Onwards to Zimbabwe

So I braved my first night camping in Africa, and survived unscathed. Well, slightly scarred by the lack of hot water to do the washing up with, but on the whole, OK. We were up and packing up by 6:00am, with a delicious breakfast of tomatoes and scrambled eggs on toast to set us up…

From Mozambique to Moseley

This is a breakaway blog post, nothing to do with Africa, just the ramblings of a deranged woman. SO, as is my wont, I have upped sticks and fled everything that is familiar to me. What’s the difference between running away from your problems and making a fresh start? I prefer to think I’m making…

Kruger National Park

Our drive to Kruger was pretty smooth – impeded only by the discovery of Caty’s underwear flapping along on the roof rack when we stopped for petrol. We drove to our lodge first, to unburden the car, and then zoomed off to the Malelane gate entrance of Kruger National Park, about ten minutes away. The…

Road trip! Pt. 1: Tofo to Nelspruit

I’m writing this blog post two months after this road trip took place, but I made notes along the way so I didn’t forget (as I am prone to doing) all the totally amazing things we saw and did and ate. Given what a rambler I am, this trip will be split into separate blog…

Zavora

This is a long one yo, so buckle up. We drove on to Zavora, about 90km south of Tofo, after an amazing two days in Barra. We hired a chapa in Tofo to drive there, and split into two groups. A chapa is the size of a small minibus, and is reasonably comfortable if you’re under 5’6″ and…

Barra

The day I passed my Open Water we set off for two nights in Barra and three nights in Zavora. The intention was to do some team building, some brainstorming and other sorts of things that you never have time to do when you’re in the office. We piled into the car and drove to…

Onwards and upwards with my Open Water

Despite the horrors of my first ocean dive, I wanted to press on and get my Open Water qualification – I don’t like to give up (which may account for a broken neck and broken shoulder obtained from falling off badly behaved horses that no one else wanted) but I was also worried that my first…

A sad week in Mozambique

This past week has been really tough. The outcome of the election in the US has barely scratched the surface. On Wednesday morning, as the world was waking up to the news that Trump had clinched a victory – despite losing the popular vote – we were waking up to far worse here in Tofo….

The first visa run

I had to go to Maxixe on a visa run about three weeks after arriving in the country – you have to get your visa stamped every 30 days, it’s a ridiculous system – so at 8am on Monday morning I was on a chapa to Inhambane with some other people from MMF and dive…

Open Water…

I can’t believe I’ve been here for nearly 4 weeks. Like, WTF. (If you’re a Phil Dunphy fan, I hope you chuckle at that.) Time is going very fast, as I knew it would, and for someone like me (a big introvert who hates fun and is the antithesis of carpe diem) it’s almost a…

On safari

Tofo Beach is famous for its spectacular diving, and the huge marine animals you see there, so I was keen to get in the water – though this urge was conflicted with the keen desire to not be eaten by a shark. My first taste of ocean life was a swim on my second weekend…

Local Life

So I’ve now been in my new home of Tofo for one week and two days. Eating out is cheap enough here to be able to do it for every meal, but it would obliterate my budget, so after a couple of days I ventured out into the market to see what I could find….