Days 106 thru 110

(Rhia’s comments are italicized)

We have settled into a bit of a rhythm here at Ponta. It is just so relaxing. Every day starts with a sunrise over the ocean.

And we do our morning walk. Unfortunately, the tides have been a little high making our journey along the beach a little more difficult by pushing us up into the soft sand. We did make it a bit further down the beach and saw this building up in the hill. We’re not sure what it’s going to be, but it certainly looks interesting.

Speaking of tides, the visitors also seem to follow a similar pattern. Tuesday through Thursday is low tide, and Saturday and Sunday is high tide. During the low times, the locals visit the beach. Some youngsters come out late afternoon during those days and set up their volleyball net; as soon as they start playing, lots of others arrive and the group seems to have a fantastic time.

They also seem to perform weddings at our little motel during the low time as well.

During the high times, the tents pop up and line the beach, and every 50 meters or so, women (who have carried tables on their heads onto the soft sand) offer massages.

Additionally, the vendors are way more prevalent during high times as well.

But not everyone is out on the beach trying to sell to tourists. Many women tote their goods to the restaurants and stores to sell.

With the winds always blowing right now, every day is water sports day. I’ve seen paragliders as well, but have no idea where they launch from.

We’ve had a couple of days of stormy-looking skies and high winds; but even that is beautiful here…

During these gloomy days, the sunrise was a different type of spectacular…

I have always thought that sea birds clustered on every shore in the world, but I have yet to see large swaths of water fowl here. There is the occasional lone pippet dodging the incoming waves, but otherwise, only land birds. However, there are cool animals here, like jellyfish and gala-galas lizard.

On the food side, we continue to frequent Focoffee, and Rhia orders the divine spaghetti. But I have been introduced to my favorite go-to, which is Mathapa. This is a local dish made from leaves from the cassava tree, along with coconut milk and prawns. It looks a little bit like the Indian dish, saag (spinach curry), but tastes entirely different. The taste is unlike anything I have had before, and I keep ordering it.

We’ve settled into a routine with living extremely frugally as well. We’ve found a couple of local street vendors who give us a fantastic deal on bread and fruit. For $2.50 we can buy 2 (very delicious, fresh) medium sized loaves of bread, 3 bananas, 2 tangerines, 3 small apples, and an orange. And the meal you see above (without the fries…that was a treat) costs $15. It’s remarkable how quickly you can settle into a simple, quiet lifestyle! In fact, 12 days into our stay here, we’ve just noticed that the place doesn’t have a TV!

Of course, every day has a lovely sunset. I have not got tired of this yet. Maybe we could extend our stay… Hmmmm. We HAVE extended our stay by 4 days; this will give us two nights back in Maputo before flying back to S.Africa and talking our way into an extra week there.

We will definitely come back here one day!