My overnight adventure

Thursday, I have no idea what day of the month it is. 10/28/10… maybe.

If you keep your level of expectation open you are bound to be blown away. From moment one on this trip I expected there to be growling times and poor conditions with the reward coming from within. However the conditions have been far from poor and I will leave with more reward, knowledge, experiences and friends than I could ever have imagined.

Myself and two other girls from camp left yesterday morning (Wednesday) on another dhow trip, around the islands and camping this time. Yes, I’m sure this trip sounds more like an unbelievable vacation than a volunteer program. It is the perfect mixture of both.

This trip was spent mostly on the boat only getting out to snorkel the two mile reef and tour some of the islands. We were with another amazing group of people, some French, Italian, British and South African. It feels like everyone is here in good spirit, traveling, exploring and vacationing. (There’s no reason not to be right?)

The boat we adventured off on was wooden with hand sewn and re-patched sails, all looking old and a bit rickety. Knowing that I could swim and would not possibly die of hypothermia in the water if the opportunity arose I was thrilled just to be out on the water on such a beautiful Mozambican day. I did find it quite odd that within the first few minutes we pushed off shore our captains started a small fire (in a pit of coarse) on the back end of this wooden boat. After kicking back and enjoying the sunshine and wind in my hair our guides started handing out coffee, tea and biscuits (breakfast cookies). Most places we wouldn’t bat an eye at complementary services, but here we were shocked and felt very indulged. Our afternoon snack was popcorn, which once again I never in my wildest dreams would have guessed such a thing, not only on our boat, but in a third world country in Africa.

Before long my friend, Haseena, and I made good friends with our captain, Dumo; our cook, Alfredo; and our skipper, Chico. Not speaking much of the same language makes for very funny interpretations and lots of pantomiming. Once again we made it a point to treat them as our friends and not as three people that were giving us a service. Making them laugh, sharing our food and making jokes with them was 75% of the fun. The other 25% was a bonus of sun, the beautiful Indian Ocean, great food, and spectacular scenery.

We camped out Wednesday night. Then snuggled into our cozy mosquito nets early (before 8pm I think), and woke up just in time to get up and watch the sunrise and repeat our sensational day all over again.