Beautiful Places and Bunny Chow

(written July 30)

With only a few exceptions, things have been going great since my last post. We made it to Chimoio, a small and rather pleasant city near Zimbabwe, and checked into the Pink Papaya, a backpackers place that is painted entirely in Pepto Bismol pink. Even the toilet seat! The owner, a German woman named Anya, was without a doubt the most unbelievably friendly person I've met in a long time. We spent an afternoon hiking in the surrounding hillsides and walking through the bairro, or slum area, with a local man.

The next day, we decided to go to Parque Nationale da Gorongosa. Apparently, Gorongosa was once one of Africa's premier wildlife parks, but its animal population was decimated by hunters and poachers during the civil war. It's recently been "adopted" by an American foundation and is trying hard to make a comeback, including through traditional ceremonies asking the ancestors to bring back tourists. Cool.

Anyway, Mike and I decided it would be worth a visit even though there aren't many animals. I called the first number I was able to dig up, which turned out the be the personal cell phone of the Park Superintendent, who was on vacation at the time and didn't seem too excited to help me with a reservation... Oops. The next number was luckily correct, but I was told that there was no camping currently available, and that the rooms were all booked for the next few nights. I know in the US that would mean, as you might guess, that there was no camping and no rooms. But this is Mozambique. So I asked the same question 3 or 4 more times ("No camping? No rooms? Two people?") and then suddenly there was an "Oh! Two people for a room? Yes, we have space." Thanks, dude.

Here's how we got there: We took a minibus (horribly crowded, of course) from Chimoio to the junction at Incope, called the Park to tell them we were at Inchope and on our way, and hopped on another minibus. We rode for about an hour, when suddenly the bus screeched to a stop, the conductor dumped our bags on the ground and all but shoved us off before the bus took off into the distance.

Ok. We looked around, feeling very much in the middle of nowhere. The African bush extended in all directions, broken only by the silent, empty tarmac road, and a small, dirt track that presumably led to the park. We picked up our bags, moved under the shade of a tree, and waited, listening to the wind in the bush. And waited more. Hmm. When we called from Inchope, the person I'd talked to said he'd send a truck to pick us up at the junction. Was this the right junction?

Luckily, it was, and after an hour, a truck came to take us to the park. The complex itself was pretty funny. They were definitely moving in the direction of luxury, but had quite a way to go. They had a lovely pool, half surrounded by a nice wooden fence and half with chain link. The pretty path lights leading the way to the rondavels (the "rooms" were actually really nice self-contained rondavels) were covered by plastic water bottles cut in half. Ha ha.

We went on a few game drives, and saw lots and lots of antelope and warthogs. Not much else. But the park itself was extraordinarily beautiful. At parts, it seemed exactly like Jurassic Park. Other parks were what you picture as the quintessential African savannah. It was definitely worth the trip.

We continued from there to Vilankulo. Unbelievable. It's a beachside town with the most turquoise waters I've ever seen. At low tide, sand bars appear out across the ocean and it's possible to walk far, far out into the water (we almost got stranded coming back late, though!). We stayed at an amazing backpackers' called Zombie Cucumber, which was run by an extremely British lady who cooked us amazing homemade dinners every evening.

While at Vilankulo, we went on a 2-day overnight dhow (sailboat) safari to the Bazaruto Archipelago, a set of 5 or 6 utterly idyllic islands about 5km off the coast. We snorkled with an amazing array of tropical fish, and explored the vast, entirely empty white sand beaches and dunes of the islands. The water and sky were both unbelievably blue. At night, we looked up at the most incredibly starry sky I've ever seen.

We spent one more day on the mainland at Vilankulo, and then continued farther south to Tofo, the most famous beach in Mozambique. I'd been a little hesitant going to Tofo, since I knew it would be very touristy and have found that most places with lots of Westerners on vacation have bad relationships with local people. But it was actually a very great, relaxed and friendly place. The backpackers' we stayed at had Mozambican music and dance nights, and about half the crowd was locals. It was really, really fun!

We spent the days at Tofo (by the way, it's pronounced Tofu!) just lying on the beach, buying shell bracelets from a few kids and turning away dozens more. Occassionally, a man would come by with a young coconut, and for 50 cents he would cut off the top, let you drink the juice, then slice it up to munch on. Yum! Tofo was also a fun place to be since we'd started to make a number of friends in Chimoio and Vilankulo who also traveled to Tofo when we did, so we started making closer friendships with them. One British couple we ended up being with in 5 places! But meeting these other travelers has been a really fun part of the trip! We've met tons of British, German and Dutch people, as well as American, Spanish, Israeli, Japanese, and on and on. Basically all are between 18 and 30 and are pretty neat people!

Oh, Bunny Chow! I promised I'd mention bunny chow in my blog. If you're ever in Tofo, go to the Bread Shack near Fatima's Nest and buy bunny chow. It's really yummy and cheap! (The owner was very excited to have over 300 google hits for "Tofo Bunny Chow" since they've only been open 2 months, so I promised I'd mention it, too!)

More soon to come...