praia do tofinho

one advice... experience speaking: whenever you travel and there are people you know who you will visit and they happen to say "i heard you're travelling north towards Beira, if you'd like you can sleep half way in a house i have at the beach"

ALWAYS, i repeat, ALWAYS accept it!
i don't know if i've made myself clear on this, you should never think twice, ok so there are sometimes really bad surprises (i will make sure you know of a bad result later on in the holiday report), but mostly, it's free, which means GOOD, and most of the time, cosy... well... after Xai-xai i could only hope it'd get better, because i regretted not having stayed there for a week.

but, how shall i put this... i'll explain it this way. I'm driving, tired, exhausted, because i haven't told you how hard it is to drive in Mozambique, not for the lions and elephants crossing my path (those i could probably handle) but because of the grand canyons in the middle of road that just happen to be in my way right after a slope or a turn... so we'd fall, feel our stomachs detatch from our bodies, think we were dead, realise we weren't and congratulate me for being such a great driver! i also had to deal with another type of creature, popping out of everywhere, CHILDREN... i think in the 3244km i drove with my "FÔBÁFÔ" i didn't drive for more than 5km without seeing people on the road side... walking, and walking, and walking... i wondered where they were going... but they walked for miles i believe, kms i mean. anyway... children are let out free. this doesn't mean i think children should be put on a leash, it means they should know the difference between laying down on a corn field enjoying the "dolce fare niente" and laying down in the middle of the asphalt, i mean the road! i had to use my horn to scare chickens, goats, turkeys (who by the way suffer from deafness i believe), cows, "pumbas" (watch the lion king), monkeys, and the scariest of all, human beings. "if i was your mom..." i'd yell... no use... it's like in Antwerp, trams rule the streets, but in Mozambique, children do!
...of course... when i'd get close to them angry because i thought i'd kill them, A.T. knew i was just making plans as to adopt them or not. i swear, if there were no laws, i'd have a football team here by now.

....oooohhhh sooo off the subject.
so, you accept this offer of a place to sleep for a few nights... hoping it's close to the water, at least. but because of the "highways" and the fact that "FÔBÁFÔs" could indeed be slower than you'd hope, they just drive through anything, making your promises of arriving anywhere before the sun goes down (17:30!!!! making the children on the road scarrier than ever) a complete failure. and there we were, in the middle of this sand dune road, 18:30, pitch dark, eyes and teeth the only thing you could identify in the dark, panic because there are no lights on the road and you know people are waiting for you. Sr. Manuel waited for us...
as soons as i turned off the engine i was off to the dinner table, and then bed. the bed part i leave out because i can't describe all the squishy creatures i found in that house... i hate animals smaller than cats!
even knowing of all the creepy things that were crawling around our mosquito-net-protected-bed the only thing that actually annoyed me throughout the night, was this thundering sound of waves crashing on the beach... i can't believe this but in that pitch dark night, i could only say "i hate being so close to the ocean"!!!

well... well... the night went and morning came (at 6:00a.m.) and fate has it that i don't fall asleep after my eyes open. let's take a walk outside and see what awaits us...

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHH!!!!! breath, breathe... 1,2,3,4,5, AAAAAAA. TTTTTTTT!!!!!!!! i know he hates it, but he had to look out the window... the ocean wasn't far away, it was below our feet!!!!!!!

kms of beach, empty...

the sun looked as if it was there to please ME,

the dogs were there to befriend A.T.,

the CAPULANA's market was put there for us,

the fish we ate for days were created for US...

and i could feel that those amazing sunsets were sent by you...

(i know you wanna know, the word "FÔBÁFÔ" is a new word in my vocabulary, it should mean QUATRO POR QUATRO, but if you translate it to english FOUR BY FOUR and slightly... actually no, completely add to it a portughese/mozambican accent, you get something like "FÔBÁFÔ"... remember the "FOGE DE LÁ"?, well, that's my life story i guess, people speak to me knowing i will eventually know what tey're saying... it takes effort though. )