Marvelous, magical Mozambique

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August 1st 2008

Published: August 7th 2008

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BerLM

Dhows

at Margaruque Island

Mozambique was an absolute blast as expected. Our trip had three purposes; firstly to relax a bit, secondly to serve as a week of saying farewell to our friends and family and lastly as a place to do our commitment ceremony.

Unfortunately as a result of logistics and circumstances, we could not get everyone that we wanted to be present to be there. There was a shortage of space and flights. We had 21 people in total and it was still an amazing week.

We arrived on the 21st of July, with our parents, roz, Cailen and Bernhard´s sister, Ingrid. For the first three days the weather was not that good, but not terrible either. Not much happened in the first three days, except for good seafood and general laziness. On Wednesday, most of the group had arrived, barring 4 persons.

Thursday the activities started, with a dhow trip to Margaruque Island, the smallest island of the seaward group of islands of the Bazaruto Archipelago. The dhow trip was very good, some people snorkeled, some swam and everyone chilled out. A few of us walked around the island, the resulting trip was slightly longer than originally anticipated but

Dhow

View from the house

well worth it.

Friday´s activity was going to Pansy Island on the south end of Bazaruto Island. Pansy Island is not strictly speaking an island, more a bar of sand on which one can get off. We had a great day there. We ran out of beer at some point and decided to go buy some at a little shop stand run by locals on Bazaruto. This was recommended by one of the local skippers and five of us set off to go and buy the beer, armed with lots of monetary contributions. As it was low tide, this took quite a bit longer than we thought, as we had to walk over a large area of shallows that the speedboat could not traverse.

We asked some fishermen along the way whether there was any beer to be bought and they confirmed that there was, indeed beer available. As you may expect after such a paragraph, once we arrived we were delighted to see that there were two beers for sale. We bought them.

Ceremony

Saturday was the ceremony. We had married legally before leaving South Africa, but this was the celebration of the marriage. We started

Us on Pansy Island

the day by having a lovely breakfast on the lawn in front of the beach at Beach Lodge in Vilanculos. Then at 10 AM,there was an informal ceremony on the far side of Margaruque Island; we both spoke for 2 minutes each and Bernhard's brother in law, JP, said a few things as well. After this, we had a fire ceremony. Everyone present had a chance to say a blessing and add some incense mix to the fire. It was all very touching and nice. One of our friends, Brand, played guitar at three occasions, once at breakfast, once at the ceremony and two songs just before lunch. The music had South American themes and it rounded off the day quite nicely.

After the ceremony we had a fantastic lunch prepared specially for us at Beach Lodge. Crab Curry, prawns, fish, etc. In all, a very successful day.

The Mozmbique trip was a unique experience that both of us will never forget.

Photo credits: JP and Jay

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