from moz to moz...

3 weeks in Paris in March : running, eating and… leaving with 5 more kilos and a huge frustration : not having been able to see or talk to many of you….

But 3 weeks are a very short time, even more when you decide to spend one week in Italy to visit your grand-mother and try to see as many doctors as possible.

Once again, all my apologies to all those I haven’t been able to see… and to those whom I had a chance to spend some time with, thanks again for the lovely cheese platters, the good wine bottles, the amazing bread, the foie gras, the champagne rose… my hips will not forget.. but my mouth as well (which is the most important!)

Latest news from Moz…

I finally joined the nice crew of the dive instructors !

After a 15 days course in charming Johannesburg, diving in swimming pools and lakes and spending the rest of the time in a super hot class-room and studying 12 to 15 hours a day, I became an Open Water Scuba Instructor… for those of you who are not already divers, I’ll be more than pleased to introduce you to the joys of diving… don’t freak out… I’m already training on other people! I certified my first diver on April the 18^th… and I must say that it’s quite rewarding to see a diver, trained by me (and well trained!!!!), joining this community! 

Back to Vilanculos… good and bad news!

Good news : it’s always as beautiful and wild, no cyclone this year so everything was there and not ruined when we came back (such a relief !),,

Bad news :

-         Our best friends from the finance department did a huge audit of all the books of 2006… and of course they’ve been through ours as well… some people ended up paying massive fines for nothing… for us, so far so good… but we still cross our fingers as these guys have the reputation of being quite vicious !

-         Our other friends from the maritime department just decided to vote a new law for the “leisure diving business. Written by people who never put their heads under water and, apparently, without asking any professionals advices, some articles are pure gems! A nice piling up of French, English and American laws that make diving quite complicated in Mozambique… For example : we should have a nurse or a doctor by the swimming pool or on the boat every time we do a course or go out… If we dive deeper than 40 metres (which does not happen in any case) we have to have a recompression chamber on the boat (don’t know how you can do that if you’re not diving from a super tanker!)… and also, every time we start a course, we should submit to the maritime department the name of everyone of our students, their medical certificate and the program of the course + at the end of the course, they have to check that they were nicely trained!!!! Coming from people who don’t even know how a regulator works, that’s quite funny… we’ll see how all this ends… for the moment we’ll try not to get a fine because we don’t have a doctor on board every time we go out!

Fighting illegal immigration – Moz version…

As in Europe, here as well they don’t really like people who don’t have their papers…

The “problem” here are the “zim” (as per Zimbabweans) illegal workers.

Vilanculos is only 1 day away from the Zim border and apparently, attracts many people who try to come here and make some money to help their families who cannot find anything in Zim if they don’t have US Dollars to buy food (no bread, no meat, no beer, no fuel…).

These people arrive here and, because their level of education is far above the Mozambican one (they speak a very good english, know some maths and have a better « entrepreneurial » spirit) they kind of steal their jobs to the locals.

Some of them manage to get legal papers quite quickly… for the other ones it’s not that easy.

To make a long story short, end of March, the Mozambican Immigration Department (imigracao…) came down to Vilanculos, “collected” more than 250 zim guys and off they went, back to the border, without any question or trial… In France this might give ideas to some…

A muddy week-end !

We have a 4x4 but we still get stuck…

Beginning of April, 4 friends of Denis came to visit us for one week. We decided to spend a day on the beautiful beaches of Inhassoro (70 ks north of Vilanculos). Awesome ride on the beach, superb BBQ… late afternoon, we decide to come back to Vilanculos by the back-road, that goes through the mangrove… but we forgot to take into consideration the fact that, as the tide was going up, the mangrove would get very wet! And, indeed, it got very wet. After a 30 minutes drive, Greg’s brand new 4x4 got stuck. It took us one hour and a lot of digging in the mud but we managed to get out of there… and 2 minutes later, it was the turn of our beautiful Landcruiser to get completely stuck. We started digging again but, as the night was falling, we decided to leave the car there and make our way to a lodge for the night. Arrived at BD lodge a long long time after (was not easy to find our way in the dark!).. it was closed… but the lovely owner opened a very nice chalet for us. Thanks to what was left from the BBQ (Pernod, beers and salami) we managed to get some dinner and the morning after, the owner of the lodge came with us, with 6 of her guys and lots of shovels and wood planks, to help us. It took them one hour and a half… and they got us out from that situation with no more damages than mud everywhere. We finally got back to Vilanculos, but driving on the beach…

Presidential motorcade.

We’re on Sunday.. it’s a beautiful day and with 2 friends we decide to go and have lunch in a very restaurant on the beach (Samara). All of a sudden we here loud sirens approaching… a police bike followed by a few cars… Denis doesn’t realise as quick as he should what’s happening and our friends start shouting in the car : “ get away, stop on the side of the road, quick quick….”. And the motorcade goes… What happened? We just obstructed (for a few seconds) the way to a presidential motorcade (either the Mozambican President or the President of the Province.. we also heard about the Prince of Denmark who, by the way, apparently loves the local crab curry…) and this is a major crime. We now know that for this, we can go to prison! And of course, a few minutes later, we got stopped by the policeman on his motorbike who started shouting at us and threatening us. Denis’s not been too French for once and didn’t argue… he apologised many many times and our Sunday was saved! Ever heard about privilege?... and this is nothing compared to what happens in Zimbabwe. Who knows if this is true but we heard that, in Zim, if you happen to obstruct the road when the President is on his way, the risk is not going to jail… simply to be shot by one of the escort guards…

A little bit of comfort…

Might seem funny to you but we finally have hot water for our shower!

How does this work… here we call it a donkey ! take an old gas bottle, give it to a mechanic who’s going to drill holes inside and put pipes to bring the water in and carry it out. Then, set up everything (poor Denis, it took him one week to finish the work) and, every evening, light up a nice fire under the donkey… and hot water comes!

We still have one of the most beautiful showers in the world and now we can also enjoy it in winter. When there’s a lot of wind it’s not very comfortable but at least we don’t have to derive around town every evening with towels, soap and shampoos and beg for hot water everywhere!

And as a conclusion, a few pictures….

An awesome dive on Cabo Sao Sebastian… with a formation of 36 devil rays swimming to us (thanks to Jean-Louis for the picture).

My superb new t-shirt, so adapted to my life here (it says “life is beautiful” – thanks to Vali for this lovely present).

Jean-Louis and Séraphine, two divers who’ve been diving with us for 5 days and with whom we had a lovely farewell dinner!