PEMBA (more diving, a sunfish!)

By noon we had landed in Pemba and we collected our bags. Outside the arrival building there were many drivers asking if we wanted a cab. We didn’t know our destination yet, and we didn't want to go into Pemba actually. We wanted to go to nearby Wimbi Beach where the diving was based. There happened to be a van there from one of the accommodations listed in LPG and we said we might want to stay there. They put us aboard for a free ride to Wimbi across the peninsula from the airport, reached in about ten minutes by a road that bypassed Pemba.

Here we found ourselves in Africa at its most laid back and dysfunctional. Complexo Touristico Caracol was a set of flats two deep along the roadside opposite the beach. The rooms backside were $40 for a room and bath, but for $60 you could get an upstairs flat with a sitting room and a large veranda. It seemed more spacious and being upstairs perhaps more secure (but again, there were uniformed guards, and a serious fence as well). We took the upstairs flat and settled in.

No sooner had we done that then the power went out and the a/c cut off. We were thirsty and hungry anyway, had had nothing but coffee at the airport, with not even a snack served on the short flight from Nampula to Pemba (which saved us a day in bus travel :-), so we decided to go have something to eat on the beach. The grassy thatch-roofed Sol e Mar appealed and we ended up there. Large beers were only $1.25. We ordered one and some lulas (calamaries) and camaraos (shrimp). We waited and had another beer. Vendors were passing on the beach and I bought some capfuls of nuts from a girl selling peanuts. We at least had something to munch on now.  We waited for an hour for our order to appear before checking with the waiter if food was coming.  Given the language problems, we wouldn't know. After our second beer, and an hour and a half with still nothing on the table, we paid for the beers and left.

We were so hungry we went to another restaurant and ordered food. This one, Pemba Dolphin, was more active and slightly more efficient. We at least got served there, though it wasn't very good, Portuguese stew, with sausages and not much in the way of fish.

We had meanwhile stopped at the two dive shops. Both were staffed by locals who were not able to tell us much about diving. They didn't know what the plan was, but said to come back in the morning. At Pemba Dive the staff tried to call the dive pro on his mobile, but there was no answer. We would just have to turn up in the morning.

Pemba Dive opened at 7 a.m. and was write across the road from the Complexo Touristico Caracol.  It got dark there shortly after sundown at 6:00, there was never anything to do at night (I take that back, a band turned up at the Pemba Dolphin, so we had a beer there and listened till we realized the lead guitarist didn't know that many riffs and we were able to keep our early hours.  Consequently we were up at dawn and were easily able to get across the road to Pemba Dive shop by 7:00. Eventually Calvin, the young instructor from South Africa, came down and told us there was no diving that day, only training, but next day we could dive. So we agreed to go back there at 7 next day.

The other shop, CI Divers, was just down the beach. They opened at 8, so we had breakfast on the hotel veranda while waiting. Eventually we saw the door being unlocked so I went to ask about the diving. Here I met Pieter, the owner, who told me very well, we could go diving at 9. So we finished our breakfast and returned at the appointed time.

The local staff readied the engine and kitted our tanks for us. There were some equipment problems, like an alternate air source without a mouthpiece, quickly sorted. The gear was carried onto the boat, a wooden skiff, fine for diving in calm seas at a not-far-off location. Pieter directed us via GPS to the ‘tunnel’ a 35 meter hole in the reef about a quarter hour from Wimbi. We had with us a recently trained open water diver Pieter would be going with so they would not be going that deep.  Pieter didn't seem to mind if Bobbi and I did our thing as long as we got back to the surface within an hour or so.

First impressions of Pemba were, decent vis, perhaps 20 meters, descent onto coral rubble (I was surprised to see that, hoping for coral gardens), and it was several minutes before we saw any fish at all. To make a long story short, it was a decent dive, pleasant temperature of perhaps 26 degrees, I got to 35.5 meters, the entire dive lasted 47 minutes plus the safety stop, Pieter pointed out an interesting leaf fish we would never have seen and …

At 20 meters depth almost at the top of the wall we encountered a sunfish, a mola mola, a huge fish about 3 meters across with no tail, but fins pointing up and down dorsal and abdominal. This thing was hulking in the water just off the reef and made little effort to evade us. In fact when it did move away it was only to circle back and return. I was able to touch it right underneath its blinking eye bulb. It felt like sandpaper (whale sharks, in contrast, are billowy smooth). In 40 years diving it was my first time to see one (also first time to see a leaf fish). The sunfish was on my list of things I really wanted to see before my time is done, and I finally saw one on July 6, 2009.

We dived the next day as well, this time with Calvin at Pemba Dive. Calvin was a bit more controlling than Pieter and although he was perfectly safe, he had a student with him and kept our dives shallow and rigorously monitored to 40 minutes, though he was flexible if anyone still had half a tank at that point and 15 min no deco time left. Our first dive was at Monty’s Fingers, a shallow reef dive. I used a 15 liter steel tank with only 3 kilos weight and I was still a touch heavy but comfortably buoyant most of the time and my air lasted for 61 minutes including the safety stop. We began the dive in at 20 meteres in an open water aquarium with lion fish and later saw two kinds of leaf fish and some nudibranchs. It was a pleasant and pretty dive for me but nothing to write home about. The next dive was to what Calvin called the Garden of Eden, which was the top of the wall where we’d seen the sunfish the day before. This time we descended through a school of brown jellyfish which Bobbi found interesting. She was more comfortable on the second dive and enjoyed it best, but I was sorry we didn’t go looking for the sunfish, but stayed in the bommies back of the wall. The scenery was again pleasant with lots of small fish life, more nudibranchs, but again it was mainly more of an excuse to be at Wimbi beach in Pemba on a holiday rather than a thrilling great dive.

We didn’t care all that much for Wimbi Beach. It was too relaxing, not much there, not even a small shop to buy juices for the fridge, which went empty the three nights we were there, nothing to sit and sip on our lanai overlooking the beach across the road. Our apt was $60 a night and had frequent power outages, causing the a/c to fail at naptimes and at 6 one morning. The toilet ran and didn’t flush, and there was almost no water pressure in the shower, but there was a water heater and a kettle and we would boil water and pour from a ladle into a bucket which would eventually fill with hot and cold water and allow for warm bathing. We could pour the bath water into the toilet to flush it. Things that got broken there clearly never got fixed. Security was good though, no one disturbed our room with was projected by a high barbed fence and patrolled by uniformed guards.

There were only three places to eat on the nearby beach. We got to know each intimately. Dolphin had mediocre pizza, greasy fish and Portuguese dishes, and something called a seafood salad that was mostly boiled potatoes with egg on top and processed cheese draping the sides and contained half a dozen small shrimps, the kind you find in packets in the supermarket. Actually it was hard to get shrimps there. The next restaurant over had them breaded, and their lulas were smothered in brown sauce and not that good. The last restaurant at the Casino had better food but wine there was 480 a bottle, almost $20, and we stuck to places where it was 350.

Our last day Calvin recommended we try Russell’s Place a hike out the dirt road along the beach. He said if they didn’t have shrimps there they would substitute lobster for the same price. So after diving and showers we made the walk. With no reference it seemed to take forever. We were cautious carrying valuables out beach roads but eventually we arrived after asking some directions. We found a kind of kraal run by South Africans, an Afrikaaner’s guest house, where the guest drove in from the country next door. They were friendly but had only a lunch menu with hamburgers and such. We had eaten nothing that day and it was by then 3 pm but they had an ‘African buffet’ at 7 and we thought we might come back for it. So we hiked (hitched partially, got a ride in a flat bread, friendly driver, no money) and got a ride as far as an Italian restaurant still on the dirt road. We had been there the day before but had found it closed. Some restaurants in Pemba were closed on Mondays, but now it was Tuesday. It was open now but someone came out to explain they were no longer in business. Businesses were shutting down in Mozambique faster than LPG could keep track of them. Funny because people you talked to there said the economy was improving, hopefully. There were so many structures that were no longer serving any purpose though, except as hovels for homeless.

We ended up in the breezy thatch roofed beach bar. We had a beer and ordered shrimp and some fish samosas and spring rools (sic, on the menu). The waiter returned half an hour later and told us there were no shrimp. We ordered another beer. The snacks came and we became sleepy and returned to our room to sleep fitfully and monitor the sky outside. Sunset we knew was at 5 there. By six it was almost dark, time to get up and go back to Russell’s Place.

We risked leaving money in our room, no one had disturbed anything there so far, and we left it in locked bags, cosmetic protection, but possibly less risky than carrying thousands of dollars cash out a lonely beach road in Mozambique at night. Things appeared ‘safe’ but we tried not be complacent or naïve. Still there was simply no way to protect against a concerted effort to get your things, and violence was not unknown here. In any event we knew the way, the timing, and the landmarks, and we arrived soon enough at Russell’s Place, a haven in the bush along the beach. We had a bottle of wine, at our preferred price 350, and the all you can eat buffet for 250 each ($10). The meat was tough goat and tender chicken but the side dishes were lentils, potatoes, cassava, beans, and banana. It was our first hearty home-cooked meal in a long time. As we were savoring our wine at the end, some dancers pulled up in a truck and did some Mozambique dancing for us to rhythmic drums and voices. It made for an interesting evening.

Next morning, not much to do. Wake up slowly, dress, pack, go out to Dolphin and try the breakfast. Not bad, espresso coffee with bread butter and jam, but with some meat and cheese, and a half papaya each, 150 each, seemed reasonable, eaten at tables in the shade overlooking the beach and bay at Pemba. But this was the end to our holiday. The rest of the day we would fly to Maputo and try and find a nice place to chill out there a couple of days.

The 8^th was the last flight we could get for Bobbi to catch hers on the 10^th back to Nairobi and UAE. I could have stayed in the north of Mozambique and pushed over to Niyassa and on to Malawi There were some mountains outside Blantyre I’ve always wanted to climb. But I decided to accompany her back as planned and spend a last two nights together before my vacation turned into my own personal one. I would try to arrange a flight to Johannesberg and then on to Bloomfontien or direct to Maseru, where there was a world of mountain in Lesotho I could trek in for a couple of weeks. If I could stand the wintry cold up there. In a way I was wishing I could return to Abu Dhabi with Bobbi and then take an easier vacation elsewhere in Turkey or Southeast Asia, some place to just relax and not have to deal with hardship in Africa, which becomes tedious after some weeks. But I’d already applied for holiday from work at this time, and I’m already in Southern Africa, so I guess I’d best go through with it. Anyway more on that later.