Paradise Perspective, Tofo, Mozambique

Concrete Roof Camp for Tents, Fatima's, Maputo, Mozambique

As a supplement to the Lonely Planet Guide, Mark and I gather information from fellow travelers.  “Where ya been?” “What would you recommend or avoid?”  Throughout the journey, there’s been a lot of buzz about the beaches of Tofo, Mozambique.  There was so much buzz, that our whole group decided we couldn’t miss it.  So, we booked flights from Livingstone, Zambia to Maputo, Mozambique (the capital city, supposedly six hours south of Tofo). 

Waiting for the bus

Maputo's Bus Terminal

Oven, er... Bus Interior

If you believe in bad omens, you might have been alarmed at the beginning of our trip when one of our group members woke up vomiting and had an unannounced loose stool while lying down at the airport.  Sometimes shit happens without warning.  It’s like a traveler’s right of passage: you’re not a real traveler until you’ve crapped yourself in public.  We bought him a new pair of shorts at the airport gift shop and carried on.

We arrived in Maputo, only to discover that the visa fee was $82 USD (not the $25 Lonely Planet mentioned, not the $50 we had anticipated).  We forked it over, but not without making cocked eyebrow visa pictures.  We hailed a $12 cab to Fatima’s Backpacker’s Hostel and surveyed the land on the way in.  Granted, we only saw a slice of Maputo, but the place looked like a dump, slapped together tin shacks littered with debris, stretching on into oblivion.  From our sweaty perch atop a concrete roof (otherwise known as our tent site), we could see the New Year’s band preparing to play in the open-air lobby down below, and we could see and hear the popping fireworks up above. 

We sweated through the night wearing earplugs and face masks, and when we rose at 5am for the $34 air conditioned shuttle to Tofo, the New Year’s festivities were still underway.  We waited in the lobby from 6am to 8am when the manager finally announced that the driver was MIA (ie: still drinking the New Year in).  We got a refund and a free ride to Junta, the local bus station which was covered in debris and dirty sledge pools- it looked and smelled like a landfill.  Without signage, we relied on Jimmy’s Portugese-speaking skills (Jimmy, a Pennsylvania-native, Exxon-Mobile employee, stationed in Angola, was in our same predicament).  He found us the Maputo-bound bus, and we piled in with our luggage.  Shoulder to shoulder in a swelteringly hot oven, we baked for two hours while tickets were sold to fill the bus.  Don’t be fooled, a bus in Africa is not full until the aisle seats have been folded down to fill in each remaining centimeter of space.  There we sat, shoulder to shoulder 4 across, 8 deep, bags on our laps, knees in the seats in front of us, baking in the heat and trying not to breathe in the body odor funk.

When the motor started, we were quite relieved to get air flow.  We buried ourselves in books for the next 8 hours of potholes and beer-induced outbursts from the front of the bus.  In addition to the piercing clap and cat-calls from the drunk guys at the front of the bus to two girls in the back, we were serenaded by blaring CD mixes of Portugese dance, 90’s R&B, and Justin Bieber.  Staring out the window, I let the stretches of corn-filled plains on the horizon take me away.

Dorms with Mosquito Nets



Boys selling bracelets on the beach




Building in Tofo, under construction



Market, Tofo, Mozambique

We pulled into Tofo as the sun was setting.  Traffic down the narrow sandy streets was jammed due to New Year’s parties.  The bus dumped us out and informed us that we would have to walk the remaining 2 km.  Drenched in our own sweat, we dragged our bags through the mess of vehicles and sand to Fatima’s which was already filled past capacity.  The New Year’s crowd had overwhelmed the water supply, therefore there was no running water in town.  Further, there were no available electrical outlets.  We pitched our tent in the sand for $16 each and wondered how we would sleep in the heat and humidity.  Were it not for the mosquitos, I believe we may have tried slept naked outside the tent.  Instead, we doused ourselves in deet, shoved our earplugs deep into our ears, and sweated through the night.

By 6:30am, the tent was absolutely unbearable.  Displacement and culture shock began to settle in amongst us.  This was not the Tofo everyone had raved about.  We meandered into the market for breakfast then sauntered along the beach.  There were no taxis, so we hitched a ride to the nearest ATM, 3-4 km away.  As 4 of us piled into the air-conditioned pick-up cab, Mark joked, “This is our first car-jacking.  How we doing so far?”  There was a moment of hesitation followed by a roar of laughter.  At the petrol station, we bought chocolate milk and off-brand Gatorade that tasted like the McDonald’s orange drink they served in big igloos when I was a kid at vacation Bible camp.  At one point Joel asked what time it was and we all laughed because it was irrelevant, no one cared; we were on vacation.  For the return ride, we hailed a 5 met (13cent) chappa.  It appeared full, but somehow they managed to pack us in on each other’s laps while some people hung on to handles, dangling out the mini-van’s open door.  We laughed the whole way.

Some Peace Corps volunteers recommended the bunny chow at the Bread Shack down the road, so we stopped in to enjoy a $4 ½ loaf of sour-dough bread hallowed out and filled with chicken curry.  We also tried the flat crust pizza at beach-side Dino’s, the restaurant of choice when a person is looking to hang out for ½ the day.  Between feedings, we inquired about the prices of scuba certification.  Contrary to the “cheap prices” everyone raved about, the cheapest price sounded like a discouraging $500 USD.  Early loan disbursements failed to come through, so most people were on a tight budget of food and shelter by this time.

Mark and I moved from the tents to the dorms where there are mosquito nets and a ceiling fan.  Justin spent his days in the market searching for someone to trade a hat for fishing pole hooks.  He also found a job selling excursions and internet in exchange for food and lodging for the next two weeks.  Joel, Kenny, Mark, and I jumped the ocean waves to cool down, then did our laundry by creating an NRS strap laundry line between abandoned wooden poles on a warm, windy sand hill above the ocean.  For some reason, the four of us hanging out on the hill reminded me of “Where the Wild Things Are.”  I guess I felt that we were on the loose, hanging out, lazily doing whatever suited our fancy.  We watched the surfers down below, the jet skies, the kite surfer…   we settled into canvas-covered wooden beach chairs facing the beach, letting the sounds of the crashing ocean waves lull us into relaxation.  It wasn’t the paradise people had talked it up to be, but sometimes paradise is all about perspective.