How to beaten up by a bus driver in 2 easy steps.

1. Arrange to take the hostel arranged shuttle from Maputo to Tofo
2. Complain that you haven't been taken where you were promised and pre-arranged, and so withhold a small amount of money.

After that, it pretty much takes care of itself.

The main reason most tourists come to Mozambique is it's beaches, and to that end we soon headed north to Praia de Tofo. It did not begin overly well; our door-to-door transfer to Tofo began with collection at 5.30am, before dumped in a bus station for over 90minutes before, on arrival to Tofo, being left somewhere random in town and not were we wanted to be. From there it was but a short step to the driver and conductor physically grabbing and attacking Maaret after I had gone to get help due to their abusiveness. It was only good luck and reflexes that prevented her not ending up with a black eye, broken bag or worse. She had a bruise on her arm for several days.

As such, I can highly recommend NOT using the transfer to Tofo that most hostels offer. If you want to be beaten up by your bus driver, you can do it cheaper for yourself.

Tofo was certainly pretty, if small and very touristy and not the sort of place I tend to visit by choice. Decent, long open beaches, and a wealth of watersport and water activity options abounded, though none of which had much interest to me either because of their cost, or more often, due to the simple fact that I can't swim and so have fairly limited water requirements.

Though obviously our arrival was not ideal and that coloured perceptions a bit, Tofo did kind of grow on me. I am not, and never have been a beach person, as I feel sure that i have mentioned somewhere here before, but I was happy enough spending a couple of days not really doing very much at all except sitting in the sun and relaxing. Away from the coast, it was scorching hot, but on the beach side, a constant strong wind blew through refreshingly – if dangerous for sunburn.

We had 3 full days there, and I didn't really do anything with them at all. Maaret went out swimming with whale-sharks (getting really close to these huge animals), and two friends Dan and Rachel went fishing and caught a large tuna which we helped them eat, but otherwise it was just a case of lying around, reading a book and just being for a few days. i know that this blog is supposed to be a constant tale of wonder and excitement, but really, there has to be some boring normality to it as well, and this is just one of those times.