Mozam part 3

SO i believe when we left off we were at Hell's Gate, in Santa Maria, which is about a Kilometer away from Hells gate, Rick saw a woman carrying a Turtle. SO he took the Turtle from her and told her it was not legal to just take a Turtle and sell it or eat it or whatever, and that if the cops saw it there would be a 25,000 metical fine. THere are no cops anywhere near Santa MAria, so the people who live there have the run of the land and believe they can do what they like. SO this lady was not happy at all wioth Rick, and she argued with him and got other local people to defend her, some of whom didn't seem to keen to take her side. In the end Rick paid her 200 Mets to leave us alone.

It was a heavy thing to see these people who had lived in the area for so long, unable to understand why there were rules against taking a creature that was just walking through the woods, like they would have been allowed to for centeries before now. In the end it felt to me like justice was served when the lady got a few dollars from us, but in the long run that time of thing surly can't be permitted, i mean she basically got paid for breaking the rules and then complaining about it until Rick wanted her to just go away.

ANyways all of that happened around 4pm while we weere waiting for a man named Pepe to come pick us up in his boat so to give us a ride to our camp. Our accomodation was amazing. WE stayed in the contractor camps next to a fancy fishing resort called "Hell's Gate Resort" that was marketed to mostly AMerican and Europeans. From the beach the Resort Looked amazing, straw roof set in amongst the lush green Sanddunes. There is a lot of aluminum or titanium (I can't remember which) in the sand in Mozambique and that traps water in the sand, so plants flourish there. People were growing watermelons and corn right in the sand, like it was rich fertilized top soil.

As i was saying, our accomdations were next to the resort, in the trees. We had a kitchen with running water and electricity, a tent was set up with beds for us to sleep on (which were normally occupied by contract workers building the resort. When the resort is complete Pepe will open a backpackers in the area where we stayed, a much cheaper and most do it yourself enviornment. It should be an amazing place when it all works out. And Pepe doent get too many visitors so he was so friendly and so happy to have some new faces to talk to.

THe mornign after we arrived we waited for the tide to start pushing into the Bay of Maputo, and when it does, it creates a SERIOUS current running through hells gate pass. And about 10 feet from shore there was a rock ledge that dropped off about 9 or 10 meters at some parts and the snorkeling along there was spectacular. We would walk out to the where the ocean met the mouth of Hell's Gate pass and just float down with the current a few hundred yards diving down to explore the rocks and we saw lots of fish and urchins and a big old lobster. Apparetntly big kingfish and even some sharks are known to run in the pass, but we saw nothing like that.

AS the morning passed we went sandboarding down the dunes and just explored the beach, until we left for Bella Russia Point. Bella Russia has an wave setup that looks insane, just a point break wave over sand bottom that looks like it might peel for over a kilometer, and had we gotten it good there would have been only 4 or 5 of us in the water. Oh well. THe day and night we spent there was eventful, we went for another turtle walk at night, and saw a bad ass scorpion in our campsite, which I foolishly got no pictures of. And we slept without flys on our tents so we could watch the stars. THen next day was insanly hot so we had a surf early and decided to make it all the way back to Ponta do Ouro that day, around 6 or 7 hours in the car. Becasue the only place we had left to check out between Ponta and Bella Russia would for sure have no waves.

WE pulled into Ponta Do Ouro, the most built up place i saw in Mozambique, right aroud dark, and about 500 meters outside of town our Landy ran out of gas on a hill and we had to make a line to tow the car the remaining kilometer or so to Rick and Brian's house.

Ponta do Ouro is basically on the border of Moazam and SA so it is quite busy. We had take out burgers the night we arrived, and it had been a long day in the car so aftr eating we all crashed. The next morning was HOT! again. we hung out inside till low tide then walked up to the point for a surf. Again this wave can run for more than a Kilometer on its best days (you can see the point in the pictures above) but we didnt see anything like that. We found a little knee high wave that ran for about 25 yards, oh well. No point in whining about things you can't control.

THat night we were supposed to go to the little market in town where a lady Rick new was making us a huge chicken dinner with Stiff Pup (a local dish that is corn meal based) Baked beans and Veggies for 30 rand (around $4 US). But a massive thunderstorm rolled in which meant we had to carry the food home becasue the market was an open air market. It was fine with me becasue we got to sit on the roof of the house and watch one of the most (possibly the most) impressive electrical storms I have ever seen. Lighting flashes were happing nearly constantly (you can see some of them in the pics I took Above, and im quite proud of those pictures) coming from inland and moving out over the Sea. It was a great show, and watching the lightning over the sea reminded me of a storm out over the Lake that i could watch from my parents bedroom, or if im feeling foolish, while longboarding through Gilson park.

The next morning we were supposed to go on a dolphin tracking tour with Rick and Brian, we were supposed to swim with them possibly, but at the very least just seek out a huger pack of bottlenose dolphins, but the wather was still a bit sour so we took a rainy ride back to the border, said our good byes to Rick and Brian and parted ways, loading our gear into the Comby Van which Skellum had done a good job watching, failing to live up to his name in the best of ways!

The End