Surfing attracts jellyfish!

Surfing was… unique. The local surf instructor slightly shredded his leg in an unnamed recent accident, and his girlfriend forbade him to actually teach us how to surf. So he sent Kristi and I on our way with two rented boards and a few confusing, self-contradictory tips on how to skim gracefully over the surface of the waves.

Of course, my surfing consisted less of grace and poise than getting my face flattened by a flying surfboard, but life is a learning experience. My surfboard was comically small, so when I lay on my stomach to paddle out past the breakers, it was a foot underwater rather than resting on the surface. The result was a curious hydrodynamic vortex that powered oceanic quantities of seawater directly up my nose each time I passed a wave. Kristi was rather more successful, acquiring a truly maniacal look in her eyes and declaring that she was abandoning her life of international development work to become a “surfer chick”. It’ll take me a few more tries before such an addiction takes hold. Occasionally I felt a momentary thrill of accomplishment at having skillfully stood up on my board, only to find that it had long since buried itself, motionless in the underwater sand. Eventually I gave up trying to actually surf, and just reverted to yesterday’s game of playing in the titanic waves, albeit with the challenging new handicap of having a 7-foot surfboard ties to my ankle. Good times.

We bartered for seafood with everyone we met on the way back to the lodge while the sun set. We returned with nearly 9 kilograms of scallops, prawns, crayfish and miniscule crabs, which we combined into a nearly inedible paella of burnt rice, unsuccessfully flavoured with salt and cider. This failure drove most of our crew to bed, but I returned religiously to the beach. Tonight the sand on the beach was so smooth that the retreating tide left behind a motionless film of water that mirrored the stars and half-moon above. Wandering the unrippling expanse, staring down at my feet, had the most enrapturing effect, like walking on the sky.

So very lazy...

Tofo makes me forget my general distaste for beaches. About 500 km north of the capital Maputo, on Mozambique’s glorious Indian Ocean coast, Tofo is a miniscule town founded on fishing and sustained by tourism. The weather is impeccably sunny, the people friendly and entrepreneurial, and the water endless and inviting and so blue it’s nearly black.

We’re at the hospitable and highly comfortable Bamboozi Backpackers, and at the moment I’m perched on the balcony of their dune-top bar, relishing the mid-tide waves a few hundred meters across the yellow sand below me. It’s an agreeable existence for tourists like me, on the tranquil shores of one of the most stunning countries I’ve seen, and it’s a crime we only have 2 days here.

Consider my day yesterday: I awoke early and devoured a free coconut (one of many) while I admired the bar, built entirely of grass, bamboo and planks of local wood. Then Natalie (our honorary Canadian) and I walked a couple of kilometers down the beach into Tofo proper, in search of amusement. We found it in the form of a snorkeling expedition further south along the coast. We joined two Americans and a handful of Canadians in an inflatable motor raft that careened over the impressive waves in search of whale sharks, and each bounce and leap nearly flung us carelessly into the water a few kilometers from shore.
Sadly, that was almost the trip’s sole excitement. We glimpsed a few dolphins leaping briefly from the water, but they were little interested in us and vanished quickly. We spent nearly two hours searching in futility for bigger game, but it was only after we’d returned in frustration to the bay we launched from that Mark, our Aussie guide and pilot, bellowed “Everybody into the water!” Slow to find my mask and flippers, I was the last off the boat. I was rewarded well for my sluggishness – as I dived in and shoved my snorkeled face under the surface, I discovered a seven-metre whale shark drifting just below me. I could easily have reached out and touched it, were such intrusions not forbidden by our guide. The largest fish in the world, a shark but interested only in plankton, slowed a little as it passed beneath, and its speed matched mine. The other divers vanished behind me somewhere, and with my face submerged the shark and I swam in total silence. I drifted for fifty or a hundred metres, arm’s length from the harmless titan in an unexpectedly tranquil and empathic experience, before it gradually descended into the opacity of the Indian ocean.
Our mission thus fulfilled, we all clambered back aboard and returned to shore. Afterwards, Nat and I perused the local crafts market and bargained for prawns with a local fisherman (2 kilos of prawns for 6 dollars – I do love to haggle!), and then wandered along the rising tide back to the backpackers. I joined Kelly and Kristi in the simple, enormous fun of battling the by-now immense waves of the climbing water. The two- or three-meter waves batted us from our feet, and we struggled endlessly to stand just so the water could work its hilarious violence on us again.
Exhausted, we cooked and devoured a vast, satisfying cauldron of a nameless prawn and tomato concoction. A few of us lingered by the bar for a while after sundown, and I enjoyed my new nightly ritual of wandering solo to the moonlit water’s edge and basking in the roar of the glittering, barely-seen waves.

Sadly, we have to leave Tofo tomorrow, for a few days in Maputo before I head to Swaziland. Through this entry I’ve been planning a rambling conclusion about how fortunate I am to be here, relaxing amidst blue water and good friends and plentiful food, but I think that’s quite enough introspection for one day. I have a few hours of daylight left, and the sun that scorched me to cinders yesterday is retreating low in the pale sky. I’m going to go learn how to surf.

The Road of Terror...

The roads in Mozambique defy belief. A chaotic webwork of dust paths crisscrosses the country, reaching some destinations and entirely ignoring others. Paved roads are few, and 4 wheel drive is essential for traveling anywhere outside the capital city. Even the main arteries, though technically paved, have potholes that would befuddle an Abrams tank. Some are literally three metres wide, and an arm’s length deep, which necessitates a sort of ridiculous slalom across the highway’s two narrow lanes, dodging careening minibuses and enormous cross-country trucks. Driving properly, between the lines, would quickly shatter even the hardiest of vehicles – and it’s been effectively demonstrated that our truck is NOT in such esteemed company.

But it sure beats some of the other wheeled calamities we saw en route. In Africa, the drivers of public transport are paid according to the number of people they move, as I may have intimated while writing about traveling in Lesotho. In Botswana, this often means that drivers pack people into the beds of their trucks, as many as can sit down and then some. But today in Mozambique we passed a pickup which had clearly been loaded with as many people as could possibly stand up – at least twenty people were crammed into the open back, all on their feet. The passengers in front leaned forward over the cab, clinging to whatever they could, and the next layer of people clamped onto them in turn, and so on. This terrifying spectacle raced around the potholes and other traffic much as we did, clocking at least 100 km an hour. I’m really glad we’ve got our own transport – public transit is a damn scary thing here.

'Bout bloody time...

The trucker had no idea what he was talking about. Through a prolonged odyssey of searching, Kelly and Andrea managed to find a competent mechanic who diagnosed a clogged fuel pump, repaired the problem for a moderately extortionate fee, and sent us on our way too late to disembark on Saturday. So another uneventful night passed at the Holiday Inn, and we set out for the tiny beach town of Tofo at 6AM today, two days behind schedule. At least we devoured some seafood (our main reason for the trip) while waiting in Pretoria.

Stuck...

Vacation is off to a roaring start. About three hours into South Africa, en route to Mozambique, the truck in which we five travel began to sputter. After getting an appraisal (in a VERY dodgy country neighborhood) from a helpful trucker, we coaxed it the 30 km to Pretoria, where we ending up spending last night crammed five to a double hotel room at the Holiday Inn. The car's being looked at, having apparently dropped some key bearings, and I'm at the pleasant Hatfield Plaze shopping centre, in one of Pretoria's nicer district. It's very pretty here - more of that Southern California feeling - but it's not Mozambique. Hopefully we'll be on our way tonight, hitting Maputo by sundown. If the car will thake longer, this being the Easter weekend, we'll probably all bus to Swaziland and formulate a better plan from there. Wish me luck.

We've been misplaced!

Pretoria isn’t Maputo, which is another 600km down the road. Our cramped double-but-secretly-accommodating-five room at the Holiday Inn is not the sunny open-air hostel that awaited us tonight in Mozambique. The Big Mac Meal on which I gorged myself tonight, at first with novel vigour and then with mounting regret, was most certainly not the prawn and crab curry my slavering mind’s eye had foreseen. But at least Raiders of the Lost Ark is on TV! Bah. I’m sure that under the right circumstances Pretoria, South Africa’s capital, is a vibrant, fascinating city. But, since it’s Easter weekend, the place is a ghost town, as everyone of means has split for the coast. There’s nothing going on. Much more importantly, dag nab it, it just ain’t where we’d hoped to be right now.

Our precious truck more-or-less died 30 km out of town, about halfway between Gabs and Mozambique. We coaxed the wheezing beast off the freeway and into a rundown gas station/bar in a nameless little hamlet around noon. It being Easter Friday, no mechanic was available and, more strikingly, everyone there was already reeking drunk, including the genuinely helpful trucker who looked over the engine when he stopped to buy beers for the road (yikes!). He diagnosed horrific symptoms liked dropped bearings and engine corrosion and broken cylinders, but informed us that the car could limp to Pretoria, where we may have to wait until Tuesday to get it fixed. ARGH! Inasmuch as rural South Africa is not known to be safe haven for lost and confused tourists (and the trucker terrified us with, “You are NOT safe here”), we dragged the truck at 20 km/h all the way to Pretoria, where we grabbed a hotel room. Now we’re waiting, watching TV, eating McDonald’s food (which we haven’t had in many months in Gabs), and hoping against hope that the trucker had no idea what he was talking about.

Aaaaargh!

I'm a git.

I write all my blog postings on my computer at home, and then drag them over the web cafes and post them. Only this time, having finished nearly all of my posts for the last two weeks, including the remnant details of my trip, I forgot my USB key before heading to the interweb place.

This is particularly frustrating because I'm leaving for Mozambique at 6AM tomorrow and will be vanished for two weeks. I'll try to find a net cafe in the capital Maputo where I can throw this stuff online. I think I'm writing mostly for my own records now anyways - who wants to read three-week-old vacation news?

In other news, I finished my job at the Red Cross yesterday! They brought cake, and bought me a copper clock shaped like Africa, and hugged me. A lot. They sang the Botswana Red Cross song, the lyrics to which are absolutely awful, but they made it sound amazing. I have yet to meet a single person in this country who can't sing like a professional vocalist. It's impressive and eerie.

So I'm done!!! I managed to get a whole lot more done at this job than at the last one. Working in Botswana entails savoring the small victories, because large ones are a myth. I had a few small victories - secured some important donations, built a database, trained the staff in how to use it - and I'm glad for them. Not too bad for just 6 weeks work. Now it's just vacation and relaxation and a wee bit of paperwork for three more weeks.

First Mozambique (possibly the poorest country in the world, but with good food and snazzy beaches), then Swaziland (landlocked kingdom ruled by borderline retarded tribalist jackass), then a few days in Gabs wrapping up the details. Then I'm coming back home to the most important thing in the world - Fooooood!!! Delicious Vancouver food!!! Oh yeah, and friends and family and dogs and all that...

The first volley!

I've posted four entries from my first day of the last trip. Don't worry, not all future posts will be so infernally wordy. Rather than hope you'll all burrow through my archives looking for them, I'm just going to link to them here.

Baobabs
Heffalumps!
Food!
Bob!

Enjoy!

Alive!

I'm back in Gabs! Waitaminute, Gabs is the dullest place on Earth. I want to be back in Zambia.

Since I can't have that, it seems (stupid work), I'll have to relive the trip through blog posts, the first batch of which approaches readiness. I went to Zimbabwe, Zambia, Northern Botswana, and technically into Namibia for a few minutes. All were amazing, and all offered different things.

I saw the astonishing Victoria Falls from above and below, across two countries. The animals were everywhere, including elephants, crocs, hippos, and monkeys who raided my tent and scattered my possessions far and wide. The weather was exceptionally pleasant and the mosquitoes were cruel beyond words. Four hundred or so photos did I take, few of which bandwidth will allow me to post, but I'll try.

Soon all will be revealed...

On hiatus...

My silence of late is well justified, I promise.

At the moment, for example, I'm in Zambia, using my few minutes on a decent internet connection to tell y'all that I won't be posting for another week. Yesterday I was in Zimbabwe (for tourists, not nearly as terrifying as you'd think... cheap and exceptionally friendly). I wandered the unspeakably immense and moving Victoria Falls, about which I'll blog in greater detail in the not-too-distant future. Today I puttered about Livingstone, the border town, and tomorrow I'll be heading up to two nights on Bovu Island, a small and cheap beastie-watching camp in the middle of the mighty Zambezi, deeper into the heart of beknighted Zambia.

Then it's two nights in Chobe Game reserve in northern Botswana, riding sunset cruises in the hopes of getting devoured by hippos, and taking a just-before-dawn game drive to see if I can't catch the lions at feeding time. It's all quite exciting, but it has me abdicating my bloggy duties for the time being. You'll get it all in nauseating detail as soon as I'm back at my trusty computer (from which I may be able to send pictures of the hundreds of baboons that followed me today.)

More to come... those of you who still check in here from time to time will be rewarded for your persistence.