Mozambiqing

So this post may be lengthy since I am trying to cram a whole week of craziness into a single post, but to make it more reader-friendly I am going to limit each day to one adventure, instead of giving a blow-by-blow of the whole day. And I promise pictures to go with each story. Get excited.

Day 1
Well, this day was not that exciting actually. It involved catching an 8:30 am bus from Joburg and taking it for about 8 hours. It was a little more cramped than a greyhound, but fairly comparable I guess. Except it was totally crammed full of people and it had no a/c, so halfway through the trip it became sort of unbearably hot. Never fear, there was an adventure though. Ok, so I don't know how many experiences people have had crossing national borders, but I've had a couple. I've gone to Mexico, Canada (yep, very exciting) and then from Italy into Switzerland into France. Crossing the border from South Africa into Mozambique was nothing like that. Granted we were on a bus, but still. Ok, so we all had to get out of the bus on the South African side to go through customs (totally fine and normal) but then we get out on the other side and the bus was nowhere to be seen and we still weren't in Mozambique and not quite sure what we were supposed to do. Luckily Rutendo was with us and she's from Zimbabwe, so she's had similar experiences with borders. She let us know that we had to walk across the border and then go through customs on the Mozambique side. This suprised all of us, but we started trekking across the border in between huge trucks, which luckily were pretty stationary. It was crazy. Ok, I don't have a picture of that (we had other things on our mind than taking pictures), but imagine the last scene of the Sound of Music when the whole Von Trapp family is crossing the border over the mountains... well except there were only six of us and none of us were related and we weren't wearing matching traveling clothes and we were surrounded by fences and trucks rather than gorgeous mountains and grass, and there was no singing. But other than, exactly the same. That night we checked into a backpacker's lodge called Fatima's which actually had a really nice vibe. I do have pictures of the outdoor patio area of it:


Day 2
We decided that for this day we were going to just walk around Maputo (the city we were staying in at the time) and get to know our layout. Our adventure for the day commenced when a random guy on the street heard us speaking English (the native language in Mozambique is Portuguese) and introduced himself as Derrique. He then offered to show us to where we were trying to go. He then proceeded to lead us to a really nice seafood restaurant right on the water and back to Fatima's that night, and managed to fall in love with Rutendo in the process. Such is life. We thought it might be awkward to continue to hang out with him past this day, but he was an excellent tour guide of the city and was very nice.
A picture of him explaining directions to us, or something to this nature:
Day 3
So we stayed at Fatima's again, but we got to switch rooms to a private room (which is much better than a communal one that we slept in the first night). The beds all had mosquito nets on them (because of the malaria and all) which were really fun to sleep in. Or at least it just looked cool. A picture of Kelsey and Fiona's bed:
Anyways, we spent the day walking around the city again, though we felt like we knew everything so much better and felt really accomplished about that. The exciting story of the day however was how we got our lodging settled for Friday. We had been planning on staying at Fatima's but it was all booked on Friday, so we changed out plans to go to Pont d'Oro Wednesday to Friday and then come back to the city and find a cheap hotel to stay at for Friday night. We found a motel and then a nicer hotel for $130 a room, which was just at the cusp of our price range for the amount of time we'd be spending in it. Though we did have plans to sneak all six of us into that one room. Anyways, we then see this one other hotel and decide to go inside. It was gorgeous inside:
It was as fancy as that throughout the whole hotel (that was the lounge area slash outdoor lawn area through the doors). We were told it was $200 a night for their cheapest rooms, which we thought would be a little over our price range. We then decided that we would try to hustle our way into a cheaper room by being like "well, we really want to stay here, but the other hotel we were thinking about staying in is only $130 a night, can you match their price?" I know, trying to hustle a room, but we had been doing a lot of hustling all week so I guess we were in the mood. Anyways, we send two of our own into the hotel to try and barter and they come back like a minute later to tell us that they wanted to give us all a tour. We all came in and met one of the owners of the hotel, who then proceeded to show us the whole hotel (conference rooms, normal rooms, suites, presidental suite (which we think he was sleeping in, it was so nice looking! and it had it's own pool) and the pool area. We found out that the hotel had not even had its grand opening yet, it had just opened and some of the rooms weren't even finished. In fact, they hadn't had any guests stay there yet. We did our little bartering thing and before we even finished he was like "don't worry about the price, we would be honored to have you stay and tell us how the rooms are and the service and everything." Yeah. So we went to the desk and told the receptionist that we would like a single room for the six of us (two cots and one of us would sleep on the couch) and that it would be for $130. She was a little skeptical at first, but then everything was worked out and we became the very first registered guests at this gorgeous hotel. We took a picture with the receptionists.
Day 4
We had an interesting transportation day this day. We left Maputo early early to catch a ferry
and then when we got over to the other side (about 15 min, so quick) we decided to take a shared taxi to Ponto D'Oro, a gorgeous seaside town. This shared taxi experience was quite something. Fun, though not in a strictly conventional sense. To recreate on your own, follow these simple instuctions... take one white van:
fill it to the brim with people (this one managed to hold 19 adults and a baby)
and then drive off for three hours over dirt and sand roads playing techno music and stopping just once for a supposed bathroom break (we figured this out too late to get out ourselves. oh well). Fiona and I had almost no leg room because we sat with the luggage and had a lot of it across out laps so that by the end of the trip we had sort of lost circulation. But it was a definitely a cool experience. Though maybe not one I'll repeat in the near future.

Adventure 2, This day was kind of like two days, because the trip was intense, but since we got such an early start we still got to Ponto d'Oro by 11. We got to the place we were staying (Kaya Kweru) which wasn't strictly a backpackers place, it was more like a cheap motel, but it had its own pool and we got our own room and it was like one hundred feet from the gorgeous beach. Besides the fact that the power kept dying and our toilet stopped working halfway into day two, it served us well. We went to the beach pretty quickly and the waves were huge! I was overly excited about this fact. The one downfall was it had a quite impressive undertow which managed to knock those of us who went into the water over a couple of times. But it was very fun and the water was a nice temperature.
Day 5
We were convinced by Rutendo to check out the snorkeling options available on the ocean. After spending the morning at the beach we all decided to go snorkeling in the afternoon. We got picked up and rode over in the back of a truck,
then had to help push the boat into the water
but then we got a thoroughly exciting ride over the huge waves on the motorboat. The visibility for snorkeling wasn't wonderful. We were told we were swimming over coral at some point, though I didn't see any. We did get to swim with a whale shark, which regardless of its name is neither a whale nor a shark, but actually just a really big fish. In fact it's the biggest fish from what they told us. It was really cool to swim with, though eventually it out-swam me. The day really made me want to go and get re-certified as a scuba diver. I love being able to breathe in the water. Oh, and near the end of our time in the water I was the last of our group to get into the boat and just as I got both feet on the deck a huge wave rocked our boat and I lost my balance and flipped right off the side onto the snorkeling instructor. Whoops. Neither of us were hurt, so that's a plus. It was pretty funny.
Side note, the rest of the pictures will be coming from Teresa's camera because my camera happened to take the boat ride with us and even though it was in a compartment, it got wet and is no longer in working order. It is the one casualty from the trip unfortunately.

Day 6
We hitched a ride back early with the owner of Kaya Kweru, which offered us a less cramped, though just as bumpy ride back. The ride started with the song Sweet Dreams though, which was fun. Anyways, we got back to Maputo and went to our final destination, the hotel we had made arrangements with on Tuesday. We went to the desk and tried to check in as a group of six for one room for $130. The receptionist was different from the original receptionist and seemed to have a bit of a problem with us doing this. She told us to wait in the reception area and hang out while she figured things out. I went outside in one of the hanging dome chairs they had out there and finished Lolita, the book I had been reading that vacation. Just as I came back inside she arrived to tell us that everything was taken care of, that we would have two rooms and that they were ready for us. We had to make sure the price was the same though so we asked and she confirmed $130. We then asked if it was $130 for one room or for both rooms and she told us it would be $130 for both. Yep. We got two rooms at this hotel that is heading towards five-star status (or at least a high four-star) for the price of less than one room. It was incredibly exciting. We decided to be super classy that night and we all got into the hotel provided bathrobes and jumped on the bed
and drank champagne
and then retired to our separate rooms

and went to sleep (I don't have a picture of this). It was a good last day of the trip.
A side note. By Friday we were not the only ones checked into the hotel. The other guests were the Mozambican national soccer team. Fiona made sure to get a picture with some of the players, though those pictures will be found on her camera, not mine or Teresa's.

Day 7
Oh did I say last day? Well we still had to travel back. This was pretty uneventful too... except for the border again. So we didn't have problems with the concept this time, we were total pros getting off the bus and walking to the Mozambican border office. However when we got there we noticed that we were missing Sasha and Teresa. They had planned on taking a picture of themselves at the border sign, but it seemed to be taking them a really long time. Kelsey went back to see what was going on and then she didn't come back for awhile. I was just starting to get really nervous that one of them had been run over by a car or something when we saw them. Apparently they had been stopped by a guard after taking a picture, accused of taking pictures of the guards (which apparently is a huge no-no) and then threatened with six months in jail. Teresa kept asking what her rights were and for him to talk to them in English and finally a nice man came up to translate for them. He then explained that really what the guard wanted was to be apologized to and then bribed. When Teresa and Sasha found this out they showed him that all the money they had was one dollar and he let them go. There is a lack of picture for this event because he made them erase it, even though it was zoomed in just on Teresa's face and the sign saying Welcome to Mozambique. Oh well, you'll just have to imagine it. We then got back to Joburg by 4.

So that was the trip. It was really fun and exciting and I'm not really ready to get back to classes on Monday. Oh hey, that's in an hour. Darn.