The Tofo trip

I initially had no intention of dedicating a post to the Tofo (pronounced Tofu, funny enough) trip but it was fantastic so thought I’d share the experience. Here goes!

At the very unfriendly hour of 3am last Thursday, I was up together with my deck-sleeping friend (DSF henceforth), to get ready for the trip. We were dropped off at the bus station and were on our way by about 04:10. The bus turned out to be a whole lot better than we imagined. It was a large coach that seated about 80 people. There were no goats, chickens or babies being passed over from one passenger to the next, as someone got tired of holding them. It was hardly crammed with some people even have 2 – 3 seats to themselves. Everyone was half asleep so the bus was rather quiet for most of the ride. It took about 4.5 hours to get to Maxixe (pronounced Masheesh), the town we were due to alight at for the next leg of our trip. Maxixe was reasonably well developed; nicely tarred roads, large billboards, decent-looking buildings. We were dropped off next to a bus station, adjacent to something of a shopping complex. At that time of the morning, the street was buzzing with vendors and as we alighted the bus, there were at least 5 people shoving wares in our faces. We found our way to the pier where we were to catch a ferry to Inhambane (pronounce Inhambani), the next stop in our journey. We arrived just in time to catch the next dhow (essentially a ferry) heading out. This time, we were crammed into the little boat with the other passengers. I cast a glance overhead and noticed life jackets; enough for all 40 or so of us – some reassurance, I thought. It was a slow, uneventful ride. Most of the passengers looked very bored; 30 minutes or so later we were there. We made our way to the bus station to catch our final bus to Tofo. En route, DSF and I were trying to find directions when a very dodgy looking guy (think he was South African; Mozambique is THE holiday destination for South Africans; most of them have second homes there) offered to take us. DSF thought him friendly but I made it clear that I was not getting into a car with him.
After about an hour of riding on a bus that was not too dissimilar to a small London bus, we arrived in Tofo. We were dropped off at the town centre, which had a market and a host of restaurants. Tofo is pretty much a holiday/tourist town. There are hardly any houses, just resorts, backpackers’ lodges, hotels, restaurants and such. The beach was in full view from our alighting point. We’d already decided where we would be staying after a good perusal of my lonely planet guide. With little effort, we found the backpackers’ lodge, a quaint place facing the beach that goes by the name Fatima’s nest. We went for the cheapest accommodation available – a dorm. We were given one that could accommodate 10 people but ended up being just us 2 as it’s still the low holiday season. We had our own bathroom and loo, complete with 24 hr hot water and electricity, woohoo! We dumped our bags, got acquainted with our surroundings and made it straight for the beach. The ocean had partitioned itself at one end of the beach such that a little pool had formed. We went swimming there, made friends with a dog I named Spikey (he looked like a Spikey and even better, he responded to the name!), who ended up spending the day with us. We had a late lunch at Fatima’s – pancakes with fried bananas and honey for me, which was very good actually. A plan was then formulated for how we’d spend the coming days. We chilled for the rest of the afternoon and evening, I was reading whilst DSF worked on her tan (apparently she would be laughed at if she didn’t go home several shades darker than she already was). We were quite the unlikely ebony and ivory pair

Dinner was at Dino’s, a lovely bar/restaurant just round the way. I had flame-grilled barracuda, with salad and chips; the best barracuda I’ve ever had, I must say. The food was so good, we decided to go all out and have dessert – moist chocolate cake. Man, it was just too good. We savoured the whole experience with Spikey laying comfortably at our feet. We retired shortly thereafter

DSF had me sold on the idea of taking surfing lessons. It was inexpensive, didn’t sound like I’d be drowning or breaking anything so I thought I’d give it a try. After breakfast the next morning, we went to find our surfing instructor. We got lost on the way but it was a very nice walk along the beach, so not quite as frustrating as it would normally be. Once we found the place, we were soon clad in surfing gear, our boards in hand and listening to our introductory lecture along with 5 other newbies. Once we got into the water, the fun began. We waded around lying flat on our boards for a while, just to get comfortable with them and were soon riding the waves. The instructor then taught us the art of standing on the board mid-wave. The seemingly easy manoeuvre of moving from a flat position to standing on the board mid-wave was made cumbersome by the fact that none of us could even balance well on the board in a flat position and the waves broke in too short a time to allow for fumbling. We tried it many times, some were able to kneel or stand for a couple of seconds. Fully appreciative of my limited fitness levels, I gave up after a couple of attempts. Riding the waves on stomach were very good fun anyway so I was content to stick with that. To make things more interesting, I started ducking under the waves at some point. I never thought I’d be this comfortable swimming and playing around in the ocean. We were all very sad when our two-hour time slot was over. Ravenous and quite lethargic after our morning of fun, DSF and I made our way to a nearby restaurant called Casa Barry for a large lunch – grilled sealine fish with a garlic butter dressing, salad and chips. This was my best meal in Tofo. I don’t know what sealine fish is but it tastes damn good and was grilled to perfection! It was just as well then that it was slightly overcast when were done cause you know what we needed after that food – sleep! We spent the rest of the day laying on the beach. We lost Spikey though; it turns out he was friendly to everyone; we spotted him stalking another group of friends. So much for loyalty!

We decided to have a late dinner that Friday and catch some of the night scene at the beach. Dino’s was the place to be apparently so after dinner at Fatima’s - grilled barracuda (not half as good as what I had at Dino’s), chips and salad, we made our way to Dino’s with our new found friend – a German dude who was also staying at Fatima’s. Dino’s was reasonably packed and though everyone was having fun, house music is really not for me. Two hours later, a couple of drinks down and a nice headache forming, I excused myself. Our German friend was also practically falling asleep on his feet so he joined me in escaping. I was soon in bed, fast asleep

DSF came to bed at some point in the night, the wee hours I believe. She’s 18 and I’m trying to remember when I last went out partying till the wee hours of the morning without taking a nap in between…maybe about 8 years ago. She had a kite-surfing lesson in the morning, which didn’t work out in the end as the weather had deteriorated some more. It was almost starting to put a dent on things. We had wanted to go onto our next activity – an ocean safari, which would involve swimming and snorkeling with various sea creatures. It ended up getting cancelled though because of the bad weather. “Too choppy at sea to go out on a boat”, they said. We decided to hang out on the beach, buy some gifts in the market and have some lunch. Lunch for me was peri-peri chicken and chips; not the best I’ve ever had, I have to say, but it was pretty good. We left the restaurant with our new canine friend in tow, a lovely dobberman DSF named Sarah

The skies cleared by late afternoon, I did some more reading; DSF worked on her tan and got some swimming done. It was a lazy afternoon, which we followed up with a nap (yes, it was that lazy) and ended up oversleeping till about 11pm. Frustrated that we’d missed the chance to have a nice last dinner, we made our way to Dino’s for drinks. It was a lot quieter than the night before. We sat on the deck facing the beach and making conversation with some folks we’d just acquainted with. We left the bar after a couple of hours and sat on the beach watching the stars. It was a beautiful night with the half moon casting its glance across the ocean. We saw a Ryan’s belt formation of stars and saw and wished upon a couple of shooting ones too – priceless!

Our ocean safari had been postponed till the next morning so we were up bright and early to make our way to the venue. DSF and I were soon clad in wet suits, highly amused at how ridiculous we looked in them, and joined 6 Dutch guys to go on the trip. Getting into the boat in the wetsuit was a chore and DSF and I were constantly falling over ourselves getting in and out of the speedboat. It was a beautiful day and heading out in the boat, I was able to appreciate the full splendour of our surroundings. Our guide soon spotted a whale shark; we donned our snorkeling gear and jumped into the ocean. It was coming right at me! They are large creatures (that one was about 8 feet long or so), completely harmless and we swam with it for a good amount of time. I was proud of my swimming skills too; we kept up with it pretty well. It got shy and went away after about 15 minutes; we went back onto the boat. We then spotted a manta ray, gear back on and in the water; I didn’t catch as good a glimpse of this one at first but soon saw it. It was amazing to be swimming next to these animals. We swam with another whale shark – about the same size as the first one and a manta ray. I was tired at this stage and started to feel sea-sick. As we got ready to head back, we spotted a hump-back whale and appreciated it from distance. I started to feel so dizzy and lost my breakfast to the ocean soon after. I was glad it happened then and not when we were swimming with the sharks and manta rays! I was fine and relieved once it was all out. We sped back to shore very happy with our little adventure

Already pressed for time, DSF and I checked out of Fatima’s and found a place for an early lunch. It took forever but it was good; we went to a place called Turtle Cove and had some more fish and chips ☺. Once done, we made our way to the main road heading out of Tofo. We hitched a ride from a guy who turned out to be very lovely. He dropped us off at the pier in Inhambane. We were trying to get to Maxixe for 2pm and left Tofo at 12.30 so he did us a big favour, wanted nothing in return. We jumped onto the dhow, which took a while to get full and seemed a lot slower than the ride on the way in. We got to Maxixe at 1.50pm, half-ran, half-walked our way to the bus station from the pier. Luckily it seemed the bus was delayed because we waited for about 40 minutes before catching the bus back. We finally arrived in Vilanculos at about 6.30pm, tired after the long journey but very pleased that we’d taken the time to do this trip. In untypical militant fashion, we crept back to the volunteer camp, walking through a dark deserted beach. It was strictly against AI rules but it was our last day in Mozambique so I guess a little rebellious behaviour didn’t do much harm. That evening, we regaled the other volunteers with tales from our weekend adventures

Ps. I’m abit behind with my blog posts but should get up to date in the coming days. For now, I’ve made it safely to Zambia and all is well.