Ferias Trip, Part 1: Angoche!

As much as I complain about the school system here, it does have its redeeming characteristics.  Case in point: the placement of long break by the Ministry makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside.  They work you, and work you, and work you some more, and just when you think it can’t get any worse, the trimester ends and you get a whole week off from school.  A whole week!  Typically, these breaks provide PCV’s with an opportunity to get out of site and go exploring.  And that is exactly what I decided to do.

For the last few weeks of the trimester, Anna, Mireya, and I worked on planning a trip during the upcoming “intervalo.” We already knew that we had to be in Nampula for a few days during the week on account of the mandatory Reconnect Conference that Peace Corps was hosting for all the Moz 19 volunteers living in the North.  Luckily, we were free to travel during the days before and after the conference and had good amount of time to do just that.  After switching between various travel destinations and writing and re-writing various itineraries, we finally agreed on one that would work for us:  the beach, and lots of it.  Our plan was to jump from Angoche to Nampula, and then from Nampula to Ibo Island in the Quirimbas National Park with a little bit of Pemba in between as needed.

Here’s the story:

Part 1:  Montepuez to Nampula (Bus), Nampula to Angoche (Chapa/Private Car)

Woke up bright (well, not so bright) and early on Day 1 at 320am to take a 430am Maning Nice Bus (Pronounced “Man-ing-gue”) to Nampula. Maning Nice is a pretty notorious bus company here.  The bus itself wasn’t in the best shape and looked like it was being held together by some creatively woven wire coat hangers and a whole lot of luck.  Even in all its shitty glory though, the bus still came equipped with a flat screen TV and incredibly efficient and annoying speaker system which they use, starting at 430 in the morning, to play the same five songs over and over again at a very, very loud volume.  And not only are the buses pretty beat-up, but the drivers like to go very, very fast (nice because it makes for a faster trip, but also not so nice because most of the time you aren’t driving on paved roads and have to deal with a significantly higher level of stress than normal).  Apparently, the buses have a habit of running off the road and/or tipping over every so often.  While no one that I know has been involved in an accident while riding on the bus, the rumors are so prevalent that you can’t help but think “Well, I guess this is it for me…” every time you get on.  Still, riding the bus beats the hell of sitting in a Chapa.   They still pack it chalk full of people (imagine every seat filled, and then people sitting and standing in the isles too) which doesn’t leave a lot of space to move around in a seat that’s ¾ of the usual size. 

The bus ride is supposed to take 7 hours.  Not too bad.  Unfortunately for us, today was different.  We forgot to account for the fact that our Cobrador (the guy who collects money and tickets from everyone on the bus) was going to get arrested in a 3 hours ordeal while trying to bribe the cops at the checkpoint in Metoro.  I still don’t know why all the chapas and buses need to bribe the cops at checkpoints, but it seems to be common practice here.  I don’t think I’ve ever passed an inspection point while in a car (typically outside of big cities) where a bribe hasn’t been paid.

Apart from our 3 hours delay on the side of the road, we made it to Nampula around 130pm.  We hurried over to the chapa station with the hope of catching one of the last cars going to Angoche.  We made it just in time and were able to secure seats in a private car (don’t get too excited, although it was a whole lot more comfortable than normal, when someone going somewhere in a private car and wants to earn some extra money, he or she will typically just cram a bunch of people in their car and ask them to pay the standard price).

Angoche isn’t actually that far from Nampula distance wise, less than 200 kilometers, but the unpaved and severely-weathered road means that you have to go very, very slow.  We started what would be a 6 hour Journey around 230pm and finally made it into Angoche an hour or two after the sun set.  The ride was pretty uneventful. I made some friends while helping fix someone’s flat tire, thought about how crappy the road was, and ate some corn.  Oh wait, also, a big bridge we needed to cross had fallen down and the only way for the car to get to the other side of the river was to drive through it.  So, everyone in the car got out and walked across the crumbling remains of what was once a poorly built, but useful reinforced concrete bridge, while the driver took a different route, driving down the hill next to the bridge and through the water.

The bridge tried to stop us, but in the end, we were victorious.  After a grueling day of traveling, we had made it.

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Day 2 was used for recuperation and lots of stretching.  We wanted to get to know the city a bit, and so we decided to just explore the town, check out the market and youth center, eat some apa’s (it’s a fried egg topped with ketchup and mayo and wrapped in a japati), loiter in the park, get haircuts (Hey Val, I survived!) and then go to the afternoon fish market. 

Angoche!

More Angoche!

A unique find in the Angoche market:  Sting Ray.  Apparently that kid in the background is pretty excited about it too.

These kids are selling Ata's, a local fruit, out of a box on the back of their bike.  Each one is a little more than a quarter.

Some creative kids made a foosball game out of a styrofoam box.

The fish market is awesome.  Fisherman literally pull up to this thin and dirty piece of beach, lay down a tarp, and then throw their day’s catch on it to sell.  They rent their “space” for about $0.50 and sell their seafood for prices that are just as cheap.  We were planning one having a seafood feast that night, so we picked up enough shrimp, crab, and lula (calamari) to stuff 10 or so people with a creamy shrimp pasta, fried lula, and steamed crab legs.  We dumped Piri-Piri Mayonnaise on everything.  Having not eaten seafood in what felt like forever, I jumped on those crabs like an addict with a desperate fix.  I miss Maryland.

Some of the features at the Angoche Fish Market,

Fish market porn.  Look, giant crawfish!

It’ll only took a day for me to decide that Angoche has been my favorite site so far and that everyone should visit. Unfortunately, because of how difficult it is to get there, most people tend to avoid it.  It’s a shame really, because the road that takes you there is not at all characteristic of the city itself. 

Angoche is what I imagine a small American town in the 1950’s to have looked like; with a Johnny Rocket’s-esque milk-shake place on the corner, the store front for a barber with that twisting red, white and blue thing spinning outside, or the retro gas station where people can fill up their reliable jalopy’s. It’s phenomenal really, and a gorgeous city at that; built up by the Portuguese when they were here and then left to crumble away when they fled the country.  Most of the streets are paved, and the hilly ones are a Mozambican-style cobblestone; rock arranged to look nice and then laid in cement.  The city is clean and colorful, yet extremely sleepy.  Storefronts of semi-restored buildings are waiting for new businesses to move in, but it looks like they’ve been waiting a while.  Unless they get the road to town paved, they’ll probably remain empty.

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After Day 3 I was even more enamored by the city, because that day I was introduced to one of the most beautiful beaches I have ever seen.   Perfect timing too, because I need a distraction.  Day 3 was April 13^th, the day that Ricky, one of my best friends from college, was getting married.  After he proposed last year, he asked me to be the Best Man in his wedding.  Honored and excited, I accepted at first, unsure of what my future looked like.  As life started to become clearer and I soon realized that I wouldn’t be able to get back to the states for his wedding and had to rescind. It sucked, and I was pretty depressed about the whole thing.

It's hard being away, but it’s even harder when you know what you’re missing. Knowing that all your friends are together celebrating significant life events without you hurts.  And it doesn’t help when you are about as far away as you can get from where they are, living on the opposite side of the world.   Either way, our adventure to the beach was a great distraction, and later that night, some of my new friends helped me celebrate here.

To get to the beach in Angoche, you have to walk along a raised-earth road that cuts through a dense forest of mangroves that buffers the city from the sea.  The road was constructed a few years ago by the World Wildlife Fund to help preserve the forest, and it’s actually in pretty good condition.  The road is raised up and when the tide come in there's water on both sides up to he edge of the road. But when the tide goes out, it's a sight to see. The muddy beds of the mangrove forest are exposed allowing you to watch swarms of crabs and mud-skippers (fish made famous by the foul-mouthed Muddy Mud Skipper from Ren and Stimpy!) play around. There’s so much going on down there, crabs running every which way, that it almost gives you the impression that the ground is moving.

Walking along the WWF road through the Mongrove Forest during low tide on our way to the beach.

After about a kilometer or so, the forest ends and sand begins.  Low tide had exposed an enormous plain of sand that made it look like the Sahara Desert had switched spots and was now occupying the space between the mangroves and the sea. Tide pools and tiny sand dunes spotted the land that would soon be engulfed by the incoming sea.

Finally at the end of the Mangrove Forest.  Need to cross a little mud, then it's onward to the beach.

Sometimes you gotta get dirty.

Treking across the sea bed exposed by low tide on our way to the beach.

We found a spot by the shoreline, unpacked and began beaching.  We swam, we played, and we relaxed all the while trying to process the remarkable surroundings and the sheer awesomeness of what we were doing. 

At one point, I wandered off down the beach by myself.  As I walked, I noticed that the white sand I had been walking on, had changed colors to a sparkly black that was shimmering in the scorching sunlight. As I continued to walk, I watched a man emerge from the small bush village in the forest behind the beach a couple hundred meters.  He then began to loiter as if he were waiting for something.   I got closer, greeted him, and could immediately tell that he wasn't very interested in talking. After passing, I quickly realized why he was out there alone, away from his village on the other side of the dune:  he was looking for a place to go tithe bathroom.  Apparently I was hampering his progress.  Cognizant of what was about to go down (literally), I walked faster, not really all that interested in playing witness to this stranger taking a shit in front of me. Then I got to thinking...why was this sand black? Well, it's probably because it’s a mixed of eroded rock particles and broken down and composted plant matter. But, it probably also has a bit of human feces mixed in there too. With that, I moved back to the white sand and stopped thinking.

Feeling both curious and hungry, my friend Kevin and I decided to walk into the bush village and try to find some coconuts. We talked to a few villagers and were eventually led to some lady who made some kid climb a tree just to get up there and get us some. The coconuts aren't mature yet, but they’re still delicious. To open them up though is an intricate process involving violent brute force and a big freakin’ knife.  First they go at them with a machete for a while until they've cut away most of the husk.  Then, they make a small hole in the top – a cap if you will, that you can then remove to expose the water inside.  After drinking the refreshing coconut water, the kid used his machete to split the thing in half so we could get to the flesh.  Using your little “cap,” you scape out the thin, soft and underdeveloped layer of flesh from the walls of the coconut and eat it.  Then you die happy because it was the best coconut you’ve ever had.  And also you’re in Mozambique, and you bought that coconut off some random kid who climbed into a tree to get it for you, all of which is pretty cool too.

Goin' at it.

Casey playing spectator.

Look ma, Mozambicans!

As the tide began to come in, the beach that was once part of the mainland, became part of an island. The incoming tide had cut us off completely.  Lucky for us, there are some Mozambicans who run a ferry system and some guy in a big rowboat will take you back to shore for a couple of mets

This is that same WWF road on our way back to the city.  High Tide, when the water comes and fills in the Mangrove Forest.

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Even though we had spent the previous day at the beach, apparently we hadn’t had enough.  The next day, we decided to make the 7km trek out to Praia Nova (New Beach), another beach site just outside Angoche, but more secluded and with even bigger waves.  Praia Nova is that special place we go to in ours heads when we need to escape for a little, a product of our wild imaginations; the place they take pictures of for travel magazines.  Radiant white sand, untainted by human excrement stretches out uninterrupted in both directions until the curvature of the earth prevents you from seeing any further. The warm, blue, cloudy water beats against the deserted shoreline in sizable, yet subtle waves.   There are no birds squawking, no other people bothering you, and no trash anywhere; there is just you, the beach, and the sound of the waves gently colliding with the shoreline. But that’s not even the best part.

As you venture out into the tepid Indian Ocean, the smooth sand coating the ocean floors massages your feet as it consumes them.  A few meters from the shore, it’s still waist-deep and you start to notice that there’s something in the sand rubbing against your feet with each step you take.  Too soft to be a crab or a shell, but too hard to be a clump of earth, your curiosity takes hold as you reach down to inspect.  You grab a handful of sand, and as you bring your hand back up to the surface, the sifting grains reveal a delightful display.  You’ve been stepping on a colony of Sand Dollars, and they are everywhere.  You can’t reach down into the sand with touching one.  It’s like swimming in Scrooge McDuck’s money vault.  Praia Nova is what I came to Africa to see: undiscovered sanctuaries of endless shoreline, deserted beaches, warm oceans, and big waves.

Walking over a big sand dune and getting our first glance at Praia Nova.  (Picture stolen from Casey)

Praia Nova, and all her deserted glory.

Observe, solitude.

It was our last day in Angoche, so we ended it with another visit to the fish market and a seafood feast of fresh shrimp fajitas, fried lula, and an enormous bowl of steamed crab claws.

CRABS!