A picture is worth a 1000 words....

Bazaruto Archipelago

This past weekend, Jackie and I headed up north to Bazaruto Island in an archipelago off the coast of Vilankulo, Mozambique. We had a rough time getting up there, mainly due to the unreliable Mozambican Airlines. We were told they were bad and we finally experienced how bad they are. We got to the airport in Maputo early for our noon flight to Vilankulo. When we got there, there was no check in line for our flight. After much discussion with a LAM representation, we were told our flight was changed to 5 pm. This was a problem. We needed to make a transter in Vilankulo to the island. To make a long story short, we found out we would not be able to fly to the island that day (no lights on the "runway") and we would be getting into Vilankulo too late. We ended up waiting all of that time at the airport, for fear that maybe our flight would show up and we wouldn't be there. We did see site the event, though. We got to see the big send off for the Queen Mother--the mother of the King of Swaziland.

Once in Vilankulo, we believe we got royally screwed over my a family from Portugal. The dad acted like he was helping me, by not letting me speak to the airline rep. (He made it look like he was communicating on my behalf since I can't speak Portuguese). Turns out, I belive he secured a nice cushy hotel for himself and his family for the night paid for by LAM and we were carted off to a hotel with prostitutes in the hallway. At least, the people that worked there were nice to us.

At least, the hotel staff was nice and we were able to get food that did not make us sick. Next morning, we flew to the island in a tiny cessna. The flyover was pretty amazing. It is probably one of the prettiest sights I have ever seen. Not sure if I can remember flying over the Great Barrier Reef, but it probably still didn't compare because I wasn't in a tiny cessna. Once on the Island, we were welcomed by the staff. Then I had about 5 minutes after scarfing down breakfast to get ready to go diving. The dive guy was very adamat that I needed to be ready in 10 minutes by the time he found me. I have to give credit to the manager who found out I wanted to dive when I checked in and made sure I got out that day. After diving, I just laid by the pool and on the beach. Then we went on a dhow for a cruise during sunset. The dhows are the fishing boats here. They are very rudimentary, but the sail very smoothly. Dinner was good and we had fun chatting with the pilots and the dive guy after dinner. Jackie and I were the only non-couples staying in the whole resort.

Next morning, Jackie tried diving and went on 2 dives with me. Not sure she got the scuba diving bug, but I think she enjoyed herself. She was able to get a lot of personal attention from the dive instructor, because it was just me and her with him on her first dive. We went out in little dingy boats. They were a bit bumpy, but fun. Of course, trying to get back into them after the dive was an experience. I am sure I looked like a beached well stuck in agony for a minute. The guys pull you up in..thank goodness...pretty sure I couldn't pull myself up the side of one of those things by myself. I had good experiences on all three dives. I was relieved after my recent episode diving in St. Thomas that went badly. The coral is pretty here. There were some light blues and really bright orange colors. The dives were shallow so a lot of the coral was still bleached from the sun. I got to swim right over a turtle. Seeing turtles always make a dive worth it for me.

We relaxed the rest of the day and enjoyed dinner and talking to the pilots and dive guy again that evening. The un-couples do have to stick together in a honeymooners paradise.

I am having some trouble uploading the pictures to this site. My next post hopefully will just be pictures from the weekend.

I completed one part of my IETA assignment on Wednesday. I did my big presentation for the staff here. I hope it was helpful, because it was tad bit boring for me. I believe i myself tuned out of it about 45 minutes into it and I was the one talking!! Having some big issues with trying to get some other things accomplished. I keep running into roadblocks in my set up of a new tracking system for the office's research activities. I am at a loss on how to fix it and am getting discouraged. I am supposed to start training the staff on the system on Tuesday. This is not good. I may be in for a long evening of work on Monday.