Paraíso.

Tofo is truly stunning. And overrun with foreign tourists, but that’s neither here nor there. I contemplated posting a long report about each and every thing we did, but such a tranquil and relaxing place deserves a clean and spare treatment.

The beach stretches out in a long palm-tinged arc cradling the clear blue-green Indian Ocean. Swells roll in softly most of the time, providing just enough background music to soothe one to sleep. All along and behind the beach are restaurants and relatively shabby backpacker’s accommodations. We stayed in a plain palm thatch bungalow perched atop a dune looking directly onto the ocean. In town, situated neatly just behind the beach, a small market sat quietly staffed by ladies overcharging (understandably) for delicious produce and gleaming seafood. All around them were locals selling copious amounts of liquor and beer for the tourist crowd. Next to the market a local (and cheap) restaurant served heaping plates of rice, stewed cabbage, carrots, and tomatoes, and your choice of fried just-dead seafood (prawns, fish, calamari). Other restaurants dotted around Tofo served similarly delicious grub, ranging from fried eggs and salad on fresh bread to Greek salad and pizza. The matapa, a soupy greenish local dish commonly eaten with rice was also not bad.

Our only real goal in Tofo, besides relaxing and mentally recharging for Term 3, was to swim with whale sharks. Having seen whale sharks in captivity (sadly, I might add), Evan and I both relished the idea of swimming freely with them. Tofo is basically the place to go if you want to see the gentle giants in the wild. Roughly 300 of the world’s approximately 1,000 whale sharks are found for most of the year off the Inhambane province coast. Tofo is chocked full of ocean safari companies that organize snorkeling excursions to swim with the sharks just off the shore (no more than a kilometer!). Despite some early technical difficulties, our boat crew proved their worth. They found three different sharks in the span of two hours.

Once a whale shark was spotted the boat crew positioned the boat ahead of the advancing behemoth and everyone slid (or floundered awkwardly) into the water. I bobbed on the surface and dove down deep to swim right next to the sharks. My decent swimming skills proved handy. Each was large, but one in particular must have been seven or eight meters and entirely docile. It was, for lack of a better term, magical (am I gushing too much?). Highly recommended to anyone visiting southern Africa; in fact, almost worth a trip to Mozambique itself. And the price? Not too shabby: $30 for snorkel gear and two hours on the water.

Other than whale sharks, Evan and I just lounged around, wake up late, ate tasty food, read books, played pool at the hostel, swam, and sunned ourselves on the beach. Evan also built more than one sand castle. We met a lot of very different people, many from Europe, South Africa (obviously), and Australia. We shared beers and laughs, and did a bit of dancing. We even ran into the same older Dutch man from Zimbabwe at our hostel!

After our sojourn in Tofo, we took an early (think 4AM) bus back to Maputo, and then an overnight bus back into South Africa. Before leaving Maputo, Evan and I just sat for hours in a restaurant having lunch and coffee, then sipping Laurentina beers as the sun sank lower over the Indian Ocean. Before hopping on our bus we loaded up on tangerines, loaves of delicious bread, chocolate and devoured two highly suspect but scrumptious hamburgers (fried egg and pickles included) from a sidewalk shack. It had been a highly successful trip by most accounts. No crimes committed or arrested for, no major thefts (unless you count that bank hold-up…er I mean…canoe trip in Botswana), and some interesting (or phantom) visas for the passport. Would have been nice to see lions and other game in Zimbabwe, but life isn’t a script. We felt refreshed after five days at the beach, ready to tackle another four months of teaching.