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.