Day 5 in Mozambique

15 June 2011, Tofo

Today we are going on an Ocean Safari! I bounced all the way to the dive centre, so excited was I that I just might see a whale shark today.

At the dive centre our guide briefed us on safety, how we should behave in the water with the animals and that if we are lucky we might see the big 5 – whale shark, mantra rays, leather back turtles, dolphins and hump back whales. Wow! My excitement just exploded ten-fold.  

On this high note we all walked down to the beach and helped launch the boat into the water. As Neil says, the people here are like cowboys and the way our skipper was enjoying the thrill of racing the rubber duck through the waves really did make me think he was a sea cowboy.

Pretty soon into our safari we spotted some dolphins. The boat rode on ahead so we could plonk into the water and be there waiting when the dolphins swam past. However, my fear wouldn’t let me get into the water and I remained on board.

On the second go Neil encouraged me to get in and I slowly swam after the dolphins with him. Then it came to actually put my mask and snorkel on and stick my head under water. O my gosh! I embarrassingly have to admit, I freaked out. I kept thinking that the dolphin is going to come bash me in my stomach or maybe a shark is going to come take a taste of my dangling legs because they probably look like two strands of delicious spaghetti.

I looked up and saw the boat, my place of safety, drifting further and further away and I started to hyperventilate.  Needless to say I quickly swam back to the boat and that’s where I remained for the rest of the trip. My dream of learning how to scuba dive might have been shattered but I still enjoyed seeing the dolphins swim by so close to us.

I must also mention that I saw a hammerhead shark. While the others were all swimming with the dolphins, I stayed on board with the guide. All of a sudden the guide started shouting, “hammerhead, hammerhead” in his Portuguese accent. I thought I heard whale shark and nearly lunched over the side of the boat to have a good look. I saw a big black shadow coming up to the surface to take a gulp. I saw a wide head but could not get a clear vision, then it swished it’s tail, which looked like a sharks and away it dived down into the depths.

Later I asked our guide if I heard him correctly and if he said whale shark. It turned out that it was indeed a hammerhead and not my long anticipated whale shark. Either way, any encounter with nature always leaves you amazed.

After our Ocean Safari we headed into town to buy the remaining ingredients we needed to make our Mozambique traditional dish.

The vegetable lady was quite efficient and she kept on saying, “you want this, take this too, it’s good” and in the end we walked away with a pineapple, coconut, onion, green pepper, a garlic bulb and soya oil (they didn’t seem to have sunflower, canola or olive oil).

Then we had to buy the main ingredient, Mozambique prawns. This was an experience all on its own. For a few days now, Pedro and Paul have been hounding us to buy prawns from them. We keep on saying we’ll come back the next day and so we thought it was only fair that we would find them.

However, it is a problem when you show the slightest of interest as about 20 Mozambique men swarmed down upon us, opening their cooler boxes or plastic packets to show us their catch of the day. There were blue lobsters, crayfish, tiger prawns, calamari, strange looking fishes;  my eyes popped out of my head and my mouth started watering just thinking of all the delicious meals one could cook.

Making our local dish proved somewhat challenging though. Unfortunately the backpacker’s communal kitchen did not have the best utensils; they scarcely had the bare minimum. If we didn’t get food poisoning from the prawns, then we would surely get it from the rusty knife.

We eventually managed, with great agony, to clean the prawns and chop up our ingredients. I must mention here that neither of us has ever cleaned prawns before and were totally clueless. We then proceeded to slowly add our ingredients to the friend onions and green peppers and adding the coconut water as a last touch.

It turned out rather sweet (I’m guessing that would have been the pineapple) but still enjoyable. I had dragged a bottle of white wine with me all the way from Cape Town and saved it for a special night. What better night than to enjoy my Monterosso Chenin Blanc (this is not product placement) with our traditional Mozambique meal.

After supper we walked over to Dino’s Bar, about 100m along the beach from the backpackers, to check out the party. We sat on the deck watching the fire throwers, the waves rolling onto the shore and the lunar eclipse. The moon was an amazing red colour and as the evening progressed, the earth’s shadow crept over the moon. It seemed like smoke coming from a fire, spreading across the moon.

They say that this lunar eclipse was the darkest lunar eclipse that will occur in this century. A lunar eclipse can only happen on a full moon night, when the sun is on one side of the earth and the moon on the opposite side. These three celestial bodies have to be aligned in a straight line on a single plane for the lunar eclipse to occur. This is amazing and experiencing it in Mozambique made it even so much more mystical.