Pemba, Mozambique

So my friend Amy (pictured below at spa) was in Maputo again for work last week and when I had last been the plane made a short stop in Pemba, which is along the north coast, near Tanzania. Pemba looked so beautiful as we landed that I insisted we should go back. This seemed like a great chance. There aren't many flights direct from Nairobi (two a week) so I flew in on Saturday evening and left Tuesday noon. A short trip but just lovely.

Somehow in my head I thought it was going to be a lively beach town (something that seems rare on this coast, with most places catering to resorts and rented houses- so not many beach cafes and the like). But I was wrong. We stayed at the Pemba Beach Resort, which was stunning but basically the only thing in "town". To be fair we didn't look very hard but after reading in the books that it had not much else, we didn't bother. The resort wasn't very full and was very tastefully done with a great spa, those lovely infinity pools overlooking the ocean, a great gym etc. We basically just lounged around and read. I read two books (haven't finished the second yet) on Kenya that were fascinating; White Mischief about the 1930s expats in Kenya based on an unsolved murder of a white guy in Nairobi in 1941. The second is It's Our Turn to Eat about a Kenyan whistle blower of corruption in the government (the first Kibaki one, about 6 years ago). Both books are supposedly banned in Kenya (I can confirm I can't find them here but I'm not down with the 'book crowd' so maybe it's not true). Either way, they are both fascinating looks into the Kenya, which I realize I barely know.

On Monday I went diving in the morning - for the first time in my short diving life, there was no one else but me and the dive instructor. Nice guy John from South Africa. It was a bizarre dive actually. For some reason I could descend (John later said it's very salinated which might have had something to do with it) - I eventually had to literally dive down. And when I got down, my flipper unclipped and while I was trying to re-clip it I bumped into the coral reef, which tore apart my hand. It was quite pretty though, I'm not usually amazed by coral but when there's not so many huge fish and turtles and eels and lobster and the like, you pay attention to the smaller stuff. So we were investigating the fish and coral and then John indicated that I should listen, there were whales calling. And then we rounded a corner and saw this amazing Ocean Sun Fish - picture off of wikipedia is on the left. I've never seen anything like it - even in movies or books. I think it was about 6ft long but John thought it was a lot bigger (and I'm horrible at those estimations, so I'll believe him). It's one of the strangest things I've ever seen (he had never seen one before either) -doesn't seem like it's the correct shape for anything!

I highly recommend the resort, as a lovely do-nothing kind of vacation. There's water sports and spa treatments, etc but we certainly didn't surround ourselves with mozambiquen culture. Although it was fun trying to remember my Spanish! (they don't speak spanish but I figured it was better than english!)