Surviving Mozambique - Part III

Before I get to my next, as promised, here are some pictures from Tofo:



These first two pictures are of the beach we were staying on, the second pic being the view from the balcony of our backpacker's bar. As you can tell, we were roughing it.

This next pic looks at the tall grass fields that lay just behind the beach. The fields were endless and looked magical when a gust of wind swept through them, especially during a sunset. The boy in the picture saw me taking photos and insisted he be in one of the photos. Got to love his stance.

This is a picture of me being immature in my dive suit before my first deep dive, the one where half of the ocean decided to make an appearance.

Lastly, this picture comes from the really nice dinner me and a few friends had on our last night in Tofo, the one following the full moon stroll on the beach while avoiding the army of crabs. From left to right, there is Elsa, Jules, myself, Simon, Emily and Chris. Now on to Part III.

Waking up at four in the morning has never been a pleasurable experience. Waking up at four in the morning following about 45 minutes of sleep after a night celebrating the end of our vacation in Tofo to a scene of dark, blurry mayhem didn't change my opinion. Our bus back to Tofo was leaving in a half hour and from what it appeared, very few people were packed or awake. And we all still had to walk twenty or so minutes with all our bags to meet the bus. Terrible start to a journey back to Cape Town that had many more surprises and trouble left in store.

Although I lacked judgment in staying out late and doing what young people do at beach bars in foreign countries, I did manage to make a good decision by packing my bag the night before. Myself and about half of the rest of our group was out of the hut door by a little after four, stumbling as fast as possible along the sandy path towards Fatima's and the soon to be departing bus. My group managed to meet the bus with a few minutes to spare but once on board we were immediately presented with a slew of major problems:

a) we had reserved 17 seats on the bus and there were only eight or nine seats left i.e. Fatima's had overbooked
b) the rest of our group was nowhere in site and as far as I knew probably attempting to figure out whether they were dreaming or actually having to wake up to get on the bus back to Maputo
c) our driver was stubborn and unsympathetic to my attempt to raise points a) and b) with him
d) barring throwing myself under the wheels of the bus in the hope the driver wouldn't roll over me (which I am not so sure would have even worked), the bus was leaving with or without the rest of the group)

And leave without them we did. I felt terrible that we couldn't do more to stop the bus from leaving but even worse that now they would have to make the long, bumpy hot ride back to Maputo crammed into the back of Sean's truck (they ended up fitting nine people, two in the front, four in the cab and five in the covered truck bed. And the truck's size had more in common with a Hot Wheel than a F-150). I even managed to secure a seat upfront where I could stretch my legs out and it was next to a vacant seat. The situation was far from ideal but much better than I thought considering how the morning had gone so far. Oh how fortunes can change in the blink of an eye.

Within five minutes of thinking the ride back to Maputo would be manageable, our bus driver pulled over for an unexpected stop. I turned by head around to see a mother and her five infant children clamoring on board, trying to find any open seat available. My empty seat was an easy target but after a further look, no other seats were available. The only open space was the standing room only entrance into the bus equipped with a fold down iron bar that I assumed could be used for a seat if you don't mind metal pole jabbing at your bottom for an eight hour bus ride. The lack of seating did not seem to deter this woman at all and within a minute of uncomfortable re-arranging, the bus had started up again and we were back along our way.

The mom took the empty seat next to mine and took three of her children with her - one in her lap, one on her leg/lap, and one on my leg/her lap. The other children found some luggage to sit on behind us, a seating arrangement that didn't seem too bad especially considering what their brothers and sister had found. Cramped wouldn't even being to describe the situation because not only was I more uncomfortable than Yao Ming flying coach surrounded by contestants from The Biggest Loser, but the family of six smelled absolutely terrible. Think hot garbage mixed with a humid port-a-potty at a summer concert mixed with morning breath following a night out at the bars. And I'm not trying to be insensitive American because I'm guessing their living arrangements are beyond anything I could possibly imagine, I'm just trying to convey what I had to smell for eight hours on a bumpy, rugged Mozambique road. Compounding all of this was the arrival of the sun and its ability to turn the bus into a traveling sauna.

The eight hours back to Maputo felt more like eight days. Time didn't just pass by, it slowly oozed by as we made our way through Mozambique jungle. The humidity on the bus made the sweat on my body feel more like molasses, gradually dripping from my pores. The kid that used my leg as a seat eventually used my whole lap as his resting ground. I didn't mind giving his mom a respite from trying to take care of all her children, and I could never be mad at a little cute, especially one as cute as this one, but body heat and weight of another human did not make the bus ride any more enjoyable. When it didn't seem like we would ever get to Maputo, the city's outskirts started to pass us by and I knew we were within an hour of escaping the bus ride from hell. Unfortunately, one more surprise was still left in store for me, courtesy of the cute kid bouncing along on my lap.

We must have been only half an hour out of Fatima's when I noticed a slight warm, liquid sensation on my foot. I looked down to find the mother sitting next to me holding up her child and wiping a wet streak on his leg and crotch with a cloth of some sort. Befuddled at first, the realization of what just happened struck me rather calmly: the kid had just wet himself and consequently my foot. As if this bus ride couldn't get any worse, I had just been peed on by a kid I had let use my lap as a seat for eight hours. What's next, our bus breaking down and having to walk the rest of the way in a freak torrential rain storm? Here are pictures of the mom, her children and me in our cramped quarters on the bus (the expression on the mother's face tells it all).



Thankfully that peeing episode proved to be the last incident on our way to Maputo, finally arriving at Fatima's a little after 1pm. We met up with the rest of our group, the ones crammed into Sean's truck, and we all shared horror stories from the past eight hours. The rest of the day we spent getting ourselves together and having bizzare Easter Sunday dinner at a Portuguese restaurant that only spoke Portuguese (side note - Easter has always proved to be one of the more interesting holidays for me which is unusual since I am not very religious. Easter highlights, in no particular order: (1) my dad telling me the Easter bunny did not exist and that he was just an evil concoction of the corporate world that caused people to lose sight of the true meaning of the Easter holiday (2) getting lost on Mt. Rainier and having to spend the night in the snowy woods with no tent and very little food (3) holding hands with John Wooden during grace at my friend Imp's family dinner freshmen year (4) the bus ride from hell). After returning from dinner where we were convinced at least half of us were going to get food poisoning, most people turned in early because we had another early morning wake up call to catch our Grey Hound to Johannesburg. Sadly, no amount of sleep could have prepared us for the problems we encountered on the way to Jo-Burg.

Monday morning started unusually efficient. Everyone was packed and ready to go at seven thirty, the Greyhound was waiting for us when we left Fatimas, and we only departed fifteen minutes after our scheduled time. The only red flag of the morning was a slight overcast looming over Maputo, very different from the past nine days of blue skies and sunshine. It was if God or who ever lives upstairs was trying to warn us of the upcoming disaster but we were all to content in our air conditioned carriage to notice. And then we hit the border.

We had all been told that the border crossing while entering Mozambique would be much harder than trying to leave the country so most of us were optimistic when we approached the border. All of us had to leave the bus and our Greyhound stewardess led us into a line to wait for a passports to be stamped. The line didn't look too bad but the sheer number of people waiting around this grass field seemingly in the middle of nowhere with only a few tents to service people seemed a little odd. We eventually changed lines and were supposed to be close to getting our visa's stamped when the madness began.

Out of nowhere, the people in line behind us broke rank and surged to the front creating a triangle wedge trying to squeeze into the front of the line. We all stood around looking for some sort of authority to take charge of the situation but that soon proved to be futile. No longer in a group, a few of us, including myself, managed to make our way to the front of the line but still behind twenty or thirty pushy, agitated Africans. Everyone was shoulder to shoulder and before I knew it a gentle push from behind turned into a pulsing shoving match throughout the crowd. We were standing in the non-Mozambique citizen line but the citizen que a couple dozen feet away didn't have as much patience as ours. A few tried running past guards and under rope, only to be met by guards brandishing large bull whips which they were not afraid to use. Police started swinging at anybody within striking distant, women and children not excluded. One person even claimed to see a woman holding her baby up in the air to try and prevent a strike only for a police man to still swing his whip at the mother and child. Our line was still pushing and shoving but it paled in comparison to the violence taking place within a stone's throw.

The physicality of the crowd caused or group to be completely separated but me and my friend Shaun managed to keep our ground upfront. After another hour of waiting, pushing our total time at the border to two hours, we were finally able to get our passports stamped. Relief swept through my body only to be quickly exorcised by the realization that we would have to wait for the other 10 plus people in our group, some of whom had been forced to the back of the line. It then hit me than any hope of making our evening flights back to Cape Town were out the window and all of us had to reschedule. Fortunately I had plenty of time to figure out what to do because we sat at the border for at least another four hours before our fortunes started to change. This picture was taken from the Greyhound, looking out on the mass of people that seemed to be growing by the minute at the border (and this picture isn't even a close to accurate representation of the total number of people).


Our Greyhound stewardess came to the group's rescue again, this time providing us a police escort to take all of us to the South African side of the border crossing. Apparently she thought we were all going to miss our international flights back to America and had called Greyhound to arrange or special transport (she later shared a grimacing chuckle when discovering we were all only headed back to Cape Town). At the South African border station, the rest of our group received their visas within an hour, only one person having to bribe a custom agents for a visa extension. After five grueling, scary hours at the border we were back on the road to finish the rest of our eight hour ride back to Johannesburg which we still had six hours left. This was going to be a long day.

Not much can be said about the rest of the ride except that it felt like it took much longer than six hours (which it did because of three accidents, one of which was a three car pile up engulfed in flames). I ended up catching a cab and staying at Paul and Marion's house for the night along with my friend Lauren while the rest of the group made a mad dash to try and make their flights out of Jo-Burg. My flight took off at one the next day and although Paul, Marion and the kids were still on Easter holiday, I thoroughly enjoyed the comforts of a clean bed and hot shower. Miraculously flying back to Cape Town went off with out a hitch and by four in the afternoon on Tuesday I had made it back to my house in Observatory. I immediately crashed on my bed once getting home, trying to recollect the last 60 hours of traveling. Thankfully I only got to leaving Tofo before falling asleep, sparing myself the nightmare of piecing together what just happened. Hell of a way to end an otherwise great vacation,