We decided to take a spin out to Barra beach nearby the rather fancy and rather renowned Barra Lodge resort at the northernmost shore of the peninsula. A snorkeling and diving mecca, apparently. Things didn't look too great today though, grey skies and a large swell running. It was early but we were peckish so we landed Cruiser out on the middle of the strand and lit up the skottel.
Barra lighthouse, the lighthousekeeper's hut of which is now upmarket tourist accommodation
An ideal spot to nibble on our egg and steak sandwiches from the comfort of the mansized camping chairs. The local lads hauling nets and boats up and down the beach kept us entertained for a short while. Our well planned morning of gluttony was cut short however by a panicky shell-necklace salesman rushing over to inform us of the EnviroCops and their green quadbikes who were "on the way" any minute now to bust up our party. It was illegal apparently to park an oversized 4x4 on the beach and eat 9am steaks in this part of the country. This much we could have guessed as there was nobody else at it. The legit reason, it transpires, is that sea turtles frequent this beach at night in order to lay a clutch of eggs and bury them in the sand and forget where they put them so that beer swilling tourists can drive over them the next day, ruining any chances of species survival. With this hanging over our heads, and the impending fine from the EcoCops we nibbled our steak rolls that little bit faster and opted out of the second tinnie.
Up we packed, a little disheartened, and rolled our way to Barra Lodge, somewhat perplexed by the grandeur of the private houses lining Barra beach. Plenty of wealth here, each cottage on stilts with two GP-plate 4x4's parked underneath accompanied by at least two jetskis and or one powerboat with all the toys and modcons. My god there's a lot of wealthy South Africans still floating about, despite rumours to the contrary.
We ducked into Barra Lodge at 10:30ish and just in time to dodge some very nasty downpours. A small little green snake in a well-trimmed bush was causing some consternation amongst the curious tourists and the superstitious staff alike. We concluded it to be a juvenile Boomslang, who could possibly still pack a punch despite his wee stature. Unfazed, we ambled to the beach bar to kill some time until the showers cleared up. Here we were flanked by a number of package holiday tourists whinnying and whining away in their nasal accents about this and that not being up to scratch. The first, and last hopefully, bunch of package holidaymakers (or cruise passengers) we would come across.
Perhaps the two least convincing Disney caricatures you're likely to come across. Thankfully.
We decided to take a gawk at Inhambane - the largest town on the peninsula - which I'd been keen to check out due to its naval history. It has been a busy trading town for almost a milennium and the Portuguese have been very fond of its safe haven since the early 1500s. As consequence of the cotton, ivory and slave trades, missionaries and varies power struggles over the last few centuries the town has taken on a very culturally cosmopolitan feel. Mosque sits next to cathedral sits next to trading dhow jetty. The dhows here are quite iconic but still very practical to this day, ferrying locals back and forth from Maxixe, the regional "city". By dhow it's a quick 1500m spin across the estuary, by car or taxibus it's a laborious 50km haul.
Looking to Maxixe across Baia de Inhambane. With the tide like this you could nearly walk it.
The well-kept local mosque, of which I know nothing about, I'm ashamed to admit. Overlooking the Baia, it has one of the best views on the peninsula.
Bewildered by the kind-of one-way-streets leading onto and off of the town's (crescent shaped) roundabout we abandoned the vehicle on one of the broader colonial style streets in search of an eatery. The 1994 "Guide to Mozambique" by Mike Slater recommended Restaurante Tic-Tic as having the "best fish and chips" in Mozambique, or something to that outrageous effect. Still though, it was the only tip we had and we stuck by Mike. We eventually located what appeared to be the correct eatery and I stuck my head inside while Chris procured a table on the stoep. I was sure I had walked into a dark old hardware store with a battered old countertop and black and white linoleum floortiles worn through to the concrete. The only hint of its restaurante status was a rickety Fanta fridge in the corner. After some faltering and false starts the owner/waiter/chef/handyman produced a faded photocopy of a menu once handscrawled in pencil. Urging Chris not to go inside, we settled on the Fish of the Day after some time deciphering the menu.
Tic Tic
Around 40-60 mins later we were granted our wish. Though I will never figure out what aquatic beast we were treated to. It looked like fish, tasted like fish, but had the spine of a human, with great big knuckles of vertebrae. Best not to ask.
A short stroll around Inhambane revealed a very interesting Land Rover graveyard which was littered with several other decaying colonial era carcasses. Greasy boys no older than 13 were rolling around underneath some of these crocks, spanner in hand, trying to pump some life back into the old beauts. With dinner in mind we picked up some better quality Pau from the small bakery across from Tic Tic and rolled on towards the Eastern seaboard of the peninsula: Guinjata beach. The sandy stretch is idyllic, perfect for swimming, diving, snorkelling, fishing and surfing, all pastimes enhanced by the line of reefs offshore. A very popular family resort though only really accessible by 4x4. So a very popular family resort if one can afford to get there. The automobile display on the beach looked like something from a hippity-hop music video. Enough Landcruisers, Jeeps, Land Rovers, Pajeros, Ford F150s, Hilux TwinCabs, G class Mercs etc etc to beat the band. On the beach we bumped into a family we had quite coincidentally met a week earlier in the cash and carry liquor store in Nelspruit while stocking up for the trip. The Kennets (?) were a lovely bunch of people so we stayed for a quick tin of 2M and an absolutely splendid frolic in the waves.
Spot the lads. Eejits.
Heading back to Tofo we almost clattered 2 young lads, around 8 or 10 years old, who were doing headstands in the middle of the road. They had fashioned sorts of skirts out of palm leaves and strung them to their legs such that when doing headstands and kicking their heels the looked quite convincingly like mini palm trees. In the middle of the road. Very impressive choreography no doubt but an absolute death wish. They only leapt out of the way of our brutal bullbars with metres to spare and sprinted alongside our doors, hands out looking for sweeties. If we weren't belting along at 60kmh I'd've rolled down the window for them alright. And dispensed a right clip round the ears. On we went. In Tofo we'd a gawk round the touristy market where I picked up what I'd longed for all week: a low quality poorly printed badly fitting 2M string vest.
The main beach road in Tofo, two blocks from the local market and one from Main Street. Tarmac is a total luxury in this country.
Come dusk it was braaitime at the campsite again thank God, so time for boerewors and lamb choppies. We were enjoying a Caub Sav doppie and watching the coals redden when a hot smelling CitiGolf pulled into the almost deserted campsite and immediately got stuck in a blatant patch of soft sand, axle deep. Some spinning and whirring of wheels and a few tsk!'s and eyerolling from our end followed. Not ones to stare at damsels in distress for too long, we brought over a towrope and Cruiser once our cans were dry. Chivalrous Boozy Gents:1 Distraught German Young Ones:0.
Owing us at least their company for a while the cute Krauts duly obliged and joined us for a few drops once they'd freshened up. And a freshening up they needed too - the poor lasses had clocked up 800km that very day driving from the dilapidated Zim/Moz border at Mutare/Manica to the campsite in Tofo without rest. 11 hrs in an arse-breaking CitiGolf in grimy summer heat doesn't quite sound like a barrel of laughs. Fair play lasses.
A few drinks later and the girls showed themselves to be a bit of craic. Somehow, the two of them had just driven 8500km around SA, Lesotho, Zimbabwe, Botswana and Mozambique in the rental Chico, without incident whatsoever, apart from getting stuck in a small patch of sand in a campsite in Tofo. Tough nuts - we felt like pampered fools in our enormous luxury Toyota with kitchenette and freezers, them with only a couple of backpacks. Still though, we hauled them free didn't we?
At 23h das lasses hit the hay while we sauntered on to Bob's (Dino's) bar for a sconce and a dop. Very poor crowd out - not a patch on the previous night's shenanigans. It seems that we rather poorly timed our stay at the backpacker's party capital of Mozambique. An enormous dance/trippy/hippy music festival had taken place four night previous though there wasn't a hint of it to be seen on this drizzly Tuesday night. Dead it was. For once we actually had "just the one" and headed off to leaba before midnight. Lovely. And to top it off there was a schoolbus parked in the driveway that came straight out of some quirky Japanese Manga comic tv series starring pet rabbit high tech transformobots. What a lovely surprise.
