Vamoose to Vilanculos…

I woke up still tired from the previous days ride, and the night spent on a mattress that was as thin as a cardboard box… The house was still asleep as I walked through the kitchen with some of my kit to load onto the bike. I was just in time to see a dozen or so VERY large cockroaches scurrying for cover into the cracks between the pink cupboards… Dirty plates from the previous night’s supper lay scattered on every surface, millions of ants doing their best to clean off the dirt and grime… Gritting my teeth at the mess, I made a few quick trips out to the bike to load up, as I wanted to be shot of this place as soon as possible… It was having a very negative effect on my karma…!

I was away by 7.00am, and rode to the closest garage to refuel and fill my auxiliary tank, as the owner of the Pink Papaya had told me that there was no fuel between Chimoio and Inhassoro, which was about 400km away… The silly bugger really was a clueless individual, as there were a number of filling stations along the way… Another good reason not to go near the Pink Papaya ever again…!

The entrance to Inchope, another “big number” day lay ahead…

I rode quickly east through Gondola and on to Inchope on the EN6, and then turned south onto the EN1 and into the province of Sofala, where I came across another of those road signs which made my heart sink… Rather than give mileages in small quantities the closer you get to your destination, they save on road signs and put up a sign every few hundred kilometres, showing distances that are hardly designed to encourage a lonely traveller… Vilanculos lay a further 150km beyond Rio Save… A cyclone warning had been issued for the area I was riding into… Clearly the rain was not finished with me…!

A short distance from Inchope, I crossed the Pungoe River again, which I had crossed for the first time just before the T-junction that had taken me into Chimoio the afternoon before. I was keen to get as much distance under my belt before the bad weather I had been warned about arrived to hinder my progress, and thundered through the village of Mutundiri and over the bridge of the Revue River. The Chimanimani Mountain Range separating Mozambique from Zimbabwe loomed far to the west of me as I kept the revs up, knowing I could burn fuel as I was carrying an extra 10 litres with me, which gave me a range of over 500km…

I slowed down to take a picture of a guy tying a flock of goats down onto the flat-deck of a truck, wondering how these poor animals were going to stay on their feet while this truck drove helter-skelter through the potholes which were waiting… Obviously this method of transporting livestock is common practice, as this same truck roared past me about 100kms later while I was taking a mid-morning break on the side of the road. The goats seemed fine, although some of them were standing on top of others!! They seemed to be enjoying the ride…. If they were having a hard time, their bleats of fear must have been carried away on the wind!!  

Clearly the SPCA guidelines for transporting livestock have not reached some of the more remote parts of Mozambique…

I rode through Goonda and past the turnoff to Dombe and Espungabera and over the impressive Buzi River Bridge and began looking for a place to stop for a break. I had covered almost 175km since leaving Chimoio, and having not bothered with breakfast from their dirty kitchen, I could feel my energy levels dropping… Somewhere between the towns of Chiboma and Nova Gulega, I found a shady tree alongside the road and pulled off to explore my bags for something to eat… I settled on a packet of ginger biscuits and a litre of water. This was becoming a staple diet for me!! I took off my jacket and backpack and sat down next to my bike to work my way through the biscuits… While I was thus engrossed, a young boy about six years old came walking past, and stopped when I called him over. He warily crossed the road and after accepting a few biscuits from me, sat down with me to eat one of them, before putting the rest into the little cardboard school bag he had with him. He then bid me a solemn farewell and walked away in the direction of Chiboma… Allan would have been proud of me…

A few minutes later, two women came strolling out of the bush a few hundred metres in front of me and walked towards me, each with a huge bag of pineapples balanced on their heads. As they neared, I walked across the road and offered the remainder of my biscuits to them. They both curtsied to me and flashed me brilliant white smiles, clearly surprised by my gift to them. Then one put her bundle down and offered me a large pineapple in thanks, which I graciously declined, explaining in a mixture of English, Siswati and sign language, that I had more than enough loaded onto my bike already… With that they left, constantly glancing behind to wave at me…

I spent a pleasant half hour resting on the side of the road, before the push to Rio Save…

Brunch over, I mounted up and rode over the dry Guengere River and the fast flowing Nhapimbi River and into the settlement of Casa Nova. A short distance further on I came to the outskirts of Muxungue, where a police road-block had backed traffic up for a few hundred metres… I rode slowly to the front of the queue and was relieved when the officers waved me through without stopping me… I stopped to refuel at a Total Service Station, first filling my tank with the additional fuel I had been carrying, and then topping up with a few litres from the pumps…

I met a guy who was on his way to Chimoio to inspect their branch of Shoprite, which they had recently opened. He gave me his business card, and I promised to look him up if I decided to overnight in Maputo. Before he left I mentioned that under no circumstances was he to consider staying at the Pink Papaya… I felt it my duty to warn anybody travelling to Chimoio to avoid the many disappointments that lurked in wait for them at this establishment…

The countryside south of my fuel stop was lush with large Mahogany trees lining the side of the road with an occasional Baobab standing proudly between them. I slowed whenever I spied a particularly large specimen, as these trees continued to stir something in my soul that made me offer a silent salute to their grandeur… I just dig Baobabs!!!

Past flooding had taken out the bridge over the Repembe River, and a steel replacement had been erected to straddle the deep gorge through which the river runs…

A steel bridge led me over the Rio Repembe and on towards it’s confluence with the bigger Gorongosa River. I could see dark clouds gathering to the south of where I rode and wondered how much longer I should wait before stopping to don my rain gear… Not long, as it turned out!! I arrived at the 1000m long bridge over the Save River, stopped to take a quick photo, and watched as rain began lashing the toll gate on the far side of the river… I noticed some buildings on the opposite side of the river and decided to make a dash for them…

With the throttle fully open, I flew across the bridge and got the “Big Fella” over the 150km/h mark before I had reached the halfway mark… The toll gate attendants saw me coming towards them at high speed and opened the gates as I was throttling back and kicking down through the gears… I waved my thanks, and as the first big drops of rain began pelting me, I screamed across the road and under the roof of an abandoned petrol station, scattering a half dozen locals who had chosen the same place to shelter from the storm which was bearing down on us… With screeches of laughter, they came scurrying back out of the rain, patting me on the back and babbling in what sounded like a mixture of Shangaan and Portuguese… The word “Bravo!” was used often…

The bridge over the Save River, minutes before a massive storm engulfed the area…

The rain beat down with a fury which made me believe that this might be the edge of the cyclone that I had been warned about… I had donned my rain suit seconds after getting off the bike, and was thankful that I had done so, as the wind blew the rain under the roof we were sheltering under and in a very short while, my companions and the bike were soaking wet… I on the other hand was dry…!! I crouched behind the bike, wincing each time a thunderbolt crashed to the ground behind the old garage and lightning streaked across the skies above. Although it was only 1.00pm, it was dark enough to make me believe it was much later… We sat through the storm for almost an hour and I shared my last packet of biscuits with the sorry looking group sheltering with me…

The storm worked its way north towards Muxungue, and minutes after the last rain drops had fallen on us, the sun came out!! I hastily got back on the bike, bid my fellow survivors a very good day, and continued south, hoping that I had seen the last of the rain… The road began deteriorating from that point on, and I had a hard time picking a line through the potholes. Another 60 kilometres later, having passed through Vulanjane, Maimelane and Macovane, the turnoff to Inhassoro finally presented itself…

I had hoped to ride the 15km to Inhassoro before going on to Vilanculos, but constant showers of rain and the badly potholed road had eaten up much of my time, and I decided to return here the following day to explore this seaside village whose beauty had been described to me by many… I rode on into the late afternoon, reaching Pambarra and the turnoff to the R240 and Vilanculos, and the short ride to the coast that waited for me after that.

Tricky sections such as these made speeding through the countryside impossible…

The ride into Vilanculos passed through fields of maize and over smaller rivers that were clogged with water-lilies. Bundles of firewood were stacked in neat piles on the side of the road, ready to be collected by the braai-loving South African and Zimbabweans who frequented ‘Culos… I passed the turnoff to the airport, and came to a t-junction, turned left and stopped at the filling station to call Uli Meiners, at whose house I had arranged to stay while in town….

Uli arranged to meet me at The Smugglers Inn, and arrived there a few minutes later just as I was taking off my helmet. He took one look at my bike and said,

“How comfortable are you in thick sand with that thing…” pointing to the “Big Fella” parked in the shade of the Smugglers Bar…

“Not very,” was my quick reply…

“Then you won’t be staying at my place…” he said, explaining that the 6km stretch to his house was littered with deep drifts of thick sand, which generally required a 4×4 to get through…

The turnoff to Vilanculos, and signs that the storm had passed this way on its way to meet me at Rio Save…

After a quick drink, we set about finding alternate accommodation for me, and settled on the Palmeiras Lodge. (Through only a kilometre of thick sand… this was better than six, but much worse than no thick sand at all…!)

Colleen, the manageress, met us in the parking area and gave me the key to Room 1… I began the by now habitual process of unloading my kit from the bike, and lugged it into the room… The sea lapped gently at the shoreline, which was barely metres away from my room, and I decided to have a quick swim to cool down. The tide was on it’s way to Indonesia, so I had to walk out to sea for about 200 metres before I got into water deep enough to cover my entire body…lying down, that is…!! Afterwards, I plugged my laptop into the mains and started charging my camera batteries and cell-phone, while updating my journal…

I received a few text messages from Allan, advising that he was preparing for his ride to Mombasa the following day, and asking if I had arrived safely in Vilanculos. I lay thinking about him and the weeks we had spent together through Botswana, Zambia, Malawi and Tanzania… He had been a great riding companion and I wondered if our talk of riding around Australia together would ever come to fruition… I knew that if I had my way, I would make it a reality…

The entrance to Palmeiras Lodge, with the sea and the beach just across the road in the background…

I walked down along the beach, passing the entrance to a back-packers joint called the “Zombie Cucumber”… Now there was a name that conjured up interesting times!!! If the places I had already stayed at on this trip were anything to go by, the “Zombie Cucumber” might be well worth visiting… Wonder what time the Zombies come out to play…?

Further along the shoreline, a group of fishing dhows were anchored together in a small bay… Their gaily painted hulls in sharp contrast to the turquoise blue of the sea they floated on… A “postcard” moment… A large black dog had followed me out on my walk and stopped whenever I did. He seemed disappointed when I turned to go back to Palmeiras, but after a few minutes he tagged on behind me again and for the rest of my stay in Vilanculos, he was never far away… often sneaking into my room and squeezing under my bed to snooze away the hotter hours of the day…

I looked out to sea and saw the island of Magaruque in the distance, with Benguerra a little to the north of that… I resolved to pay them a visit in the very near future… I walked back to the lodge and settled down to enjoy the last of the setting sun, as it shot golden arrows across the bay in front of my room…

“This is what I’m talking about!!” Allan would have said if he had been here…

I had found the place where I could take deep breaths before the ride home…

Room 1, Palmeiras Lodge, Vilanculos….

A fishing dhow glides silently past the entrance to the lodge in the late afternoon, barely a few metres offshore…

Friday, February 22^nd 2008 (185 km)

Vilanculos to Inhassoro and back…   S 21º 34’ 37” – E 35º 12’ 25”

When I set out on this trip, I had planned to spend a few days somewhere on the coast of Mozambique, “recharging my batteries” and preparing for my return to the daily grind of my stressful existence… I had settled on Vilanculos as the spot to do this… The Palmeiras Lodge was secluded and quiet in this their off-season, and I enjoyed the peace and tranquillity, spending my days writing, swimming and taking short walks along the seashore at low tide…

I also planned to do a few short rides on the bike to explore the surrounding area, and one of the places I wanted to see was Inhassoro, about an hour’s ride north of Vilanculos. The bike was stripped down to its top-box only, and after a leisurely breakfast at the little restaurant that serves the Lodge, I rode out, back up the N240 to Pambarra and on to the EN1.

The restaurant at Palmeiras Lodge, which serves a continental breakfast each morning, prepared by Bonniface and Colleen…

There was no urgency on this ride, and I motored along at a steady 80km/h, stopping when I saw something of interest, and actually enjoying the jinking I had to do to miss the potholes on the 60km section north to Macovane. The weather was playing along for a change, and the ride was made in bright sunshine… I was dressed in a pair of jeans and t-shirt only, and enjoyed the feeling of the hot sun on my arms and the wind blowing directly onto my chest, keeping me far cooler than I would have been, had I worn my Boulder jacket and pants… Before I reached Macovane, and only half an hour into the ride, I noticed that my arms were turning a reddish colour, and realized that I was getting burnt by the hot morning sun… I stopped and applied sunscreen which I carried in the little Wunderlich bag secured to the handlebars, and then continued cruising north, until I arrived at the filling station at the turnoff to Inhassoro, at the settlement of Macovane. I bought a cold drink and then wandered over to the little restaurant hidden behind a huge banyan tree…

The filling station at Macovane, where I spent time chatting to the owner of the complex…

I had passed here a few days previously on my way south to Vilanculos, and had not noticed that it was more than just a small petrol stop. There were a few small chalets built off to one side with an ablution block which served them, and a larger building which turned out to be a house which could sleep six people. An open air restaurant and bar was tucked into a grove of trees and was occupied by a middle aged woman, making notes in a ledger and banging away at a calculator… She turned out to be the owner of the complex and we sat talking about Mozambique and the history of her business. She had inherited it from her father and ran it together with her mother, while her brother ran a transport business, with trucks running from Maputo through to Chimoio and back…

She was very forthright in her criticisms of the government, the roads and infrastructure, and brash South African and Zimbabwean Tourists, who caused havoc on the beaches with their drunken antics… My description of the roads I had ridden thus far on my trip, had her rolling her eyes heavenward, and I explained that I would be heading south towards Maputo in a few days… I asked about the road conditions and this set her off on another tirade against the government and their lack of progress in upgrading the roads… I said that I had heard that the roads closer to Massinga and Xai-Xai were “quite bad”…

Her reply brought a smile to my lips, as holding her cigarette in one hand, and with her other hand on her hip, she said, “They are not “quite bad” my friend, they are BAD!!” My laughter encouraged her to describe the depth and size of the potholes, and the danger involved in avoiding them and the oncoming vehicles playing their own game of dodgems…

I was enjoying speaking to her, as she had obviously been well educated and was not afraid to speak her mind on any subject that came up in our conversation… She advised me to visit the Hotel Seta in Inhassoro if I wanted to have lunch there, as it was the best place to eat at. While a few chickens wandered around and under the tables looking for food, I thanked her for the chat and made my way back to the bike and left to ride the 15km east, to the coast and the popular holiday destination of Inhassoro…

The road there was a single-lane strip of tar in reasonable condition. The owner of the complex at Macovane had described it as being “like a carpet” compared to what I would find further south!! Oncoming traffic veered off the road onto the shoulder as I passed, giving me a wide berth, surprising me with their courteous behaviour… I passed one of the “gravel making” businesses, where a group of well muscled young men were breaking larger rocks into smaller stones, using large hammers, and then raking the smaller stones into piles…

I cruised slowly through a marshy area where most of the larger pools of water were covered in water lilies. Jacanas and Crakes tip-toed across the surface of these lilies, hunting for food, larger herons waded through the shallows, and flocks of Red Bishops swept over the reeds to where their nests hung…

The entrance to town, and the road which dips towards the sea and the centre of Inhassoro…

I turned left off the main road once I reached the town, and into the entrance to what seemed to be a large holiday complex, the Hotel Seta… After getting directions to the restaurant, and being told I could ride my bike there, I skirted the main public area and idled down a narrow sand road towards the sea and a large open-air restaurant on the edge of the beach. It was much larger than I expected it to be and confirmed the popularity of this little town, especially with fisherman and their families… I sat out on the open deck, watching locals digging for clams and crabs in the shallows left by the outgoing tide. I took a dozen or so deep breaths and felt my body begin to wind down… This was the life…!!

The restaurant at the Hotel Seta…

I ordered a Mac-Mahon and a plate of fish and chips and settled down to enjoy the pleasant surroundings… The tide was at its lowest ebb, and a few hundred metres of beach was exposed to the hot sun, the turquoise blue of the water contrasting sharply with the white sand of the beach. Laughter from a group of crab hunters drifted up to where I was sitting, and I turned to watch them digging in the sand with their sticks and netting the crabs, as they exited their burrows in panic…

A European contractor supervised the enlarging of the already expansive deck, and I watched as he gave instructions to the guys assisting him… The pace at which they worked had me thinking that this deck might not be ready for Easter, and I had to turn away to avoid going across to get them to “shake a leg”!!

I was joined by a South African lady who was visiting the area and we sat discussing the pace of life here and the friendliness of the people, enjoying our surroundings and peacefulness of Inhassoro…

The large portion of fish and chips arrived and was cooked to perfection… I ate slowly, enjoying the company and relishing the fact that I did not have to worry about where I would be staying tonight or the unloading of the bike… It was an 80km doddle back to Vilanculos and I still had five hours of daylight to do it in… I watched a smallish dhow with a bright blue sail cruise slowly past the deck, its occupants waving at me when I stood up to take a few photos of them. Once again I wished I had brought the bigger camera with me on this trip, as I would have liked to get a clearer picture of them with the longer lens… They sailed further up the coast and then brought the dhow closer into shore and furled the sail in preparation for a landing on the beach…

I thought again of the simple lifestyle so many people here were able to lead, and wondered if I could ever adapt to the slower pace of life that so many ex-pats I had encountered, enjoyed… Of course I could!!!…..  

A fishing dhow sails past the deck on its way up the coast…

With the sun beginning to drop towards the western horizon, I paid the bill and headed back onto the road, and began the ride “home”. On the way up the coast I had passed the entrance to the Catholic Mission of Santa Anna, and decided to ride up to the large church which lay at the end of a long rutted driveway. I sat the bike while looking at the front of the church and the convent tucked behind it. There was not a soul to be seen, and I wondered where all the people could be. The place seemed to be well maintained, and a much larger complex than could be seen from the highway, was stretched out behind the church… I would have liked to take a look inside the church, but its doors were firmly shut, and with nobody to ask permission from, I turned the bike around and rode back to the highway…

Both the tide and the beer were running out as I lounged on the deck of the Hotel Seta…

The Catholic Mission of Santa Anna, south of Macovane on the road to Vilanculos…

I crossed back into the district of Vilanculos and took the turnoff to the coast which came up soon after. Keeping the bike in 4^th gear, I rode at a steady 60km/h back to Palmeiras, enjoying the slow pace and returning the waves of all the kids playing in the sand on the side of the road…

It was early evening when I rode through the gates of the lodge, parked the “Big Fella” under the shade of a large flamboyant tree and then retired to the pool to float there until darkness blanketed the land… I had thoroughly enjoyed the lazy day and felt that at least some of the tension had begun draining out of me… I could have done with many more days like this one….

© 2008 TBMH

Sunday, February 24^th 2008

Dhow to Ilha do Margoruque… S 21º 59’ 71” – E 35º 20’ 15”

While I was having dinner at The Smugglers Inn one evening, I was introduced to Dave, the owner of Sail-Away Dhows, who had lived in Vilanculos for more than 14 years, “waiting for the boom”, as he put it… He had two or three smallish dhows which he used to take tourists out to the islands for diving and exploring the reefs around Margoruque and Benguerra. He also sailed out on three and four day excursions to the island of Bazaruto further north, camping out on the mainland and other small islands…

I decided to spend some extra time in Vilanculos and figured a dhow trip and some diving would be an interesting way of spending a day, so made a booking and paid the US$85.00 fee for a day trip to Margoruque…

Preparing to cast off on the dhow to Margoruque….

Early on Sunday morning, I hopped onto the bike and rode the short distance to Dave’s place to meet the other eight people who would be my shipmates for the day… There were five Portuguese girls from Johannesburg, a Dutch couple who worked on contract in South Africa and a South African couple on leave… We were fitted for masks, booties and fins, and then walked down to the beach a few hundred metres away, to the waiting dhow… There were three crew members, consisting of an interpreter-cum-guide, a cook and the skipper… Near the stern of the dhow was a large sandbox, which served as the “kitchen”… An old metal kettle was set to boil on a bed of hot coals, and before long, a morning cup of coffee was served to all on board… I sat watching the people around me, wondering what they thought of all this… The Dutch couple seemed intrigued by the fact that a fire was burning on board a wooden sailboat! The Portuguese girls spent the hour long trip across the bay to the island, chatting to the crew and enquiring about the lunch menu… The rest of us made ourselves as comfortable as we could on the wooden benches bolted to the gunwales, and enjoyed the views from where we reclined. A small ferry which serves the islands, passed us on its way back to the harbour at Vilanculos, the crew waving merrily as it cruised by…

Island ferry passes by as we motor out to our diving destination on Margoruque…

The bay was no deeper than one or two metres at most, and we were able to see down to the ocean floor, all the way across to the island. As we got closer, we noticed the burnt-out ruins of the lodge which had caught fire just a few days earlier… Apparently this lodge had only just been completed and other parts of it were still being built when the fire started… Margoruque is part of the Bazaruto Archipelago National Park, and only a limited number of lodges are permitted to be built on these islands. A small village is perched on the seaward side of the island, and I assume the labour that worked on the building, and would later work in the lodge, would be drawn from here.

Fisherman wandered up and down the shoreline, looking for octopus and other crustaceans… A park ranger also patrolled the shoreline, ensuring that no shells and other protected species were removed by the tourists arriving to dive and walk around on the island’s pristine beaches…

The dhow turned north for a few hundred metres, then turned south again and drifted to a gentle stop against the rocky reef. One of the crew jumped onto the rocks carrying an anchor which he wedged into the sand. We grabbed our diving gear and began the long walk along the shore to a point about a kilometre away, where we then scrambled over the rocks, kitted up and leapt down into the turquoise waters… I drifted back towards the dhow, taking over an hour to reach it in the gentle currents which ran northwards towards Benguerra Island… It had been a very long time since I had donned mask, fins and snorkel, but within minutes I was as comfortable as I had ever been, when I used to dive on a very regular basis…

The burnt out remains of the Margoruque Lodge….

I had forgotten how beautiful the various reef fish were, and I recognized many of them from my dives on the reefs of Sodwana, Mauritius and Reunion Island, and was able to name some of them when the other divers surfaced to ask what they were… We saw Angelfish, Wrasses, Trigger Fish, Clownfish, Parrotfish and Boxfish, and many more, which I could not remember the names of… Large shoals of fish surrounded us at times, and we also came across a number of schools of tiny silver and blue fish, hiding under the overhangs and in the caves of the reef…

I was in my element, and was disappointed to see the prow of our boat looming up in the clear waters. A few of us decided to keep going along the reef, and passed the dhow, noticing how hundreds of fish were lurking under it, nibbling on the hull and resting in its shade. I hung onto the motor mountings for the longest time, watching them and tried to coax them closer by pretending to hold food out in my hand…

While I was doing this, one of the crew threw a bread-roll into the water close to my head, and in seconds I had hundreds of fish swirling around me…an amazing sight from both under and above the water… We drifted for another half hour and then clambered out onto the rocks and walked back towards where the dhow was anchored… The Portuguese girls had completed their dive and were getting ready to soak up the sun in the lagoon to the north of us… The Dutch couple had settled under the tarpaulin which had been erected by the crew to provide shade for us all…. It was blisteringly hot, and walking across the hot sand had us hopping and skipping in an attempt to avoid blistered feet…

Reed mats had been laid out under the tarpaulin and those who had not gone off to swim and tan, sat and chatted… Shells littered the beach, many of them broken by the reefs before they were washed up onto shore. We were however able to find conches, cowries and cones which had not been damaged… With the beady eye of the park ranger upon us, we knew we could not take any of them back with us and after “ooh-ing and aah-ing” at their beauty, left them where we had found them…

Another dhow had anchored close to ours by the time we completed out first drift dive along the reef…

The crew had meanwhile been preparing lunch and we waited in the shade, wondering what would be served up for us… While the cook chopped onions and tomatoes for the salad, the skipper and his mate carried a large bowl of rice and a covered silver dish up onto the beach and set it down on the table… The lid was lifted to reveal an aromatic and very tasty calamari stew!!! A large bowl of bread-rolls was also brought to the table with the salad, and we tucked into what was a wonderful meal… Slices of pineapple and peeled bananas were later brought to us, and a very large urn of pineapple juice was set down along with a batch of tin mugs… Paradise the easy way…

The cook prepared lunch for us. Note the calamari stew on the coals in the “sand-box” behind him…

Our meal was brought from the dhow to where we sat under the tarpaulin…

After lunch some of the girls chose to walk around the island, which we were told, would take them about two hours… That sounded far too strenuous for the rest of us and we decided to walk just as far as the northern point and swim back through the shallow lagoon…

The lagoon we walked and swam through after lunch….

Our “camp” on Margoruque, bikinis everywhere you looked… Joop and I were seriously outnumbered…

In some places the lagoon was deeper than two metres, and I had to swim with camera and cigarettes held up above the water in one hand, while paddling along with the other… The girls thought this was very funny, and kept leading me into deeper water to watch me struggle… The tide had turned by the time we got back to the dhow an hour later, and knowing that the other group would only be half way around the island by then, the rest of us decided to do another drift dive in the opposite direction to the one we had done in the morning… We got our gear, walked back along the rocks to the end of the point and lay in the water while the current carried us towards the dhow… The visibility was not as clear as it had been earlier, but we still managed to see many of the reef dwellers, including a very large Pink Parrotfish, which hung about, seemingly unconcerned by our presence…

Preparing to cast off on our return voyage to Vilanculos…

The “walkers” had not yet returned by the time we reached the dhow, and the crew were a little agitated… We packed all our gear back into the boat and sat waiting for them for about 15 minutes, and then just as we had decided to cast off and sail south around the island to look for them, we spied them coming across the beach a few hundred metres away… One look at them confirmed that we had made the right decision to swim and snorkel rather than “take a hike”… The girls were shattered!! The combination of heat and thick sand they had walked in had done them in completely… They fell asleep within minutes of clambering back into the dhow…

The sail was lowered and we set off back to Vilanculos. It took a little over an hour to cross the bay, and this was done mostly in silence… Joop and his girlfriend took turns sleeping on the large canvas bag that the sail had been kept in; the Portuguese girls slept in shifts; and the crew mumbled to themselves from time to time… I went to sit amongst them, almost falling into the coals in the “kitchen” in the process… We sat chatting about life in Mozambique, and they showed me how to use the sticks they had collected from the island to brush one’s teeth… Similar to the Gwarri bush used in the bushveld back in South Africa…

“Ronaldo” joins the crew in the stern to discuss the meaning of life….

We arrived back on the beach close to Dave’s house at a little after 5.00pm… His assistant was there to meet us with his Jack Russell puppy… We wearily dis-embarked by jumping down into the shallow water, our kit held high, and then dragged ourselves up the beach… After saying my goodbyes to everybody, I walked back to the house where I had left the “Big Fella”… I battled my way through the thick sand on the way back to Palmeiras, and went for a swim in the pool to cool off… The tide was coming in across the sand banks, and many of the skiffs and smaller vessels which had been left high and dry earlier, began floating up off the bottom and tugging at their mooring lines…

I went back out to buy some airtime and have a light meal at Smugglers, learning that Dave was having another two larger dhows built up on the Tanzanian border, close to Nacala… They would be ready in a few months time he advised, and then he would be looking for an intrepid group of folk to sail them down to Vilanculos… He said that under normal circumstances the voyage would take about ten days, but he was planning to explore the coastline south of Nacala and Beira on the way down, and planned to take about a month to do the trip… I signed up on the spot and we exchanged e-mail addresses so that he could advise me when to set off for the rendezvous in Nacala… I wouldn’t miss this for the world!!!!

Later that evening, as I watched the full moon rise up over the ocean, scattering diamonds over the bay in front of my cottage, I thought again about the folk back home and wondered what they were doing on this Sunday night… My girls would be preparing for school tomorrow and the week that lay ahead… I wished that they had been here today, to share the experiences I had revelled in… Maybe one day…

I rolled into bed, listening to the lap of the waves against the shore, the high-pitched squeaking of fruit bats skimming through the palm trees in the garden, and a few of the village dogs who were howling at the moon…. Could I, like Dave, spend fourteen years doing this…? Yeah…!! Of course I could!!!

Sail away, Dudes!!! Mozambique’s waiting…

Vilanculos harbour, various vessels rising up off the sand on the incoming tide….

© 2008 TBMH