Christmas Eve with Shark and Pig

In the morning I’m snorkelling in deep blue waves with a dozen sunburnt South Africans while a three-metre whale shark swims underneath us. By afternoon I find myself stuffed into an over-crowded minibus with 18 people and one pig.
Oink.
An odd combination of circumstances that is actually quite common to the backpacker’s experience of Mozambique.
The tourism industry in Mozambique is still somewhat in its infancy. The fabulous beaches have always been there, but decades of civil war kept the tourists away. About 10 years ago, some intrepid South African tourists started making their way up the coast, finding some beautiful and almost empty coastline along the way. Today they come in droves, especially around the Christmas holidays. They drive up in huge bakkies (trucks) loaded down with barbecues, four-wheelers, jet-skis and loads of camping gear.
And the hotels followed. Today dozens of resorts dot the coastline, especially along a huge stretch of white-sand beach called Praia de Tofo, about four hours north of the capital city of Maputo. There are restaurants, all-hours bars, dive shops and surf shops, almost all run by South Africans.
But the transportation infrastructure is still somewhat lacking. Visitors endure hours of bumping along roads with potholes the size of, ummm... maybe a whale shark. And backpackers have no choice but to join the locals in the cheap-and-cheerful “chappas” – minibuses loaded down with so many people that limbs and occasionally whole torsos flail out the windows, with bags and goats strapped up top, and the occasional pig or chicken under the seat.
My friend Mark and I met up in mid-December to spend our Christmas holidays exploring together. As he was working in Namibia and I in Swaziland, we decided to meet up in Johannesburg and plan our adventures from there. Our original plan had been to go to Botswana, but the lure of tropical beaches was too strong and we decided to head out to Mozambique instead.
We started in Maputo, the capital city which is tucked into the bottom corner of the country, near its borders with Swaziland and South Africa. We were pleasantly surprised by the city’s laid-back, Latin atmosphere. Both of us are living in cities founded by dour Afrikaaners, where the South African fear of crime and strip-mall culture is strong. So as we wandered through Maputo’s colourful streets full of street vendors and music, I turned to Mark and said, “This is how I imagined Africa would be.”
We weren’t in the city long before we headed up to Tofo.
The beach was gorgeous, with huge turquoise waves crashing in from the Indian Ocean. The water was warm but the surf often too rough to do much swimming, so pent most of my time hanging out on the beach. Local boys would come along every few minutes selling shell bracelets they made themselves. They said they used the money to pay for school fees. Imagine an eight-year-old in Canada working all summer so he could go to school.
But the boys were cheerful and friendly, and always brought along a soccer ball to amuse themselves when sales weren’t going so well. One day when they were playing on the beach and I approached them to take a picture. When the ball came my way, I joined in, and was having so much fun that I forgot about taking pictures. Mark joined in, then a few other tourists on the beach. So it was The Bracelet Boys versus The Tourists. They were just small enough that we managed to keep up with them. We played until the tide came in too deep.
On my second day there I embarked on a ridiculous and over-priced expedition labelled an “Ocean Safari”. The point of this safari is for a dozen tourists to get on a large boat and waste tons of gas zipping back and forth through the waves in search of a whale shark. Once the shark is found, the tourists slap on snorkels, masks and flippers and dive in the water. They snorkel alongside the whale shark until they get tired. Then the boat picks them up, takes them ahead of the whale shark, and they do it all over again.
The first time I jumped in the whale shark was coming straight for me. I adjusted my mask, peered through the turquoise depths, and mouthed “holy shit!” into my snorkel. I moved out of the way just on time, and the giant creature sailed past. They’re krill-eaters, so they’re perfectly harmless. But they are alarmingly large.
The whale shark was quite laid back, so she let us swim with her for almost an hour. Which was too long for me. The sea was rough that day, and I’m apparently not much of a mariner. I was the first to lose my breakfast over the side of the boat, so I was quite grateful when we got back on land.
Later that day, several of us boarded a chappa (the one with the pig) to Inhambane to get some money from the cash machine. Our chappa on the way back broke down, so we flagged down a passing truck. Everybody in from the chappa hopped in, which left only standing room for myself and a few others. Ever stood in the back of a moving truck on a pot-holed road? It was an interesting exercise in balance.
Our next stop was another 5 hours north in Vilanculos, a small town that hit by a cyclone just last year. Since many people in Mozambique live in reed huts, I don’t know how there weren’t any fatalities. The town doesn’t show any signs of the cyclone now, but the storm did do some serious damage to the reefs there. Which means tourism numbers are down, just when they need us the most.
But neither Mark nor I dive, so we were quite happy to spend our time there wandering around town, exploring the market, stuffing our faces with Portuguese bread and tarts, and meeting the locals. Some small girls taught me a game played with pebbles that’s something like jacks. You toss on pebble in the air, and gather as many pebbles from the ground as you can before catching it. They giggled at my clumsiness when I gave it a try.
We also did another tourist trip, this time a “dhow safari”. A dhow is a type of sailboat still used by Mozambiquan fisherman today, with an ancient design that I think was imported by Arabic spice traders centuries ago. They took us across the water to one of the islands, where the beautiful white sand led right down to a reef that’s good for snorkelling. I’ve never seen so many amazing fish. Mostly small angel fish, but others in blue, yellow, white, even one that seemed almost transparent. Tiny neons swimming in schools that flashed electric blue when I reached out my hand to scatter them. The swimming was effortless as the current carried us along the reef.
The island was just gorgeous, and after lunch (fresh crabs and calamari, with a view of dolphins leaping along the channel) I walked down the beach to a high-tide lagoon between the reef and the sand where the swimming was lovely. If Adam and Eve had a swimming pool in the garden of Eden, I think it might have been something like this one.
On the way out the men brought up the sails, tugging them this way and that with ropes. We floated gently across the shallow, turquoise water until suddenly we heard a huge crack. The mast broke in two and tumbled into the water, taking half the sail with it and narrowly missing hitting a few children.
We headed back down to Maputo for New Year’s. We got more of a chance to explore the capital this time, including the big open-air market just outside the city centre. This amazing place sold just about everything you can imagine: fruit, vegetables, baskets, hand-carved wooden spoons and bowls, goats, chickens, clothes, toiletries, even hair extensions. We took a look at the goats and the enthusiastic vendor kept pulling a mottled brown and white one towards us with a big grin. “This one very nice!” How do I explain to him that I wouldn’t have a clue what to do with a goat? That meat in my world comes faceless and nameless in styrofoam trays from the supermarket? We also watched, amused, as live chickens were placed in plastic shopping bags, with little holes poked in the side where their heads stuck out.
The most interesting part was the medicinal market, which reminded me of some of the shops in Vancouver’s Chinatown. They had all kinds of pelts and skins hanging from the rafters, and jars full of dried snakes and lizards. There were bundles and bundles of twigs, bark, and roots, and jars packed with dried leaves and coloured powders. One vendor even had a dried puffer fish and a shark’s jaw. I which of these mysterious ingredients are used medicinally, and which are used for magic.
We spent New Year’s eve at a street party in the middle of a city. There was a live concert featuring several Mozambican stars, and an R&B artist from the States. It was good fun... We danced with strangers who were delighted with the two awkward white people who spontaneously joined them, and watched as a little man with a big knife try to pick a fight with our newly-acquired friends from Cape Town.
From there we went back to Joburg, where Mark went to visit some distant relatives, while I took off to Soweto. More on that later...