Mozambique

At first the Mozambican officials agreed with their Malawian counterparts and said they were unable to issue visas, but after conferring together they decided that they could after all. The junior lackey came back from the office and said the price would be 25 USD each. We knew that it should only be 15, but we were not about to start haggling and jeopardise our chances. As expected, the receipt we received was for 15.

On our return to get our Malawian exit stamp they seemed genuinely surprised that we had been successful. We were apparently the first, and our visas numbered 0001 and 0002 seemed to bear this out.

So we started our two-day jaunt to Nacala. The roads were extremely variable, as the rains had caused a fair bit of damage. They ranged from good dirt or tarmac to the worst roads we had experienced with sections of deep puddles and thick red clay mud.

We stopped overnight at Alto Molocue where we had to use our long neglected language skills to organise a room and meal, as the main foreign language is Portuguese.

Sarah had warned us in her email that the worst section of road was the final hill to their camp. It had been graded a couple of weeks before, but the council had neglected to put any drainage in and recent rains had washed it away. We arrived to find a steep stretch down hill with a deep groove worn straight down the middle. It was slightly hairy, but fortunately fairly straightforward.

The camp itself is perched on a hill overlooking the deep water bay of Nacala, and is pretty much everything you could want for a peaceful spot away from the crowds. We stayed in an A-frame hut as the tent was still wet, but strangely failed to make the move out when we did manage to dry it.

Unfortunately they had had a string of breakdowns and only had one boat running roughly, no car to take kit down to the beach and no compressor so they were ferrying tanks to and from town to be filled. They rose to the occasion admirably; Sarah took us diving and fed us while Arthur and Trevor ran around fixing things and the various other staff carried our tanks up and down the hill.

We had a fantastically restful time, so restful we forgot our wedding anniversary until we were reminded by various emails from family and friends. As the multitude of broken things were fixed got to know Sarah and Arthur a little as they started to get some time to chill and met a French couple, Marianne and Oliver traveling and diving the world in their landy.

The five dives we did were all spectacular, involving a range of corals and terrain including enormous brain like coral, delicate fans and deep walls. The fauna was equally as varied if not necessarily as dramatic, and on a night dive we saw large sea horses and Spanish Dancer nudibranches. On one trip back from a dive we saw a pod of dolphins, slipping into the water to swim with them before they dove away from us.

Thanks to Sarah for the pics

    The Brain, with Sarah in the background

Our return trip to Malawi took us via same route we had used to arrive. The road had deteriorated over the three days we had spent at Nacala, especially approaching Alto Molocue where some of the puddles were deep enough to attract a crowd of hopeful onlookers.

Just outside town we came across an overturned truck that had blocked all but the most rutted and muddy part of the road. After failing to get past we conceded defeat and paid an enterprising local who had opened her garden as a bypass for smaller vehicles.

We crossed the border early and were back in Blantyre by mid afternoon contemplating our 1800km, four day round trip for five dives.

We headed north the following day, pausing in Lilongwe to do an oil change and get some parts before camping an hour or so from the border. The road into the park in Zambia had been repaired, but we knew it would be rough so we had another early start, as the Zambian border guards are notoriously inefficient.