WeLoveTravelling: A little piece of South Africa

The turn off to Guinjata, Coconut bay and Paindane is off the potholed road just before Inhambane. It became sand pretty quickly and we pulled over to deflate our tyres. Further down the road we came across a number of dancing children - naughty little boys standing right in the road doing some kind of hilarious cross between the chicken dance and pelvic thrusting, afterwards holding out their hands in the hope of sweets.

We later pulled into the Cumbini resort, and waited for the owner to drive up in her Pajero. She took our docs and escorted us to our house - quite a large and solid looking thatched unit with a large (empty) living area and fully kitted out kitchen, with two bedrooms and an amazing view over the sparkling sapphire sea. The accommodation was fairly basic but for the first time we had a working fridge and huge freezer plus 24 hour electricity, so we were pretty happy! 10 minutes later the resort staff showed up selling fresh pau (Portugese rolls), just in time for lunch.

After having a look at the pool and restaurant, which was playing Sokkie treffers, we took a drive to check out the famous Taurus supermarket, a South African run store and the only real supermarket we had come across. The store had absolutely everything you could need, although unfortunately no fish as apparently no one was catching. So we stocked up on a thick juicy South African steak and some lamb choppies for our dinners.

Next we walked down to check out the beach and were amazed once we got to the main swimming area, it was absolutely packed with South African families, each one with their beach gazebos and tents lined up along the superb soft clean sand. There were tons of jetskis playing in the waves and kids swimming. We risked the bluebottles and had a swim, then relaxed on the beach for a while in the hot sun, wishing we had brought a gazebo, cooler box and chairs like everyone else!

We walked back to the house and chuckled at the Cumbini owner who had looked shocked that we wanted to walk to the beach. She recommended to drive down, and it seemed that was what everyone else did. She even drove around the resort in her Paj, no one liked to walk here!

Around 18:00 we drove, yes drove, to Jeffs dive centre down the beach, for dive planning. We were greeted very warmly in Afrikaans by the crew at Jeffs. I had emailed to request a Manta reef dive and we were pleased that they had booked us on the 6:30am dive out there. We confirmed all our details and then headed back to braai for the night.

The braai was an excellent sturdy construction with a chimney and a great view, and we enjoyed a glass of wine as the sun went down. The steaks were really delicious and we were starting to make our way through the ton of food we had brought with.

The next morning we woke up with the sun and headed to Jeffs for our first dive. The boat was full for the 25 minute bumpy boat ride out to Manta reef, one of Mozambique's most famous reefs for its Manta cleaning stations. We dived Nitrox and had a good dive but sadly no Mantas... We did see many other awesome marine life though, such as enormous schools of fish which didn't even swim away as we cruised through them, 4 massive potato basses, which were also very chilled, and large eels, even two white tip reef sharks! We also saw the manta acoustic equipment the scientists had told us about, and really enjoyed the dive.

Back to Cumbini for lunch and a swim in the pool, then back to Jeffs for our second dive at 13:30, this time to Devils peak - a closer and shallower dive site. The dive briefing was my first ever briefing in Afrikaans! It was an incredibly beautiful dive site, with many amazing corals and anemones, and we saw eels, a large stingray, porcupinefish, leaf fish, nudibranch and many more. We went through a narrow swim through, into a cave full of different fish. The visibility wasn't great and sadly still no mantas, but no matter! That concluded our diving for the trip and we hoped to come back another time and have more luck with the mantas and whale sharks!

I accidentally left the suncream on the dive boat, so we hung around waiting for it to return, and grabbed an R&R drink at the "Dusk til Dawn" beach bar, relaxing on their hammocks and watching the waves. We shopped at the few market stalls, selling everything from sarongs and T-shirts to carvings to bracelets. Werner grabbed a quick swim before the boat returned. We concluded our day with a long nap before braaiing again for our last night in Guinjata.