Advertisement
Published: November 15th 2010
Edit Blog Post
Maputo to Inhambane is only 1 hour by plane, the LAM staff are as unhelpful as ever and have no ideas as to where to fit my bag. I find room under someone else's seat with the help of many passengers and not the staff. Inhambane is about 20mins from Tofo, so I get a taxi. Staying at Fatima's Nest, luckily this is much better than the Maputo Fatima's which has rude staff. The accommodation is beach huts or dorms, the dorm is also a thatched hut just much bigger and all have mossie nets so no probs there.
Luckily after 30mins, up walk Nik and Liz from the beach, my truck buddies! They acquaint me with the facilities, then we're off to a local hut for dinner. Black and White is a tiny shack of a restaurant but always good food, speedy service and cheap, which is more than can be said of the hostel food. Here the local beer is 2M, not Manica like further north in the country, there is in fact a bit of a rivalry. The other good thing is that is comes in 500cl bottles so you need to go to the bar less frequently.
I also have a shot of the local booze, tipo.
The next day is a relaxed one, sunbathing, reading, generally not much. I meet the local crew. Mr Delicious, seems to be the man to know, he can get anything you want and everyone seems to do what he says. He didn't play in the football match the day before so is annoyed as his team lost 6-0, Tofo Beach vs Tofo Town apparently for the World Cup... Big Tomato and John Tomato sell bracelets along with most of the blokes of the town. They will even make them to order, anything to make a sale. There are also lots of street kids, for some reason their parents live in Maputo but they have dropped out of school and live on the beach. Didn't really get to the bottom of why, but they seem to do ok out of the tourists and can speak pretty good English from that too. Nelson decides to plait my hair and do a fashion show in everyone's clothes.
That evening is supposed to be civilised with dinner at Casa Barry. This is along the other end of the beach and is more expensive, we
have a huge seafood platter and a sushi platter with glasses of white wine. The total is only 20 quid per person, even with 3 huge glasses of wine each, bargain. Unfortunately we continue drinking white wine in the hostel, where it is now served in half pint glasses, so this leads to bad headaches in the morning.
In the afternoon I attempt a dive but unfortunately too many things are out of my comfort zone so I chicken out. The boat ride is against the waves the whole journey, so after hanging on for dear life for 20mins I can barely move my arms, then the choppy sea makes me seasick. There is a strong current so we have to do negative entry, which I hate, and fail at. Luckily Fred expects this, so he takes Nik and I down, positive entry. The visibility is almost zero so as I start descending into the unknown I'm not too happy, one last thing tips me over the edge, my ears will not equalise, especially as we have to descend quite fast against the current, so I call it quits and get back on the boat. At least I see a
whale and plenty of devil rays back flipping out of the water.
That evening is a full moon party at Dino's along the beach. Brilliant night but full of crazies. Many locals stagger out drunk, early doors. One small, local woman keeps having her boob pop put while her mate keeps putting it away, the old, fat, English bloke who she's dancing with doesn't mind at all! Then we start attracting all the local men, so have to dance with the dive masters for protection. It ends up being easier just sitting outside out of the chaos. We have to leave at 3am as the girls have to catch the 4am shuttle to Maputo!
One more lazy day in Tofo before I leave too. I finished my book so have to leave as there's not much else to do!! Lovely setting though and great for beach runs, except where fierce dogs chase you...
Advertisement
Tot: 0.081s; Tpl: 0.018s; cc: 12; qc: 28; dbt: 0.0461s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb