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13th – 20th November 2010
Vilanculos – Tofo

After one of the worst nights sleep of this trip….I think I managed about 2 hours of actual sleep in the hottest room ever with mosquitos flying around us (the Lonely Planet does rate Beira as the place that you are most likely to catch malaria in Moz!), we woke up at 2am and quickly got changed and finished packing our bags (so quickly that I managed to leave my favourite t shirt behind) and ran out the door as our taxi driver was early (now that’s a first in Africa!) and was tooting the heck out of his car horn. We managed to board the bus etc and had a smooth comfortable ride to our drop off point although the sun threatened to melt us as one stage…we were at the front of the top level of the bus and the sun was intense…but hey it was better than sitting in a crowded chapa!
The drop off point for the bus was about 20kms inland from Vilanculos so we had to catch a chapa truck into the town. We were staying at Zombie Cucumber Backpackers here but our chapa driver didn’t know where it was so we drove around the sandy streets for a while before we finally found it. This has turned out to be one of the best backpackers I’ve ever stayed in with excellent facilities and a really nice atmosphere, unfortunately the cook was AWOL while we were there but they still served up delicious breakfasts.
I was exhausted when we got there and pretty much dumped my bag on the floor and climbed onto the bed and fell asleep for a few hours before waking up feeling human again. We had found a restaurant that we wanted to try but after walking for what seemed like ages we arrived at the restaurant to find that it was closed due to the owner dying that day…….bad luck for him and us. So we ended up down at a dodgy, tacky place called Smugglers eating calamari and chips.

The next morning we woke up to a gorgeous day, we were picked up and taken further down the beach to go on our snorkeling trip out to the Bazaruto Archipeligo on a dhow. We were joined by 3 American guys for the day, it was beautiful out there, the photos just don’t do it justice. Lots of white sand and turquoise waters, amazing coloured fish and the hot sun….and delicious crabs, salad and rice for lunch! This was one of my favourite days of this whole trip, spent in one of the most beautiful places on earth! We finished off the day with dinner at a lovely restaurant down the beach eating a prawn curry with a nice cold beer.

The next day was spent chilling out around Vilanculos, we explored the markets, booked the next bus trip, stocked up on doom to kill all the mozzies in our room and relaxed in the pool.

Not too early a start today thankfully. We had to meet the bus to Maxixe (pronounced Masheesh) at 9.30 so we caught a taxi back to the turn off and waited on the side of the road, watching the locals go about their day. I was a little nervous about this leg of the trip as we had to catch a bus to Maxixe, then a ferry to Inhambane and finally another bus to Tofo our next stop, but the day went really well except for a minor melt down from me when the heat, tiredness and irritating local chapa drivers got a little too much! But we made it and were amazed at the beautiful beach of Tofo……like a beach in Northern Queensland, lots of golden sand and crashing waves. We are staying in Bamboozi, a backpackers with basic bamboo huts and a bar/restaurant resting high on a sand dune with views of the whole bay. It’s the most touristy of all the places we’ve been so far as it’s only about 6 hours from Maputo and close to SA so there are a lot of South Africans here on holidays. We haven’t really been doing much, just lying on the beach, reading, sleeping etc and generally making the most of our last few days on the coast before heading to Maputo

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