Mozambique - tofu

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Tofu

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Our "Pad" for the two weeks.

At the beginning of the week, we took it very easy as we were tired and so we had to resist all diving opportunities. So we spent the morning on the beach and went for a Kilamanjaro training walk in the afternoon. We met up with our Warner brothers friends again in the evening and had another enjoyable evening with them.

The following morning, now a little refreshed, we went on a beach safari to see whale sharks which apparently there was a 99% chance of seeing. After 90 mins of searching the sea we were beginning to wonder ! However we did get to finally see one and all on the boat slipped into the sea with our masks and snorkels on……2m from its face ! These boys are about 5m or so long so its quite a site to be met with !! But very beautiful !! However, I had an added complication in that as I had slid into the sea my swimming trunks caught on the side of the boat and tore literally in two around the bottom area leaving me with a full one-cheek exposure !! There I was trying to photo the shark with one hand and hold the remainder of my trunks with the other…whilst swimming…..and being ever conscious of the other swimmers…..fortunately everybody was preoccupied with the shark !! A minute or so later and the shark was off and we were back in the boat..and on our way back to our launch point, however another was spotted and so we were all back in the sea again ! This time we were able to swim with it for a few minutes before it dived too deep for us to see it any longer. It wasn’t an amazing experience but it was quite incredible to be that close.

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The face of a whale shark.

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The rest of the whale shark.

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John had suggested that we did a PADI refresher course as we hadn’t dived for 6 or 7 months. I initially thought it might be a bit of overkill but I knew I’d left Utila unconvinced as to whether I really liked diving and was still a little anxious of diving in general…..so we signed up for PADI refresher which included a fun dive at a local site at 18m called Salon. In the morning we revised the basic skills in a very cloudy swimming pool. We looked at flooding your mask and clearing it underwater and losing and recovering your breathing regulator. We both concluded that it had been money well spent.

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Will, the Dive Master responsible for our refresher, along with Cindi, the owner, and her son, Fin.

In the afternoon we were taken out to Salon but John really struggled trying to equalise his ear pressures on the descent and eventually aborted the dive. I was able to continue and although visibility wasn’t amazing at around 8m, I saw a whole variety of fish which I didn’t know even existed and so our initial concerns about Tofu being a suitable diving spot were overcome- we decided to stay at just this resort for our “Holiday”, having previoulsy considered splitting the two weeks between here and another dive resort. During the evening we met up with the Warners guys again and had another enjoyable evening.

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The Warner crew, the guys in the foreground, Jake & Clint are both Stunt men.

As the week wore on we were both running very low on cash and John needed Internet access to try and sort out some personal issues and look into the different options for climbing Kilamanjaro, and so I set off to the Bank and John to the local Internet.

The cash machine at the bank was very slow, each transaction taking about 2 mins which ordinarily wouldn’t be a problem with one transaction but I had to make 7 to get sufficient money out for us. The queue outside was getting longer and I finally stopped part the way through to let some others use the machine. There were two guards posted outside the bank I can’t imagine what they made of my antics.

I eventually rejoined John at the Internet café for lunch and we both have time checking e-mails & moving money around. In the evening we meet up with a German and Austrian couple, Volker and his wife, Manuela, who are also travelling around on two Honda 650 Dominators, and so we share some of our experiences over dinner.

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Manuela and Volker.

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Manuela's bike.

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Volker's bike....spot the difference !

Around this time we started being followed by a border Collie sheep dog who looked like a stray, his ribs were clearly visible and his fur was getting matted on his back. He was though still quite young as his teeth were evidentially only a few years old. He was intent on you throwing things for him to chase and would try and mesmorise you into throwing them for him….BUT he would not return them.

After our PADI refresher it was always our intention to start the Advanced open water course and we started this with a Navigation dive on the Friday morning, fortunately Johns ears were fine for this dive and we both compleetd the course successfully. The same day, two of the “Warner” girls, along with Jake & Laura leave and head off for their respective next destinations. This marks the begining of a procession for us of people joining and leaving the core-crowd at Bamboozi.

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Warren, an Aussie from Melbourne, fast becoming part of the core crew, found carefully preparing himself a sandwich.

Our next dive, our deep dive for the advanced PADI, turned out to be with Volker & Manuela at a site called Manta reef. We learn that they are PADI Dive Masters who have been “employed” by the dive shop and they will be coming along with us. ( Basically they get free dives for assisting in dive classes. A normal practice of most dive sites.) It is our first negative entry dive which is a bit of a departure from the nice feet-downward submerging we’d gotten used to. Basically you roll off the boat backwards with full SCUBA gear on but don’t come back up to the surface to check everybody is ok. You then twist your body around whilst pulling your BCD toggle to empty any air that may give you any buoyancy and fin downwards. The basic idea is that you get through the top current as soon as possible or you will be pushed off the site…so you kind of jet down the first 5m, check all is ok, and continue your dive. John and I committed ourselves to the new entry method, however my mask was filling faster than I could swim with, and I was getting equalisation problems at the same time…so my ears were hurting and I was fast losing my visibility due to the water in my mask so I decided to stop my descent any further and clear my mask, it took me three attempts to get the water out of it and stop any more getting in, meanwhile my ears are still hurting so I swim back up a little to try and equalise them. I think I’ve got it sorted out and so I dive down to join the rest. The dive is interesting but my ears hurt on and off and on the ascent I start going up too quickly and am soon at 3m-The pain is excruciating and I wonder how I am going to get out of the sea. Fortunately my training kicked in and so I returned back down to 5m for my safety stop. Eventually it’s time to surface and as I hit 3m the pain is there again and intensifies until 2m where I get a weird squeezed rushing sound and my ear sort of clears. I get to the surface and clear a lot of mucas from my face and try to clear my chest. As I do so I find I’m spitting blood !…a bit disconcerting !! This continued for about 10 mins and finally stops. I am however left very tired with a painful ear. I decided as a result to take the next day off diving. John’s dive goes well which was great for him after his previous equalising problems. He does however come back up though with the nose section of his mask with blood in it. The synopsis from our Instructor is that he probably has over equalised and possibly ruptured a blood vessel in his sinuses. In the afternoon we continue with our training for Kilamanjaro with the stretching and strength exercises we’d started.

On the following day we rested in the morning and ambled about. We met up with another English chap called Rick, who we’d dived with a few times, and had impromptu interview with an English girl, Bronwin, for the first publication of a Tofu local newspaper.

In the afternoon we did a 3 hour walk towards our Kilamanjaro ascent training. 20mins of which we spent clambering up and down sand dunes. Hmmmm, nice ! We were joined by the border collie again for most of the walk and when we finally returned to the Bamboozi bar I thought he must be thirsty and hungry and so offered him water I’d been carrying in a bottle from my hand, which he duly lapped up, and three chocolate bars. I’d been brought up with dogs and the condition of this dog was very hard for me to bear, however after a few more minutes he was off again(more on him later).

Meanwhile, my left ear still sounded waterlogged which, if not painful, was uncomfortable and a little disconcerting. In the evening we met up with Olivia and his wife, a French couple we’d met whilst also diving, and along with Nathan and Kate, a couple we’d met a few times in Capetown and Northern South Africa, had a really nice evening.

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Nathan & Kate.

The next day I woke up with my ear still sloshing about and was a little more concerned than I had been, however as “luck” would have it, Esther, our Instructor was in the bar for breakfast the same time as us, and so I asked her about it. No sooner had I mentioned it than she was buying a bottle of water, resting her head on our table and asking me to pour some of it in…………strange people these Instructors !!, never-the-less I obliged and she equalised her air pressure without any bubbles coming out from her ears..which demonstrated that her ear drum wasn’t burst, obvious eh !! I then asked her to “do it to me”, “what now?” was her response. No time like the present and I wanted to know if I needed to see a Doctor, so head on table she watered my ear, I equalised, no bubbles !…so no burst ear drum ! !! Relief, Gratitude, and the beginning of organising our next adventure dive, peak buoyancy.

The rest of the day we spent on the Internet responding to e-mails and trying to sort out which route and company we were going to choose for our Kilamanjaro attempt.

On the Tuesday we dive at the Salon dive site again to do our Peak performance buoyancy. Visibility isn’t that good but we can see clearly enough to do the various exercises to demonstrate our grasp of the concepts. The main exercises were fin pivots where you lie flat on the ocean bed with your face in the sand. and inhale air so that your upper body rises as your lungs fill with air, you then exhale and you should return to the rest position. After this we had to swim under an ever-decreasing hi-bar in a reverse limbo style. I.e. face down but without touching a rope with yourself or scuba gear. The first of the final two exercise had us swimming around in a figure of 8 changing our orientation as we go, so we start right way up and end up limboing on our backs under the rope. The second exercise had us swimming up to the rope in a normal position and then placing our noses on/near the rope and swimming over the top of it in a summersault and hence going under the rope again in limbo style again. Quite interesting exercises which we completed successfully. John on the ascent though had another nose bleed in his mask which is now starting to become common place.

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John and I on our way to becoming Advanced divers.

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Manuela, our friendly Austrian Dive Master.

The border collie turns up again and we finally learn that he had a name, Dooby, and he has an owner who has pulled her hair our worrying about him. Apparently there is always food, a bed and a brush waiting for him but he prefers to play with the tourists on the beach. When I found this out from more than more source I found him reminding me of the Tramp in "Lady & The Tramp". Anybody who spends more than a few days at Bamboozi gets to meet Dooby !!

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Dooby. !

Later in the week we dive at another dive site, Giants castle to do another component of our advanced dive course, the drift dive. The dive was incredible and we get to see two manta rays, one of which is 6 m plus and they swim over the head of John which he enjoys as he lies on his back . We also get to see plenty of moray eels.

By now it is Wednesday of the second week and we plan to leave tomorrow so we tell all the new friends we have made and arrange a night out. We’d been introduced to two Australian ladies, Michaela & Rebecca by Nathan and Kate who also ended up joining us for our farewell drink. By the end of the evening we end up sitting with the Girls on the beach looking out at the sea and stars whist discussing the alternative application of one of the sun-shades as a moon-shade. A highly interlekchual & rewarding conversation !!

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"Too Tall" & Dave assisting in our first farewell.

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...along with Rebecca and our new Dutch friends who's name escape us.(If your reading this, sorry-please remind us!)

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John with Rebecca & Michaela.

We finally get to bed at about 3:30 but are awoken by Rebecca & Michaela 30 mins later as Rebecca’s tent had been entered and nearly all her belongings stolen, amongst which were all her undeveloped photos and a journal she had been making since starting her journey in Europe. We get up and try and help them look for Rebeccas stuff the best we can but after a few hours it becomes clear that the thief has long gone with her belongings. Rebecca is naturally very angry.

John and I don't get much sleep at all and have to get up at about 8 to the sound of a large overland truck which has driven into the sand and got himself stuck. The noise of his engine revving, and the noise generated from the assistance offered by an English chap, Jay, with his four wheel drive and winch, finally denies us the opportunity to retrieve any lost sleep from last night so we take the day easily and decide to stay a further day.

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The Stuck truck & Jays attempt to free it.

In the mean-time we are being mocked a bit as we had been due to go. That evening there is a full moon party at a local restaurant on the beach, Dino's. Initially John and I had intended to leave the following morning but agreed between us that if we stayed at the party later than mid-night, that we’d stay for the whole week-end….such was the resolve of our iron wills………By about 03:45 I’ve had enough and head back to bed. John though is made of sterner stuff stays up until sun rise.

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The full moon party...I'll be lucky to keep my eyes open long enough to see it !

The following day John pretty well sleeps most of the morning, while I go for two breakfasts as my way of compensating for lack of sleep. The rest of the day is taken fairly easily and we end it playing a few games of darts in Bamboozi's bar. Somewhere during the course of the evening John decides that he’d like to dive at Giants castle again before we leave Tofu and so I agree to join him for the following mornings early dive at 08:00.

The boat ride out to Giants was pretty epic with the boat having to ride over some pretty high waves. Our boat driver, Manual, had brought his girlfriend out for a ride on the boat, an arena we didn’t think she was suited to. As we arrived at the dive site and prepared to leave for our dive I suspected she was going to find the swell pretty tough. We left the boat and were well rewarded with our dive and got to see 5 or 6 Mantas, two of them being cleaned by smaller fish, which was an incredible sight. The swell was also incredible and we had to hold on to dead reef and rocks to stop us getting pushed along the reef too quickly.

When we surface John has another bloody nose which freaked one of the Dive Masters as we waited at our safety stop. When we finally did resurface we saw Manuals girlfriend with her head over the side of the boat……..that was tough. The boat ride back was straight out of a Bond movie, at one point the boat couldn’t out accelerate a wave and so we ended up almost surfing on it which had the boat going towards vertical as we came in. Manual did an incredible job dodging through the various waves and currents we met on the way back. Finally the boat hits the beach pretty hard and almost has Manuals girlfriend shooting off the front of the boat as she wasn’t holding on.

We spend the rest of our last day taking a well deserved rest on the beach and even manage a fairly early night.

Mike.
 


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