zoom, so please bear all of that in mind if you're expecting clear-cut whale photos. They're there if you look hard enough and they were closer than it looks too!
Following the weird first day, the remaining ones were spent eating, buying shorts, exploring the little there is to explore and the beach. After Carla left the hostel, I met a couple of English doctors on they're way to work in South Africa. They were also very nice and invited me to go and find some food with them (maybe some kind of hostel camaraderie), I said Yes and off we went.
Alex (27 I think) and Gabby (26) were having a holiday of indefinite length until their work visa eventually arrived. There isn't much to do in Tofo so we didn't do much, but it was nice to have some company of the same age and language.
On the last morning we had to leave at 9. Gabby and Alex had arranged to go on a bike ride with some slightly crazy South African expats. They asked me if I wanted to go, so off we went on a 7-of-the-clock, hour and half bike ride. It turned out to be around a few of the places we'd (Sue, Carla and I) walked before, but it was good fun to get up early, ride bikes through sand, see a few more sights and try to avoid the treacherous (what they called) sand puddles - deep bits of sand.
All in all, Sue and I had a good time relaxing and eating. It was good to get away and get some perspective. I thought we might feel bad having left the village and it's occupants behind. But it seems that most of the people in the village genuinely don't want to go to the beach, I guess they're happy with what they've got.
And so that's it, we got a couple of the unsafe buses back and people were intrigued with my front facing camera:
