So I threw up on a whale shark

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If it’s one dive trip to be without my cameras, it had to be this one. The one where humpback whales swim up to your boat with their calves in tow. The one where bottleneck dolphins escort you through the waves to your dive sites. The one where loggerhead turtles and 8m long whale sharks laze on the water next to you during surface times.

Diving in Mozambique is something special. On my first dive to Manta Reef we saw humpbacks, whale sharks, dolphins, turtles, mantas, and 2-meter long white-tip sharks. By the end of the day our boat no longer stops when we see another unmistakable tail waving to us from the waters. The deep dives in Inhambane off Praia do Tofo are far out and the transport out in the small boats are not for the nausea-inclined. Sites are anywhere from 30 minutes to an hour out on a little boat rocked around in pretty rough waters. When the boat stops and we all kit up, I need to put on my gear blind as my eyes are desperately glued to the pretty white cloud on the horizon as we rock about on a watery rollercoaster. It doesn’t help that my torso is constricted by a 3mm wetsuit (when I’m used to diving in skin) and that I’m diving on regular air (when I’m used to diving on Nitrox.) Why then, am I diving on air? Because diving in Moz is ridiculously expensive at up to 70 USD per dive with full hire. (As another measure, Open Water courses run upwards of 500 USD.) I can’t bear to tack on another 10 bucks per dive so I decide to take two teaspoons of cement and HTFU (harden the FU as Tim likes to put it.)

It’s not the easiest diving I’ve done. I’m a pussy and the winter 24 degree C waters are pretty cold for me. Currents even on our first dive here are pretty strong and it was serious work to keep from being swept away underwater. I surface after 45 min with 110 bar which for me is less than usual. Our groups are small and consist of only Advanced divers if not other vacationing dive instructors themselves. You know it’s good when dive instructors dive it on their holidays. I don’t see many people getting certified here at all. Extra precautions are taken as the nearest recompression chamber is in South Africa; low air levels are set at 70 bar for everybody.

Mozambique has amazing things to offer but to be honest the diving itself didn’t blow me away. Sure it was nice, and you have loads of humpbacks and whale sharks at the surface. As for the underwater scene though, color variety is not a forte, landscape and coral diversity does not compare to Asia. We saw a good variety of life; reef sharks, manta, leopard sharks, morays, scorpionfish, stonefish, nudis… Perhaps I am a bit spoiled but these no longer impress me much anymore, I’ve seen all and in greater quantities in other waters. It is nice diving, but in my mind I’m paying the premium for the whales and dolphins we encounter on the surface, which are rightly pretty sick.

The humpbacks are now passing along the coast on their migration south after calving up here. Tim sees tons of whales in Australia but here in Moz the humpbacks really hug the coast so are so much closer. We’ve been as close as 10m from a humpback and her calf. I hear them singing underwater when we dive. When we aren’t diving, we sit on the beach and watch the humpbacks breach in the air, spout, and wave. I feel a bit cheeky now laughing at all the people who pay thousands of dollars and spend weeks on huge cruise ships for the chance of just spotting a couple of these from the boat deck a hundred meters away.

Although the diving is a bit exploratory, challenging, and really makes you feel tiny tiny in 360 degree open ocean, I suppose I couldn’t be in a safer situation. We dive with 2 DMs and both Tim and Todd are dive instructors as well. I myself as a former lifeguard have kept up with my own First Aid and CPR training. So really, I feel quite safe. In addition, diving with dive instructors on holiday is a blast. Tim takes plastic coke bottles down on the d vies to rub between his hands, the sound attracts sharks and we are here to see some big ones. Todd’s dreadlocks float underwater which makes him look a bit like a medusa; clownfish mistake him for an anemone and swim around in his hair. Best of all they still stop and point out all the good stuff to me and put our diving into a bit of perspective.

Nausea did get to me on the first day out. I donated quite a bit of stomach bile to the ocean. As I was going at it over the side of the boat, a whale shark swam directly under my face. Sure beats staring at a round porcelain bowl.

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