Day 4
A perfect day. The weather has cleared
WHALES! Walter shouts from the verandah, he has the binoculars glued to his eyes. Whales for my birthday! I am in awe of Walter’s talents, from knowing which tyre pressure to use to arranging for a whole pod of whales to visit on the morning of my birthday. And the children phoned to sing happy birthday and let us know they had managed to buy gas. Scientist no 1 was immediately in questioning mode “What colour are they? Do they have large dorsal fins? Are they spy-hopping? Is there tail-slapping? Is there a white spot behind the fin?” I promised to check with the binoculars.
I wish I could claim this as my own, alas they were too far away for the iPhone's capabilities. Picture courtesy of St Lucia They were indeed Humpback whales and quite common for this time of year, apparently.
Aside: Internetlessness
The lack of access is both a blessing and a curse. A simple question like “do cashews grow on trees?” is unanswerable. Without “the Google” and not speaking either Portuguese or Shangaan we are unable to access answers. It’s deeply frustrating when you’re used to simply typing a question into your cell phone and then deciding how much information you want in response. On the other hand we are not slaves to the cellphone / email monster, allowing us to relax fully. Our biggest problem (will the beer be cold?) is easily answered (yes, the refrigerator works) and we spend hours reading or napping. We haven’t suffered from our lack of news (apart from Walter still not knowing who won the Open)
We startled a Purple Crested Lourie as we drove down the path to the beach this morning, falling about the branches as inelegantly as his Grey cousins in my garden at home. On the beach were 3 Little Egrets picking about the rocks, a first for me – I wasn’t aware they frequented rock pools. We also watched some Sandpipers (I have no idea which) racing around the edge of the sea for their breakfast.
After parking (within 150m) we walked south along the beach, finding the best spot to snorkel about 2km away. The beaches are magnificent, truly deserted – although the recent bad weather washed up blue bottles and the odd piece of jellyfish.
Deserted beach. Heaven
The water is probably around 23deg C (a little chilly for me) but we spent 3 hours lazing on the beach blanket until mid day and just had that pleasant light tan sting to show for it. I should think that’s a problem in summer, with temperatures reaching into the 40’s and the sand too hot to walk on, you would have to have sufficient umbrellas to brave the beach then.
There were little crab mounds everywhere , crabs peeking out and then rushing around madly; Walter claimed these too “Your birthday sign, here to wish you happy birthday oh great crab” We even saw a little blue crab with spots – again I’m frustrated by the lack of reference material, the Bradt Mozambique book doesn’t get down to this much detail. Walter found a dead blue snail with what appeared to be jelly-fish protruding from it.
Pretty little blue snail
In the afternoon we watched what we initially thought were the whales from the morning, but talking to other guests in the evening (where we were thoroughly beaten at snooker, all my fault, sorry Walter!) it seems these were dolphins. I had been quite excited, believing them to be Orcas (very clear black and white colouring). Once again we were the only guests in the restaurant; I think they could improve their business with a little more attention to how they prepare the food. We read endlessly, fortunately the iPhone books app works offline, so I read all the books I'd downloaded as well as Freakonomics and Superfreakonomics (both worth a read, wonderful)
Walter reading by the light of Scientist No 1's headlamp. "These lights are NOT good enough!" Of course this has nothing to do with age....
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