After downsizing our belongings and dropping off chico, our car, at a nearby hotel we made our way to the mini bus station to pick up a ride to Maputo, Mozambique. As soon as we climbed on the bus packed with locals, African music blaring, surrounded by lush landscape, we truely felt that we were in Africa. A few hours later we arrived at the border and watched several people bribing the officials to get across the border without ID. Can't imagine that working as well back at home.
We began our trip to Maputo on a sour note though. A guy got hit by a car right next to our bus. The car was driving passed us on our left, but he wasn´t even in a lane. The pedestrian did not see him coming. He flew over the car and landed on his backside. Luckily he appeared to be okay although we'll never know since our bus took off shortly after, the car that hit him stopped so we hope that things were alright.
We found the weather much more tropical and humid compared to South Africa, which also came along with more mosquitos and more tropical fruit. At our hostel we received the usual briefing about the nearby neighborhoods which we shouldn't wander around and prepared ourselves for our bus trip to Tofo the following morning. On arriving at the bus depot we were swarmed by men trying to get us to buy a ticket for their bus. The mood got pretty tense as scuffling broke out over it. We managed to pick one and get on safely.
When we arrived in Tofo, we were taken aback by its beauty. It was a touch of paradise. Tofo is a small beach town made up of a small town center and a few rustic lodges overlooking the water. It´s quite undeveloped, which makes it that much more appealing. The white sand beaches were beautiful and the water was aqua coloured and most importantly it felt very safe to walk around, even at night. We stayed in a small hut by the water. It felt very mystical walking around at night with the moon reflecting off the sand, lighting up the ground and palm trees. We ate lots of fresh tiger prawns and fruit that are plentiful in the area. Very nice...
The best part of our stay was when we went snorkling with whale sharks (harmless filter feeders but massive). It was one of the coolest things I´ve ever done. Definitely in my top ten so far. We first swam with bottle nosed dolphins (which were hard to get close to since they swim so fast). Then we finally found a whale shark and got so close several times that we actually had to move out of the way. It's strickly forbidden to touch the 8m long shark, which was covered with beautiful grey and white spots. It was such a surreal experience. It felt like being in an aquarium except that you were swimming in the Indian ocean. We took some pics with a waterproof camera so we'll see how it works out.
After 3 days in Tofo we bused back to Maputo where we spent a couple of nights before our flight to Tanzania. The highlight of Maputo was definitely when we made our way to the fish market, on the outskirts of town where we got to chose any seafood we liked and the adjacent restaurants cooked it up for you. It was by far the tastiest seafood we've had on our trip. When it comes to African city scape there is not usually much to talk about, Maputo seemed to be not too much different. With Avenues such as Mao Tse Tung and Vladimir Lenin, the old communist political structure was evident in the uninspring buildings and decaying infrastructure. We usually do not carry the camera around with us, so another reason why you are not getting too many African city pictures. Tofo made the small excursion to Mozambique extremely worthwhile. It was a great little place, and highly recommended for any Southern African trip.
