Conservation Pt 2

All the comments that get posted on the blog are emailed to us as well, so we are glad that you are enjoying following our adventures and we wish to respond and update you. Regarding the Swakopmund post, we found out that Nando's actually does have some franchises open in the US; looks like in the DC- northern VA area. And Peter, who asked for us to spice things up a bit, with some major movie style action - we are trying. The boat we were on just the other day started coming apart and we almost had to abandon ship. The boat launches and landings are rife with potential for harm but no injury yet. Each time, the boat starts on the beach at the edge of the surf. We then all push the boat into the water into the surf. When the surf is high, we get pounded. It can be pretty exciting.


Then the driver puts the throttle to full and we all hold on for dear life bouncing over the waves until we get out of the surf zone. We are not boat owners, but it doesn't seem necessary to go top speed; and it does feel pretty close to mayhem. And then to land the boat, they drive into the surf zone and gun it once more until we are beached. If there weren't straps for our feet, we might be thrown 100' from the boat.


In the aforementioned boat issue, one of the pontoons started to separate from the boat's plastic shell. As the tear grew, larger and larger sprays of water were gushing at us - while Betsy moved to the "dry" side, I (Hugh) was getting hit in the face and chest with enough water that I felt like I was being dragged behind the boat, instead of being actually on it. There were some South African tourists onboard with us, and they were actually enjoying it, more as it got worse: they even started singing songs as they were getting blasted with water. Eventually, the driver decided there was too much water coming onboard and a high probability that the pontoon would just completely fail, so he stopped and called in a rescue boat. Mozambique has been fun and educational: 1. We learned that bread conducts electricity. The toaster at the volunteer house is one of the pop-up types for sliced bread, but we only have rolls which do not fit in well. If we try to push the bread in the slot after starting the toasting process, zap! 2. There are two sizes of SIM cards used in today's mobile devices; the iPad uses the micro size which is not available in Mozambique. But with a scissor, our guide was able to make the standard size fit into the micro slot. If it wasn't for him, we wouldn't be able to post any new blog entries


Tofo itself is not a major resort destination. Even though the diving community is well established here, there are no serious resort hotels, only small local establishments. There is a paved road that leads to Tofo, but within it there are only "roads" of sand. Pretty much every time we want to go somewhere we first have to walk to the beach to get there. In the mornings, the locals spread the fishing nets on the beach as we go jogging past. (We've increased our frequency from 3 times in 6 weeks to 5x over the last two. Betsy will run in her shoes while Hugh prefers barefoot). "Downtown" Tofo is a collection of huts and stalls made of wood, corrugated metal and thatch roofs. People are selling everything a little bit of everything - within 5 feet you could buy a coconut, flip flops or beer. A little bit of everything but nothing too exciting. We go almost every day to buy water as the tap water in the house is brown. This is the first place we visited in Africa where English is not the predominant language- portuguese and a bunch of different local African languages are used. Over the weekend when we were not working on the project, we found some other fun things to do; for instance, Betsy took a surf lesson and rode some massive waves.


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Location:Tofo, Mozambique