It is always nice to come back to my own comfortable bed
after a vacation, especially one where I spent most nights sleeping in my tent
on the beach in Tofo, Moz. I guess it
could have been a lot worse, haha. The
last 10 days have been the most adventurous fantastic time of my life. It was a vacation for the memory books! I will give you some of the highlights.
Our vacation started on Dec 23, when half our travel group
met in Manzini, Swaziland so that the next morning we could get an early start
traveling to Maputo, Moz. While in Manzini, I stopped at Baker’s Corner
for a donut, the best way to start a morning, and then went off to buy my first
ever bikini to celebrate 35lb weight loss since June!
The next day’s travel to Maputo went pretty smoothly,
especially considering that it was down pouring rain the whole time, that’s one
way to test the water-proofing on a tent.
The tent held up, and for the most part this was the only time the whole
vacation with notable rain, we had great weather!
The 8 of us spent Christmas Eve and Christmas in Maputo, the
capital city. I had to keep repeating to
myself that it was Christmas. Without
family it didn’t feel very festive, but it was unforgettable nonetheless. The first night we walked to a restaurant on
the beach for drinks and the next night we spent at the bar in the hostel we
were staying at. Most of the city was
closed down because it was a Sunday and Christmas, so I don’t have the most
accurate impression of the city but I got to experience with good food, a bottle
of wine from the duty-free shop, and among good company.
We had direct transport door-to-door from Maputo to Tofo
Beach. My friends turned the 8hr bus
ride to the beach into party bus with the bottles of vodka they bought at
duty-free. My liver cannot keep up with
theirs and I wasn’t taking any chances during such a long bus ride on the roads
of a 3rd world country. I was
busy taking in the sites of Mozambique.
It is so different than the mountains of Swaziland. The country is flat and huge. Everything is so much more spread out than
Swaz. The fields look more like big
commercial farms I am used to from the US instead of the subsistence farming
here except that there are still women with hoes weeding the fields by
hand. Most houses in Swaziland are made
from cinderblocks and a few are made from sticks, mud, and rocks; but in Moz
the majority of the houses were made almost completely out of coconut branches/leaves.
Tofo Beach was a little bubble of paradise. White sandy beaches, beautiful blue Indian
Ocean, sitting on the deck reading a book, sipping fruit juice, and background
noise a mixture of something like Dave Matthews Band or Jack Johnson coming
from the speakers behind me and crashing waves in front of me. Tofo is generally a quiet relaxing vacation,
but it is a hotspot for New Years. We
were there long enough to experience it both ways. The beginning of the week was really chill. Most days we sent under a cabana in a hammock
on the beach with local kids begging us to buy the bracelets they make or bread
and samosas. Nights were full of drinking, dancing, chilling, concerts on the beach
with coconut homebrew, ridiculousness and all kinds of trouble!
One of the days we went on an ocean safari to snorkel with
whale sharks, the biggest shark in the world but they have no teeth. However, the sharks didn’t want to come out
to play, but the dolphins did! WE got to
roll backwards off the boat to swim with so many dolphins; I couldn’t count all
of them! I was swimming within 4m of
them. I got nervous at one point. Three of them were swimming right at me. All I saw was their huge size, the gray on
top and white on bottom and I was second guessing whether it was just friendly
dolphins in the water and not a scary shark with teeth!
New Year’s Eve was pure chaos and crazy partying. Hard to believe the beach that was so
peaceful a few days ago is now party central.
Dancing in sand is challenging by itself, but it is brought to a whole new
level when packed in with hundreds of others.
They set up a DJ booth and a stage for live music on opposite sides of
the dance sand floor. NYE music
consisted of an awesome Mozambiquan Drum band and DJs playing house music, bass
blaring for the rest of the night and throughout the morning. Every night the music was going til 5am
except NYE where the party started at 10pm and lasted til 10:30am. I went to sleep at 2:30a and woke back up at
4:30a to rejoin the party just after the sun came up. I put my bathing suit on, watched the people
who were crazy enough to still be dancing, took a nice long walk on the beach,
and then came back to sit at the water with the tide rising, trying to figure
out my New Year’s Resolution and to be hit on by Mozambiquan men. At 7am I was thinking of everyone back home
who was just then celebrating your New Year and hoping that yours was half as
memorable as mine.
WE pulled another all-nighter the next night in order to start
our journey home at 3am. I arrived in Mbabane, Swaziland around 5pm completely
exhausted from a whole day of travel and khumbi drivers trying to overcharge us
the whole way, but no other major incidents.
After one night in Mbabane decompressing with the other
Volunteers who also happened to be there and a good night’s sleep, I am now
back at my site and in my bed, so comfortable after so many days in sand!
Happy 2012 everyone!
I think it is going to take the whole year to get all the sand out of my
stuff, not such a bad thing. Here’s to a
year full of many more memories!
No comments:
Post a Comment