We left Tofo after assembling an impressive posse, all ready to head north to Vilankulo. This was another resort town but was far more laid-back than Tofo.
We had enough people to form a party-chapas, therefore avoiding the excessive crowding and frequent stopping that a normal chapas typically does.
This would have gone smoothly except for the fact that the local police chief told Chris O. that his stolen items had been recovered.
Fairytale endings notwithstanding, it turned out to be bullshit and the police chief ended up getting 2 free congratulatory beers for his lie. What did end up happening is that we missed the party-chapas because of the turtle-pace police-report-writing in Inhambane. We also missed the last normal chapas to Vilankulo and had to spend the night in Maxixe.
We did eventually arrive in Vilankulo and our posse had already checked into Baobab (the local party hostel). Our crew consisted of two Swiss guys, Matt and Alain; Jeff, the token American; Teko, the chilled-out Chilean; Ana, the lone Dutch girl and Morgan, the quintessential beer-swigging Aussie.
Upon our arrival, we had managed to arrange our entire hostel, around 25 people or so, to take a dhow excursion to the nearby Bazaruto Archipelago National Park.
To elaborate a bit, a dhow is a traditional Arab fishing-boat made to hold 5-10 people. We had managed to cram 25 people and 5 crew members onto said boat, with no life-jackets but plenty of beer.
The Bazaruto Archipelago is an island paradise among island paradises, with white sand dunes, lush green forests and turquoise waters.
We spent the day drinking, snorkeling and just going buck-wild. Due to the fact that we started drinking at 7:00am, it was not a late night.
The following day I had signed up to go scuba diving in the world famous 2-mile reef. I consider my capacity at scuba to be a representation of the control I have over my inherent anxiety: the calmer you are, the less oxygen you consume and therefore the more bottom time and the longer the dive.
The dives in 2-mile reef were spectacular. I saw 7 giant tortoises, a white-tipped shark, a school of rays, thousands of fish and the most beautiful corals I have ever seen. We even saw a lobster that was literally 3-feet long!
Of course these two dives were not flawless: on entry for the first dive, I somehow managed to hit my head on the oxygen tank of another diver, cutting my head open (not too bad though). On the second dive, my weight belt unknowingly fell off and the dive master and I struggled to get it back on as a giant turtle was chilling right next to me.
The positive thing to both these incidents is that I managed to stay calm and still had an amazing time, even though my head kind-of stung.
The night we had all gone to bed early was also the same time that our old friends Shayne and Sue decided to show up at our hostel, to Chris O.'s delight. For some reason Shayne punched Sue in the face and kicked her while on the ground and was thankfully asked to leave our hostel (not making this stuff up) by the local police.
Over the next few nights we made escaped north. Some of the "highlights" include staying up to 3:30am to catch a chapas to Beira, which ended up being delayed for 2 hours. Another was watching another travel companion, Stefan, have 1000 dollars American stolen from his bag in our hotel in Beira while we were eating dinner.
Sleeping on a bus in Quelimane, while being ravaged by mosquitoes and then having to take my first safari-toilet shit behind our bus, armed only with a flashlight and toilet paper is also high on my list.
My "favourite" chapas ride was where I was forced to sit on an uneven bench and backrest, sandwiched between 3 Mozambican pastors for 7 hours while I could literally sleep on my knees because they were lifted so high due to my lack of leg-room. To make more room, a pastor put his arm around my shoulder but then proceeded to fall asleep so he was actually pulling my head further towards my already-flexed hips. So I was literally sitting in a forced-fetal position with a Mozambican pastor pulling on my head. Oh Mozambican public-transport, how I loathe thee!
In Nampula, our last stop before settling down for a few days, was where we were introduced to the glorious bucket showers: the alternative to showers where running water no longer exists. After riding in cramped buses for endless hours, there is nothing sweeter than to douse yourself with cold, not-so-transparent water and end up feeling dirtier than you did before.
If this does not build character, I do not know what does. But wait, it does get worse...
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