Day 3 in Mozambique

12 June 2011, Inhambane ~ Tofo

Day three of our Mozambique holiday and we have arrived in paradise but before I tell you more about this paradise, let me jot down how we spent our morning.

We found the kitchen closed so we couldn’t make our morning cup of coffee and ended up going for an early morning walk along the promenade to the pier.

It was bustling with activity. Many people were arriving from Maxixe and unloading their wares they received from the mainland. Other ladies also arrived with various vegetables and goods to sell in this small peninsula town.

On our return we finally could have our coffee and Ouma rusks on the terrace with our beautiful view.

We finally did get to take the ferry across to Maxixe and honestly, it is not much to boast about. It is beautiful when you step off the ferry but as soon as you reach the dusty main road, the charm slips away. 

Maxixe developed basically as a trading stop, allowing people from the mainland to unload goods to take across the peninsula and then to continue up the coast.

We took a walk around town and found an open-air carpentry shop with beautiful furniture crafted out of rich brown wood. I even got offered a marriage proposal. While walking past a group of men sitting outside a shop I heard one of them chirp, “I need a wife to marry”. Ha ha, sorry pal, this girl is walking on by.

Before hoping back over to Inhambane we enjoyed a beer-shandy on the deck of the One Stop restaurant, admiring the view across the bay to our little sleepy town.

One thing I must point out, when you in a foreign country, menu's are always entertaining to read. If someone can tell me what kind of a drink a bathtub is, I'll buy you a bag of cashew nuts.

We ended up taking the local taxi service back to Inhambane, the dhow. While waiting on the pier for the return ferry, a local dressed in a sailor suit approached us and asked, “Inhambane?”

We explained to him that we already had tickets for the ferry but he insisted we had to get on the dhow. Realising we weren’t understanding he gently reached for our tickets that were poking out of my book. He then pointed to the dhow and pointed to the tickets and said, “no ferry”. O well, when in Rome... So in we hopped and away we went. 

It was a lovely ride across the bay and we even saw a large group of flamingos gathered on a sand bank.

Back on shore we went in search of a supermarket to buy some goodies for the week ahead and the central market to buy some fresh fruit.

Outside the market I saw a lady selling strange looking roots and suggested to Neil we go buy some. I had seen people earlier that day, down at the pier, buying pieces and munching on it. They were very long roots, light brown in colour, which looked like sweet potatoes. My curiosity was killing me and I had to find out what it was and tasted like.

We asked the lady for a small piece and asked her how much it was. Even with our hand signs, pinching our fingers together to indicate a small piece, she clearly did not understand. Luckily, another lady did and she organised a small piece for us. We thanked her and started to walk away but she stopped us, as I suppose she wanted to see our faces when we tasted this root.

Neil was the brave one and took a bite first. He didn’t pull a face and so I took a bite too. What a strange experience, it was quite crunchy and chalky, you had to chew for a very long time but as you chewed, a sweet watery taste swirled around in your mouth.

Not having made up my mind if I liked it or not and not wanting to be rude, I said “bon”. Our friendly helper took it as an affirmative and organised an even bigger piece for us. We kindly paid the lady for our unidentified root and departed with a puzzled look.

Luckily when we crossed the street, leaning against the wall was a man who must have been watching us with great amusement as he told us, with a smirk, that what we were eating was called cassava. It is a root from the cassava plant that the locals usually dry, mill into a powder and make porridge from it.  Aha! So that is what it is. He also told us that the leaves of the cassava plant look like those of a dagga plant.

He wasn’t the only one that thought it amusing we were eating the cassava. When we bought coconut bread from the bakery across the road, the lady looked at us with a smile and asked, “bon?”  We gave her a thumb up although I can say that I won’t easily eat cassava again thank you.

After lunch we caught a taxi to Tofo. On the way we passed plantations of coconut trees for as far as the eye could see, interrupted with fields of cassava (well a plant that looked like a dagga tree so we presumed it was cassava).

Our taxi driver dropped us off in town, although he said he was going to drop us off at Bamboozi Backpackers. So you can imagine our irritation when we realised Bamboozi was a 2km walk away. It may not sound far but when you carrying your luggage it all of a sudden seems miles away.

We then decided to stay at Fahtima’s Backpackers. It was much closer and looked great. I felt like we had arrived in paradise. Our little grass hut was perched right on top of a sand dune with the beach at our front door. We had a perfect, unobstructed view of the ocean and peninsula’s hugging the bay closely.

After we settled in we went to explore and started with a walk on the beach. We walked towards Tofino, clambered up the sand dune and sat admiring our little piece of paradise while we discussed our plans for the rest of the week. Taking in the beauty of our new surrounds, our planned two night stay soon turned into three and eventually we stayed here for the rest of our time in Mozambique.


We took a walk into town and found a dive centre where we booked an ocean safari for tomorrow. One of my biggest wishes before I came to Mozambique was to see a whale shark. I teased people and said I was not coming home unless I saw one and I ended that day full of excitement and holding my thumbs tight for luck.

Later in the evening we sat outside our hut, a Mozambique sunset as our backdrop, enjoying a chilled 2M beer and snacking on cashew nuts, our feet deeply burrowed in the beach sand. If this was not rewarding enough, Tofo treated us to an almost full moon shining on the ocean. What a perfect vision to have before falling asleep in a grass hut, listening to the rumbling ocean on your doorstep.