Mozambique!

We're literally at the other end of the semester now, so time's truly flying. Only six weeks left of classes and three weeks of finals, then... done. It's really rather frightening to be honest.
Anyway, what an amazing midterm break! As it's one of the few long-term periods we all have off, many of the CIEE students scattered to the four winds to find adventure and excitement, and I was certainly one of them. I decided to head north-eastwards to Mozambique, with its spectacular Portuguese-influenced culture and gorgeous beaches.
My four friends (Brittany, Diane, Nate, and Loren) and I flew to Jo-burg on Friday the 25th, despite our plane being delayed (big surprise: almost nothing flying towards Jo-burg seems to get out on time) so we didn't arrive until after midnight. This wouldn't have been a huge problem except that we had a bus to catch at 6:30 the following morning, so by the time we reached our hostel it was after 1am and we needed to be up at 5am for the bus. What was really sad was the fact that we only spent such a short time at this wonderful hostel: Moafrika Lodge, despite being a bit out of the way of the main city, was a palace compared to our living arrangements at UCT. We pretty much ended up with our own room, complete with a jacuzzi tub, how shower, a TV (which only got two channels but it was still a working TV!!) and fresh towels. We literally did a double-take because we couldn't believe our luck. Fortunately we were scheduled to spend another night at Moafrika on the way back, and were already excited about it.
So Saturday had barely dawned and we were up and out once again, headed towards the bus station to catch our lovely Greyhound bus (yeah, no joke, Greyhound runs in South Africa too!) to Maputo, scheduled to be about nine hours. While we had some issues with our tickets--Loren had lost hers, as well as her camera and all her money at the airport the night before, and Brittany and I needed to get our tickets for the return trip that we had to reschedule due to our inability to read a calendar--exacerbated by the system failure on the Greyhound computers (another frequent occurrence in this country, the sporadic shut down of the internet for long periods of time, always when you need it most) we did manage to get on the bus and were headed to Maputo! The ride itself was rather uneventful, although the choice in movies was rather questionable (I have a hard time believing "Drag Me to Hell" was really appropriate for the toddler and young boy sitting across the aisle from me, but maybe I'm just a soft American or something). At the border we had to get off the bus in order to get our passports stamped by the South African side (to declare that we'd actually left) as well as the Mozambiquean side (to clarify that we'd arrived). The border crossing was made easier by the helpful assistance of some of the regular border-crossers, who probably guessed from our slightly confused and worried expressions that we needed some help deciphering which unmarked brick building to enter first and what lines we did and didn't have to stand in. All-in-all the whole process was rather hokey because we probably could have walked through the whole mess without any visa or stamps and no one would have questioned us because we're white tourists. But I have the visa and stamps to prove that I follow the rules.
We finally made it to Maputo and found the hostel, called Fatima's Place, which is deceptively large but homey and laid-back at the same time. Apparently Fatima's Place can keep up to 90 people, which seems impossible at first glance because the bar seems to take up most of the space, but once you start exploring you realize there are bunk beds everywhere, and each room can hold at least eight people. The common area is open, which becomes problematic when it rains, which happens quite frequently, but lends a sort of jungle-atmosphere in the middle of the city. But we got our things situated and found some food across the road, then made it back to take up residence on the outdoor furniture in the common area, where we met three young guys from Pretoria (also on break) who were extremely entertaining and had a great time making fun of our American accents and our lack of soccer knowledge. Fabio, Matthew, and Thebe were determined to make sure we had a good time, and they certainly fulfilled their roles as they introduced us to South African culture (I'm mostly referring to their extensive knowledge of South African drinking techniques, but we also had some interesting conversations about race and soccer). We also met a traveler from Colorado, who had taken a month off from his job designing iPad and iPhone apps (ever used the New York Times ap? Yeah, Ryan designed that) to travel, and he'd already spent time in Amsterdam, and Cairo, and was headed up to Tofo for a few days and then out to Cape Town to round off the adventure. We filled Ryan in on all the vitally important things to do in Cape Town, and were excited to hang out with him on the beach in the coming days. The boys persuaded Brittany, Diane, and Loren to head out with them to a Reggae club at 1:30 in the morning, but I decided to pass and paid the entrance fee to Club Sleep instead.
The following day we spent in Maputo, exchanging money (Mozambique uses the metical, which currently is worth 30MZN to the US dollar) and seeing a little bit of the city. We didn't get very far though, as the small area we were in was rather peculiar and honestly didn't seem like a friendly place for tourists anyway. I was struck by how much dirtier it felt to the Cape Town that I've become accustomed to, and I realized that Maputo was more of an African city without the heavy European influence. The Portuguese colonized the area, but it seems that once Mozambique won its independence the country was adamant about removing all traces of colonization, and it hasn't really recovered since. We did manage to get our money exchanged and spent the rest of the afternoon enjoying some amazing pizza and preparing ourselves for the next leg of our journey.
Monday morning we headed north along the coast to Tofo, a beach town about twenty minutes west of Inhambane. The ride was...well, horrible. Basically the bus we were taken in was a glorified minibus, the kind I see here in Cape Town every day that run along the main roads taking people to work and such. The ones here fit about ten people, maybe more if you really squeeze people in. This bus held 29 people, including the bus driver (I counted) but was bigger than the minibuses in Cape Town. Each row of seats held four people across with no aisle and absolutely no leg room. The seats were horridly uncomfortable, and we were all soaking wet to begin with because it was pouring when we left and, as I mentioned before, almost all of Fatima's Place is open to the elements. It had rained so hard during the night that the street in front of the hostel had turned into a river, and we had to wade through ankle deep rushing water to get into the bus. Needless to say we were none-too-pleased about the forthcoming six hour drive to Tofo. But we got to see some of the massive markets that Maputo is reputed for and the scenery was lovely once you got out of the city.
Tofo could not have been more perfect. We arrived a little after 1pm to beautiful puffy white clouds, an azure sky and the rhythmic sound of the ocean. We literally dropped our stuff, threw on bathing suits, and ran down across the hot sand into the water of the Indian Ocean. It was literally like a bath tub the water was so warm. The sand was perfectly white and unblemished by rocks or debris, and the hostel was right on the beach so there was no commute and no lugging of beach gear down to the water. If this wasn't paradise I'm not sure I want to go.
The hostel itself was called Fatima's Nest (owned by the same Fatima that owned the hostel in Maptuo) and it consists of the main common area which houses a bar and several picnic tables, a kitchen where they serve three meals a day daily, and comfy canvas chairs that look out over the beach and the water beyond. Next to the main building are several grass covered wooden buildings that house the dorms and suites, and beyond those are the showers and toilets as well as the kitchen were you can prepare your own food. The whole place is built on the sand, so after about five minutes you begin to realize that you're going to be sandy for the rest of your stay. But that didn't bother us as we soaked up the last rays of sunshine on our first day.
We met up again with our new friend Ryan (he had taken the bus with us that morning) as well as two American teaching assistants that work at UCT who's gone out with Brittany, Diane and Loren the first night we were in Maputo. Sara and Shannon joined us for dinner and we had a great time looking over the exams they had to grade for their students back at UCT. I was appalled by the absolutely awful writing of most of the students: many of the exams had basic, basic grammatical errors, like misuse of commas or subject-verb agreement and spelling errors. Both Sara and Shannon assured us that this was not abnormal, despite these papers being from their second year students, and that the sporadic and poor public education system in South Africa is to blame for the failures of the students. It just made me sad to think that UCT is the best school in Africa, often toted as the Harvard of Africa, but frankly that only insults Harvard. Obviously not every student that goes to UCT can't write--please don't believe that's what I'm saying--only that a majority of the students are not prepared for college in terms of their writing, and the system in place here is not doing them justice.
Basically my friends and I spent the next couple of days just enjoying our time off and exhilarating in the sun and sand. We walked down the main road (I think the only real road in Tofo) to the market on our first full day where the locals swindle the tourists for souvenirs, food, and booze. We had some fun bartering for things, as well as exploring the language barrier between English and Portuguese. A trip into town became necessary to find the ATM, which became an adventure as night started to fall and myself, Brittany, Diane, Loren and Sara were crammed into the back of a minibus knowing that one of the golden rules of Africa is never to travel in a minibus after dark. But we didn't have a problem and made it to Inhambane and several ATMs, most of which didn't have any money in them (a common occurrence in Mozambique) and others which only took specific cards. We finally got what we needed, stopped at a grocery store to pick up essentials (like drinking water, as the water from the tap is not OK to drink) and took the nice public bus back to Tofo. We spent a couple of nights with Fabio, Matthew and Thebe, who we met in Maputo, as they liked to peruse the three main hot-spots along the beach (Fatima's being one of them) so inevitably they would run into us.
Wednesday the girls, Sara and Shannon, Ryan and I all took a dhow, a traditional fishing boat, out to Flamingo Bay, where we spent the day sailing in this beautiful lagoon and touring Survivor Island, where apparently a season of the TV show Survivor was filmed. I'm a little skeptical about that point, only because the guide seemed a little washy on the details, but the tour was fun and we got to see this small village that is almost completely isolated from the mainland and survives only on its own resources, which was pretty interesting. They also treated us to fresh crab for lunch, which didn't sit well with my stomach, but the side dishes were delicious nonetheless. We slowly sailed back to the mainland, saw some flamingos, and headed back to Fatima's to examine the sun damage caused from being out on the water all day.
Our final full day in Tofo was spent primarily sitting on the beach and hanging out in the luke warm water, as it was so hot we couldn't stand to be anywhere else. That night we headed over to Dino's, a bar and grill (yeah, just like the song) where they have fantastic pizzas that are delicious but take forever to make. Literally an hour and a half after arriving we got our pizzas (after two people from our group left because they couldn't wait any longer and were fed up) only to have a black out (the power was cut to the area). The entire beach went pitch black, which was actually kind of awesome because the stars just popped, and it was breath taking to look at them with no lights. But after about five minutes the power came back on and we finished eating and headed back.
That morning we all returned to Maputo by the minibus, and spent the afternoon at Fatima's Place showering all the sand off of us and taking a long-awaited nap. Sara and Shannon had a flight out of Maputo airport at 5pm, so they left shortly after lunch and Ryan had a bus to catch later that evening, so he left shortly after the girls. Fabio, Matthew and Thebe still had two more days of their Tofo stay, so we had said goodbye to them the night before.
Our bus back to Jo-burg Saturday morning was almost empty, so we had the run of the place on the ride back. No issues at the border, and two more stamps to prove that I was leaving Mozambique and re-entering South Africa. Saturday night was a luxury once again as we enjoyed the comforts of Moafrika, indulging in a long hot soak in the tub and a little Aljazeera on TV. Our flight out of Jo-burg Sunday morning actually left on time, and we were back in Cape Town by 10:40am, with plenty of time to get back to good ol' LBG to get some postponed school work done and a little grocery shopping.
Overall the trip was fantastically relaxing and fun; essentially the epitome of a college Spring break. The people I traveled with were great, we had a lot of fun and definitely made some great memories that will last for a long time. I'm glad I got to experience a piece of Africa that I can't find here in Cape Town, and while I realize that Tofo is definitely a tourist area I think spending time in Maputo and just traveling around between the two spots allowed me to see more than just the Spring break experience. I'm certainly glad that I got to meet the people I did, and I'm hoping that I meet them again (I actually ran into Shannon today on campus, and we're hoping to catch up with Ryan before he leaves Cape Town on Saturday, and Fabio has extended an unlimited invitation to stay at his house in Pretoria should we be in that neck of the woods).
I only have a limited amount of pictures as we rotated cameras throughout the trip to conserve batteries as well as limit the amount of doubles of the same pictures, so once I get the photos from Brittany and Diane I'll have more stuff to post, but in the meantime enjoy the ones that I do have and I'll post the others ASAP.