Thanksgiving ‘07

by Dom on December 9th, 2007

We went to the Ambassadors. It was a nice festive event. The trainees were there. I was pretty much at the height of being ill so I can’t say I was happy to be mingling. It happened though. I even tried swimming once, I went under, got an incredible headache and was then greeted at the surface with a coughing fit. The water was ok though. There were like 30 people in a pool the size of Tim’s. I missed the first bus too, so I didn’t get any of the good beer like some black&tan or some other dark beers that weren’t Carlsburgs. Man I am tired of that beer. The food was decent. Honestly though, my memories of home and Shoney’s were a bit better. One funny thing did happen, this kid got stuck in a life preserver. He tried to dive through it but was too fat and got stuck. It wouldn’t come off. He tried pulling up, and sliding down, and diving back in both ways, but ended up in the shower with soap. It worked. I think it was the morning after two black mambas were killed maybe 10m from our tent. scary…They were only like half a meter long but one had eggs.

Mozambique

by Dom on December 9th, 2007

So I know it’s been a while but I’ve been busy, I tried to type these offline as I went while it was all still fresh in my mind, and I’m paying for internet, as usual, so I’m just making one huge post. Enjoy.

The Plan

wake up early hitch out to Mwanza(the Malawian border town), buy visas, and minibus(chapa as called in Mozambique) it to Tete hopefully in time to get tickets on the flight leaving that day. If not, spend the night in Tete and take the next flight. Tickets should be around $100, and the thought of saving two days transport is well worth it. Hang in Maputo for a couple days enjoying a first-world-ish city and food and then bus it to Tofo. Spend a few days in Tofo diving, learning to surf and eating lobster. Then backtrack through Maputo and Tete via plane again to get back to Lilongwe in time for Thanksgiving. Now what actually happened…

So we woke up early planned on leaving around 5:30 but didn’t actually end up leaving until 6. It turned out ok though we got real good hitches. It was kind of crazy. There was this dude that was actually going all the way to Mwanza, but he said he would be going to slow, and we actually never did see him again so I guess we got there before him. We had made a sign the minibus on the way out to the hitching point and I held it up as I sat in the bed of the truck of the first hitch to the passing cars to see if they would pity us. It worked. Strangely enough. The guy made no sign though except that he turned his turn signal off, it was weird. He wasn’t going all the way but it was definitely enough. Then after him and a 5min wait we had a ride in a taxi to the border, but the guy riding didn’t ask for any money which was cool.

We got the exit stamp in Malawi no problem and took the K100 ride to Zobwe, the Mozambican border town. There the border people proceeded to take two or three hours of our time. They called us back after an hour and made us all write our middle names. It was great. real great. Otherwise it was smooth, just long. We finally got out of the office around 10:30. Then we spent a good little bit waiting on a minibus(chapa) to go while Jenn tried to hitch for us. It turned into a bit of a fiasco. We all took off in the bus, hitching failed, went about three K only to turn around and come right back. That was obnoxious so Jenn got out again. Her and I were shotgun. Ron and Catherine were in the back. She got us a ride on a truck just as the bus was about to leave, but he wasn’t going to charge us and possibly could end up being faster so we chose him. He wan’t us there in a hury so I ran out and over there with Jenn and my stuff. Only to sit and wait for Ron and Catherine. After what I deemed too long while Jenn was out talking with the driver still I went back to check on them. The bus conductor wouldn’t let them out. He had locked the door and no one would move out of their way or unlock it to help them. They didn’t give me any hassle though as I reached through the open window unlocked and swung open the door in a rush. They piled out then we all piled into the truck to take off, but then we had to wait like another half hour with the driver to get change. Turned out he wasn’t in such a hury. Super nice guy though.

We arrive at Tete around 1:30, unsure if today the flight is at 1, 2 or 1:30 or what. So we rush straight to the airport knowing they only sell tickets in town(stupid). No dice the plane is about to leave. We missed it. Oh well, a night in Tete would be cool we thought. Little did we know we’d spend most of our time there. We got a ride into town with some lady we met at the airport. She showed us a hostel, some banks and the LAM(Mozambican airlines) office. We got out at the office and tried to get some tickets. Our reservations had been cancelled by LAM because we didn’t pay before a certain date so we tried to get some more. Today is a thursday now, and there were none for friday or saturday and only two for sunday supposedly. We left double dejected because they claimed the tickets were like $200+. Which is twice what we expected, not good. So we just wandered around the town for a bit, got some food and speculated about other options while looking for a place to stay. We finally ended up at this place called Hotel Kassuende. On the brink of sketch but seemed like a solid enough place and it had A/C which we hadn’t seen in years, or months atleast. It also just happened to be across the street from a travel agent. We decided to check about flights with him, because the 32hour bus leaving a two days later for $50-ish didn’t sound too enjoyable…The travel agent said he had four tickets for Saturday. Sweet. But his were like $250. After a few hours deliberation and a no money scare, when the international bank declined our ATM cards, we decided it was worth it to keep the trip going and just do it. So we brought him the money, cash and he got us our tickets and a reciept from LAM. However he said there was a problem with the fact that we had reservations that had been cancelled by LAM and so our names were in the computer twice and I don’t know maybe people aren’t allowed to buy two tickets or aren’t allowed to buy some cancel and buy more who knows. He said he got it cleared up and the portugese made it kind of hard to really follow up other than just taking his word for it. The flight was two days later too though, so we had an extra day in Tete. It wasn’t going to be too bad though Tete has a couple good bakery’s and some good pizza and the beer options were just so much better. So we did the hanging out and then trucked it to the airport. High spirits and excited. We were at the airport around 9. The flight was at 1. We were by far the first in line. As it turned out though that just meant we got rejected sooner. As it turned out our travel agent didn’t clear up the problem with Maputo and we, in a moment of stupidity didn’t get his number. So we had to sit there beside the front of the line watching the plane fill up. Flying standby for $250 in Mozambique. Not too fun. We were all in peices by the time the end of the line finally arrived. All four of us were up at the desk the whole time in the guys face pretty much and he let people on before us and then offered us 3 seats. We didn’t even have time to debate leaving someone behind for a day when he gave another seat away, 2. Then 1, then none. We were livid and distraught. We did happen to meet another PCV in Mozambique, there were some PCT’s heading back to Maputo. They helped us get one person confirmed for the flight the next day so only three flying standby. We rode back to Tete ate lots of pizza, I had two calzones the size of half a large pizza each, they were soooooo good. The next day we were there again at the same time. Got another one of us confirmed so then, as it happened, only the girls were flying standby. We sat there through everyone getting on again until, except this time we brought our travel agent. The mean manager women in Tete told him we declined the three standby tickets because we decided to take the bus. How stupid would that be, that was lady was so atrocious. Jenn begged at a clutch moment and the lady permitted the boarding guy to take our tickets and give us boarding passes we were on, three days later. Sunday, not saturday, not the Maputo yearly holiday, not the curio market day or the live music day, but Sunday.

So we got our bags at the airport, a cooler with fish in it that someone had checked(africa…) had opened and spilled on Jenn’s bag so she checked trash cans and turned in circles for a bit looking for what smelled and then we informed her…it didn’t make her any happier about LAM. We taxied it to the hostel and our driver showed us the tallest building in Mozambique, SWEET. The dude at our hostel was a boob too. A weird dude with a weird accent that forced his laugh at things he was out of the loop on. And a bit too particular. Oh well enough about him, another odd thing was the lack of mosquito nets at a place where it’s obvious whitey’s are gonna be where it’s also obviously malaria ridden. The people there weren’t especially friendly. I’ve just realized I’ve been pretty negative so far. Don’t worry it gets AWESOME. We went pretty much immediately out on the town looking for food. We ended up at this place that must we decided was like the chili’s of Moz. It was good though. I don’t remember what I got but I remember it was good. Seafood pasta I think.

Maputo Day 1

So the next day we all ventured out together looking for breakfast. I mean if Tete has that bakery Maputo must have something as good atleast or better hopefully. We find an awesome little bakery, and had coffee. Then Ron and I went looking for the ForEx for him while Catherine and Ron went looking for a western union. That ended up eating up the whole morning. And we finally got on our way to the fish market around 12:30. It was pretty straight forward to get to but just kind of far. Like after a few diversions we arrived around 4. The diversions included stopping at this veritable shopping mall and just wandering around feeling a bit to village to walk in a Lacoste or Monte Blanc store. I did manage to get into some african jewelry store. Beautiful stuff, real expensive too. The exchange rate really threw me for a loop, its so much better there. its like $4 for every 100 metcais. Of course they drop a few zeros so like 10metcais is actually a million or something like that. It was close to confusing the entire time. I digress, we also got ice cream and checked out some curious and spray painted lilies. As in a lily that was cut and spray painted hunter orange, why…who knows. Over halfway there the road ran along the water for a while, it was nice, there were embassies from like everywhere, but we really needed to go to the bathroom and couldn’t find the American one, so we ended up in the bushes/park. The market was real neat though. Just 30L buckets full of mussels and clams, and baskets full of crab, coolers full of snapper and mackrel, buckets of prawns and lobsters just chillin on tables. This time we opted for sharing a little of each and ended up with mackrel steak, prawns, crab and calimari. About 3kg’s, that’s like 6.6lbs of sea food. We had a dude from a market resteraunt walking around with us helping and then he cooked it all up, gourmet style, for 70Mc per Kg. It was so good we knew we had to come back. We hitched back into town with some drunk dudes and possible prostitutes. Ron and I in the bed while the girls were in the cab. Beautiful seaside ride. Well the water was pretty dirty but it was the Indian Ocean! Then we got ice cream again and took another cab back to the hostel, I got a waffle with my ice cream. Tried to order pizza at 8:50, but they stopped delivering at 9 and wouldn’t budge. I was truly sad. Delivered pizza, what a wonderful luxury. The stuff I’ll love when I do finally get home…

Maputo Day 2

We slept in and got up around 8. Wandered out and got coffee and breakfast again. Then started again for the market. Hopefully for lunch this time. However we did stop for ice cream at the nicest hotel I saw in Moz the whole time. It was weird. Then chapa-ed it to the fish market again. I had a 1kg lobster and a kg of prawns, I think I paid about $20 for it all. It was good but quite filling. Then we hitched back in a chapa owned by a rwandan refugee whod been in maputo for about 5 years he said. We had to go to the LAM office to try to get return tickets. And I’m not even going to try to remember all the in’s and out’s of that story but just know it was atrocious and it haunted our every move that whole vacation. Dinner we looked for an often rumored good Thai resteraunt but ended up back at that first nights resteraunt. It was quite good again. Not let down.

Tavel

The next morning we got in a pre-arrange taxi to the bus depot and passed a KFC, if only we’d known that was there! I’ve been craving a bucket of chicken for literally years. I could never pull the trigger in atl. Found the express bus to Tofo, no problem. Then we sat for another hour and pulled out. It was a decent bus too, a coaster one per seat. We took up the back row. Bought cashews and beer from the vendors shoving them in our faces at the stops and even bought a coconut. Apparently I paid a bit too much for the coconut because after we pulled away and I Was like whatever, change lost, the conductor asked and Jenn told him we were waiting for change, how much, 100Mc, for what, coconut. He talked to the driver and we busted a u-turn after having gone over 2k down the road. As we rolled back into the village I pointed at the vendor, he came over and gave me a 20 change, the conductor yelled, a 50 came through my window, the conductor(who is bigger than me) got out screaming at this little vendor guy and chasing him down. Finally the conductor came and brought me the rest of my change. I ended up paying 5Mc for it. About 20cents. It took about eight hours on the bus to get there. Not too bad, we rolled in at 2 and it almost felt like a whole day there. The water was gorgeous and felt spectacular. Checked in to our hostel on the beach, checked out one dive spot and then went swimming again. Apparently there were small jellyfish in the water. I got stung twice, which was pretty lucky Ron must have gotten stung like 20 times over the whole time we were there. Our place was a little reed hut with sand floor and like 20 shelves it seemed, a woven banana leaf roof and a fan. ELECTRICITY! That fan was clutch but it ended up the power was out more than on it seemed.

Tofo Day 1

So we woke up went swimmin, got some breakfast and wandered over to Diversity Scuba. Ended up signing up for a dive and a whale shark safari. The former for the same day and the latter for the next day. The dive was at 1 that day so we went next door and got some lunch at this surf shop/diner, it was cool. That’s where Jenn asked what prego was and we found it was steak not liver like previously suspected. The dive was so freakin’ awesome. It ended up just being Jenn, Catherine, Me and people from the shop. We had to push the boat around on the beach so we could get it in the water and out. It had twin 85hp johnsons and just tore through the ocean to the dive spot. Where we went was called the Salon. I was pretty dang nervous at the beginning huffing hard on my regulator as I sunk into the salty water but I started to get comfortable once we were going. Saw lion fish, octapus, scorpion fish, trigger fish, moorish idols, nudy branches(that’s what it sounded like the divemaster kept sayin), trigger fish, flute fish, anemone crabs, and all kinds of other stuff. It was real awesome, real awesome. It also had that feeling like I accomplished something really cool, like after that first mountain biking trip we all went on. It was like 4-ish by then, we got debriefed, went next door again for snack, then went back to the hostel to shower and change and head to dinner. We decided not to eat at the place we were staying, didn’t hear good things nor experiences, and went for a walk down the beach and ate at this sweet place that served an awesome pizza.

Tofo Day 2

The next day we woke up early ate some breakfast and snagged some body boards that were sitting out to really have some fun in the water. About 10 minutes later, however, this dude came down and asked us who we had spoken with about the baords because we had to rent them for 200Mc’s a day. You have no sign, they are just sitting out and we don’t want them for a day, we told the guy. he was upset, said something about his sign blowing away cause it was windy and about how we shouldn’t just take things. Jenn told him things like that are normally included with your stay in America, He said this wasn’t America and asked how long we’d been here. He was surprised at that answer and then told Jenn she probably didn’t even know how to use a body board. She told him she was sponsored…Ah good times. That place did cause some Likoma flash backs from time to time. Around 11 we headed out for lunch and to prepare for our whale shark safari. We had made some friends at the dive shop so we got the good snorkels. booya. How this works is we take a boat out, similar to the one the day before but with a small spotting tower on there. We tool up and down the coast looking for dark spots in the water and when we see one we verify and hope in, snorkeling only. They stay close to the surface for the most part. The one we saw was about 6m long. It was a baby. We also saw a manta and a ton of dolphin. That was a pretty sweet little adventure too. Afterwards we had a meal at the internet place in town which made one mean iced coffee. then went swimming and headed to that same reseraunt for dinner again.

Tofo Day 3

So this day was a more individual day. Ron had a massage scheduled, Catherine and Jenn went on a deep dive to Manta Reef and I tried to find a surf board and teach myself how to do things with it. The one place next to the dive shop was closed and as long as the walk ended up being it was probably good. I heard of another place from the dive shop and went to check it out. It was too early so the bartender wasn’t there, so some of the other staff told me to just take it and talk to the bartender when I returned(if I returned). IT was a 8′ foam board and like a 20 min walk. Tofinho was the corner of town I was trying to find. The guy at the surf resteraunt showed me it in some worldwide surf book so I was determined to find it. It was real nice. There were some 2′-3′ waves but the currrent was real strong. I only mustered up the courage a few times to try. Otherwise I was on the beach practicing some techniques Jenn suggested before I left her for her deep dive. We had decided to meet back around 11 so after my initial solid attempts I returned the board and headed back to meet them. Don’t worry the plan was to all go surf after lunch. Went back to that internet place for lunch. It was good again. Battin’ a thousand. Then I showed them how to get to this surf spot. Well not really I got a hitch the first time from our friend at the dive shop and then he ended up picking us up again, which was pretty great. It’s a bit of a haul, especially with an 8′ board. We started off in this little cove. I wasn’t sure if it was any better or worse than where I was before but I was tired of walking. So we hung out there for a while until the current had us in the reef wall. A bit dangerous. I thought it’d be cool until Jenn said we were being stupid. Then I got a bit nervous. We made it ok though, a few scrapes, no biggie. This new side, where I was earlier, was much better. Much less dangerous, more open and a bit closer breaking waves. So we surfed for a good bit longer, swapping off for the body board when I got too tired. I did stand up a few times. Never for anything significant but it was definitely a good time. A very good time. Need to work on paddling. I’d presume that’s most newbies problems. We ended up taking trying to take photos of each other jumping and writing in the sand with a stick and messing with these little sand snail things. Afterwards we walked the boards back and paid and stopped to check out this other restaurant on the way home. We decided, since it was the last night to try to something new. So after showers we headed back. Nice thing about Mozambique and especially Tofo is that we could walk around after dark. We then decided that instead of taking the 4am bus for 400Mc we would just hitch to Inhanmbane and take a bus for 200Mc back to Maputo. We were told they left continually from 6 to 11.

Travel Back

Apparently on sundays they only leave at 11. We waited on the bus for like 2-3 hours and didn’t get into maputo until like 5. Very annoying because we were flying out of Maputo the next day and hence essentially now had zero time in Maputo. We made the best of it and got ice cream/gelato and I got like three dinners at some restaurant. Never did make it to KFC. That’s a bummer man…

Flying out of Maputo

So we got there and paid for our tickets and got our boarding passes no problem. We tried again to get some kind of compensation (thanks Jenn), but turns out that for a third world african country they are a bit of a stickler for following processes for reparations. Who knew. Anyway we made it to Tete no problem. We didn’t stop in Quelimane, or get our two meals/snacks, only one. Our goal for Tete was stay at the place with TV, and get some pizza and in the morning get some breakfast at one of the bakeries before rollin out. As it turned out, none of that was possible. Tete just doesn’t like us. Oh well, we made it back. Hitching wasn’t too much of a problem, we did happen to find, luckily enough, the slowest minibus in Malawi to take us from Mwanza to Zalewa. A few hitches later we were chillin in Lilongwe preparing for sleep, going out to dinner and looking forward to Thanksgiving. So, that was Mozambique.