Mozambique, Autumn Sweaters, and Unfortunate Bets

Cape Town’s getting colder, and rainy. I’ve been enjoying it immensely. Scarves and jackets everywhere. For some stupid reason, my roommate Ian and I have made a bet that might have me at the mercy of the elements this next month and a half. The Flyers, somehow or another, are in the playoffs, and are playing his team, the Pittsburgh Penguins. Our wager is that if the flyers win, Ian can’t shave for the rest of the time we’re here. He’s already got a pretty sophisticated beard now, but in a month he might be verging on Abe Lincoln. If the Penguins win, I have to walk up to campus every day instead of using the ultra-convenient Jammie shuttle. This is going to add about a half hour each way to my daily commute… up the mountain. Oh dear. Flyers lost game one pretty significantly, like they have in the other two post-season series. I hope they know how much I’ve got riding on this. Or not riding, as it were. 

Some really cool stuff has happened in my life the past couple of weeks. During my week of holidays, I went to Mozambique and spent a lovely week living in a tiki hut on the beach. It was wonderful. I left on Saturday on an early morning flight to Jo-burg. Turns out I had booked the wrong flight, and spent a harrowing 9 hours in O.R. Tambo airport in Jo-burg, the notorious city, running on less than an hour of sleep. The night before, we had a braai at my apartment and people had finally left by 3am. I had to be out of the house at 4:30, so sleep was out of the question. It was honestly a pretty awful day, but I cheered up when my friends got to Jo-burg. We went to pick up our tickets for the flight into Maputo, Mozambique’s capital, and were more or less surprised to find that the Mozambique national airline, LAM, had totally screwed up our booking.  I think we saw it coming from a mile away, when the e-mails they sent us were dated 1980. Omen? You bet. So the next couple of hours were spent running around the airport, looking at rental cars, hotel prices, and standby flights. Fortunately, we all got on that evening’s flight, and I was pleased to finally know which country I would be spending my night in. 

The hour flight to Maputo was crowded and tight. A rather tough landing on the tarmac was our first introduction to Mozambique. As we disembarked, we were greeted by the warm tropical air of a vibrant Saturday night. Right away, we felt as if we had landed in another world. The airport was tiny- maybe the smallest I have ever been to- covered in dark, sultry wood and oddly painted windows. We handed our passports to the customs office, and felt uneasy as we waited for a half an hour to get them back. It was okay, though. We have some very cool new visas to show for it. We quickly jumped in a cab and were soon speeding through the streets of Maputo. There was a really apparent kind of electricity about the place- everyone was out in the darkness, talking in the streets. The drive to the hostel was petrifying; I would say we dodged incoming traffic at least five times. But we got there intact, got a quick dinner at a restaurant around the corner, and turned in for bed. 

We had to be up at 5am the next morning for our bus ride up to Tofo. No one had slept all too well; blankets are kind of a rare commodity in Mozambique, so we bundled up in copious layers each night to make up for the lack of covers. The bus was jam packed- about 30 people, all of their luggage, and some surf boards thrown in for good measure.  We tried to sleep as much as we could on the nine hour trip up the coast, leaning on one another’s shoulders and subsisting on nothing but thin, bland cookies.  And lots of Lionel Richie too. Guess the bus driver was a fan. 

When we got to Tofo, it was as if we had stepped into paradise. 

The sun was shining, it was warm, there were coconut trees and beaches with turquoise water! It was a really amazing place. The backpackers, or tiki hut, more appropriately, that we stayed in was called Fatima’s Nest, and it was literally ten steps away from the beach. We would wake up, have butter and jam sandwiches for breakfast, and hang out on the beach all day. There were lots of fun dogs to play with, and the water was so warm. It was a nice change from the arctic waters surrounding Cape Town. 

There was a scuba diving place right down the way from our hostel, as Tofo is a scuba diver’s paradise. A bunch of the girls on our trip were scuba certified, so they got to do a bunch of really cool dives and and see lots of pretty fish. I am not scuba certified, but I did get to go on a whale shark dive. Whale sharks are the biggest fish in the ocean, and Tofo is one of a remarkably few places in the world where they continue to live- they were poached and severely overfished for some time. These things are HUGE- usually around 25 feet in length. And I got to swim right alongside them! It was almost scary to have something that big only a foot away from you, but really thrilling. 

We spent five days in Tofo, laying in the sun and having the time of our lives. We took the very same minibus back to Maputo. Thankfully, there wasn’t as much Lionel Richie this time and I managed to sleep pretty much the whole way back. We arrived early, and  had the rest of the afternoon to spend exploring Maputo. Mozambique, and Maputo in particular, looked like nothing I have ever seen before. Things were in a state of general dilapidation, and there was a lot of garbage everywhere. It was clear that Mozambique experiences its share of poverty; it was a Portuguese colony up until independence came in the 1970’s, spearheaded by Frelimo. Soviet dictators sent money and weapons to the fledgling government, hence street names like Lenin Avenue. The drive up to Tofo was lined by thatched huts that people had built to live it- these very neatly arranged square buildings. It was cool to see that people actually lived in these places. All of the people that we met were really friendly, and always curious to learn about where we were from. We spent our night in Maputo by going to this really cool fish market. I admittedly was freaked out by seeing the rows and rows of dead fish and crabs, etc. lined up to be sold to you by eager vendors. You pick a fish, tell them how much you want, and then bring it to a restaurant that cooks it for you. It turned out to be one of the most delicious meals I have ever had, and though I'm not sure what I got (soldierfish, maybe?) it was amazing. 

 It was hard to leave the carefree mindset of vacation and return to Cape Town, and lots of work for class. It was nice to see all of the friends that I had missed while I was away, though. And for the first time, as my plane flew over Table Mountain before landing, I felt as though Cape Town had really become my home.