TOFO, INHABANE

14 - 19 JUNE 2011

TOFO, INHABAME: PARADISE

Eight hours on Fatima’s tourist shuttle through the lovely Mozambique countryside brings us to Fatima’s Nest at Tofo beach in Inhambane where I spend the next five nights lying about, napping, reading interspersed with daily walks:

Colourful streets of Tofo

Fish? Prawns?

Give me shelter from the storm

ANOTHER sunset??

More struggles, more monuments

My view at breakfast

Pitch my tent for a pittance under a shelter, protected from the sun

Lounging in the warm sunshine falling asleep whilst reading Robinson Crusoe

Sitting about in the beachside bar, drinking, listening to groovy music and playing pool

A beach so wide, white, clean and fine that it squeaks as you walk on it

Forays to the market each day, only a 10 minute walk, to pick my dinner that day from the catches of the day; fresh lobster, prawns or fish?

There is plenty of papaya, pineapple, passionfruit (this would be the ‘P’ food group?) and bananas to make my fruit salad lunches.

Meeting lots of friendly campers and tourists, getting the heads up on lots of places to visit in South Africa.

Only drawback I can find here are the groups of South African school leavers who talk about their mummies and daddies (dare I day in their peculiar whiney accents) and then consistently wipe themselves out each night.

TOFO - TRULY A BLISSFUL PART OF THE WORLD – I wanna come back here again one day.

Too soon my seven day visa is due to expire forcing me to leave and head back south to Maputo. But who said this shuttle left at 4.30am? I saunter out at 4.20am thinking I’m early to find that that for whatever reason they were late and should have left at 4am! That would have left me in a pickle trying to exit a frontier 10 hours away with no transport. But the gods are smiling on me and soon enough they are kind enough to drop me directly at the combi park to find another minivan heading straight across the border right through to Manzini in Swaziland. EASY PEASEY

FACT: Mozambique has been a Commonwealth of Nations member since 1995 making it the first member never to be ruled by Britain at any time!