Having A Whale Of A Time

11^th October-16^th October – Days 375-378 – Tofo and Inhambane, Mozambique

And so we returned to Tofo.

Bamboozi Guest House

As good tourists sometimes do, we'd sorted out a few day activities from Tofu. Firstly, we arranged to go snorkelling with whale sharks. This is something that M wanted to do as far back as Djibouti. It was whale shark season in Mozambique, Bamboozi offered a snorkelling, and we were ready to go. We'd have to be up early and hop onto an inflatable boat to a place called "whale shark alley", quite an ominous sounding name although these creatures are docile and don't ruthless rip humans limb from limb. In short, unless we had an unexpected visitor in the form of a more carnivorous shark (which we were told was possible), we'd live to see another day. It seemed worth the risk. As Inna was swooning over one of the guides, we were fed stats about the creatures we were hopefully about to see. They could easily grow to 7 or 8 metres long and would swim around feeding on plankton (which seemed to me a bit of a contradiction as I've only grown to 1m86 despite eating rather more than plankton in my lifetime). We were sat on the edge of the speedboat, snorkel and mask at the ready, waiting for the shout to fall backwards into the water and marvel at these enormous animals.

Divers at the ready

"WHALE SHARK! GO!" came the call. I did just like on TV, fell backwards into the water and felt my mask and snorkel both slip off. I rose to the surface coughing seawater out of my lungs, readjusted my equipment and went under again just in time to see a hazy shadow disappearing off into the distance. The girls managed not to have a salty drink but didn't really see much either. A rather poor start by anyone's standards. The second shout came and I was careful to hold onto my mask and snorkel this time and ended up slightly disorientated, finding that I was looking straight into the faces of everyone else in the ground. I turned around to see what they were looking at only to see an enormous tail coming straight towards me, and that thing was BIG! Thankfully the tail didn't quite hit me (and if it had I think I'd have sent the next post from Madagascar) and we managed to follow the guy for quite a while as he went on his plankton hunting mission. The silence of the sea was a nice change from the group on the speedboat, as you just float smoothly to keep up with this animal that could probably beat you in a fight if it tried, but you somehow just don't think of that. The spectacle was just so impressive. A few more sightings occurred before we went back to shore happy. Inna invited the guide for a drink of course and took a bit of a niggling from us in the afternoon about it...

She must have been a bit shaken up by her lack of a holiday romance as, as few days later, she went out for a morning swim while M and I were struggling to get up and came back wailing. "Did he turn her down again?" I wondered. Actually it seemed that she had an unfortunate collision with a parasol and had ended up with a gash in her head. The ups and downs of travel.

The patient recovers courtesy of amateur First Aid

Our great return to Inhambane was for the dhow trip that we had lined up. We waded into the sea, hopped aboard and got poled out deep enough to rig up the sails and with the wind rippling against them we sailed off to and island offshore. As I'm writing this many months later I don't remember the name of the island or of the extremely friendly guide but I hope I'll be forgiven for that... Our boat contained a barbeque and some fish and the guide and captain whipped up a tasty grill for us at lunch after which we went wandering around the island which seemed to contain nothing but an old abandoned hotel and, bizarrely, a homeless guy who asked us for the leftover fish. Homeless isn't anything I've really considered as a career before although if it's in this setting, abandoning European standards of living may not seem such a bad idea. It's on the "to think about" list. Our guide told us tales ranging from the ecology of the island to his first experience driving a car ("I got in, reversed into a coconut tree and the car wouldn't work any more") and we had a delightful afternoon.

Pole man featuring playful local kids

La bella fa'niente

Dhow/Island

This was, naturally, followed by a return to Tofo for beer and piri-piri calamari on the beach, and a total failure to spend the night in Inhambane (for the second or third night in a row). But who cares, really? Finally, the next day, we were set to leave back to Maputo en route for Johannesburg Airport. The home leg of the trip was beginning.

We have survived!

The long walk back to the bus station