Mozambique

I thought that I would start with this picture just to set the right mood

On our first week off (we get every fifth week off) all the students at Bushwise scattered all over Southern Africa it seemed; one group of students rented a (too) small red car and drove off to St Lucia and Durban, on the South African east coast; another group of students stayed behind for a couple of days and then rented a car and explored the area around Hoedspruit. One student had plans to head off to Kruger National Park with his girlfriend (who flew in just for the week) and another student, who hitched a ride in the small red rental, were off to Nelspruit for adventures by himself. Me and Anja got into a white Toyota Condor together with four other students and headed for Mozambique.

The final destination on our journey was the small town of Tofo. Not much of a town, Tofo is all about diving and people who go there are either divers or go there together with someone who is.
While Anja was busy with her Advanced Open Water (yes, that is scuba-related stuff) I kept myself busy working on my tan (No, no scuba-related activities for me). Not sure if what she tells me is true or not but apparently there are things living underneath the surface of the ocean (one would assume that they would drown) and in an attempt to convince me she took a few pictures. She claims that these pictures show marine life (judge for yourselves but I suspect some sort of Photoshop manipulation).

Schooling fish

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Octopus

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Blue starfish

There was no need for me to even get out of my sun chair in order to enjoy the local wildlife though. One day when I was working on my tan in the resturant/bar thingy outside the dive centre, a couple of Humpback whales decided to grandstand a bit just 500 meters off shore and in an instant the sleepy resturant turned into something that more resembled Wembly arena – people were on their feet, cheering with excitement. The whales did their thing for about five or ten minutes and then went back out to sea. Pretty spectacular stuff!

Humpback whale doing its thing

The journey back to South Africa was something of a bumpy affair and even though our road was of a rather good standard, one 150 km stretch of road was not. At times there were so many holes in the road that it actually seemed to be more holes than road! And it was on this stretch of road we had our flat (we were actually lucky to only have one). Cheered on by the early morning sun and the roosters in the background the spare tire was soon in place and we were on our way again. The rest of our 15 hour drive was (thankfully) uneventful.

/J