Home » Mozambique » Day 12. Thu 28th April. The Bazaruto Archipelago

Chris, Mark and I have booked a boat for 9:00 to go snorkelling off the 2-Mile Reef. It costs $25 per person, but we can go out for as long as we want.<br />I still have diarrhoea and I'm getting painful cramps in my gut which are really getting me down. I nearly decide to stay with Blondie and Ken on the beach, especially when I discover that the boat has no sun shade, but finally I decide to go. I'm very glad that I did, because the snorkeling is absolutely fantastic - I think better even than Hurghada.

Day 12. Thu 28th April. The Bazaruto Archipelago

DaveMidgley
2005-10-22 18:43:57

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arrives first with a baby girl on his shoulders., which he passes to me. Amazingly, even when the whole family (father, mother, son, daughter and another unidentified teenage girl) are aboard nobody volunteers to relieve me, so I sit holding the baby, which seems quite happy and eventually falls asleep. I am quite happy too, until, about half way across, we spot two dolphins, and I rapidly return the baby to its mother and grab my camera, but too late.

We get off at the long bay to the north of the island, where there are allegedly flamingos, but we see only egrets and a few disconsolate cormorants sitting on the posts around the fishing pens. Pasquale keeps rabbiting on about something that sounds like "my brother", but we can't work out if it's his brother's fish farm, his brother's flamingos, or what. We eventually decided that the word for flamingo (or possibly egret, or cormorant, or fish farm) must be something like "mabruder" in Portuguese (if anyone can make sense of this I'd be glad to hear from them).
We pick up the dhow again at the far end of the bay, say goodbye to our family of hitchhikers, and motor back to the lodge. I had hoped that we might put up the sails on the way back, but it is already after 3 (we've been out since 9) and I am exhausted and glad to get back. I have decided that the only way to fix this bug is to take the universal travelers' advice and starve it out, which means strictly nothing but water, so I have eaten nothing since breakfast. I am so exhausted that I collapse onto my bed without even a shower (interrupted by Sonia and Isabella with the laundry - at last!). At about six I manage to struggle into the shower, after which I immediately collapse into bed again.

I am just drifting off when a deputation arrives in the shape of Blondie and Mark - it has been suggested that we skip the dam at Cahora Bassa altogether and stay here another day. I request more information on what we'll be missing, but it seems that Cahora Bassa is pretty much like Kariba, and it's so nice here relaxing by the sea, so I agree. Actually, if this is a democracy, it seems hardly worth waking me up, as everyone else including Ken has already voted aye.