Mozambique, 1999
Author: Littlefish

Background: These dives took place on a long trip in Africa and Europe I took earlier this year. I’d just gotten certified to dive a few months before the trip and, completely hooked on the underwater world, I’d set my heart on squeezing in at least a few dives on the trip. A number of companies had just introduced trips to Mozambique -- a country previously off-limits, as it had only recently emerged from years of civil war -- and were touting the chance to dive and snorkel in its barely-dived tropical waters. Well, if the opportunity presented itself...who was I to turn it down? I found a tour company that offered a trip with at least one chance to dive -- a camping trip, not a liveaboard; I was going back to school after this and was facing tuition bills a lot higher than the average diving trip tag! -- and off I went.

The 17-day trip had a pretty laid-back itinerary, mostly hopping from beach to beach and staying a few days at each one, with a few stops for game viewing. It started at a game park in South Africa, stopped at beaches at Bilene, Maxixe, Morrungulo and Vilunculos in Mozambique, and ended up in Zimbabwe. Of the 12 clients, six of us were certified to dive: Lynne, who had the British equivalent of a divemaster certification; Jeremy, who’d logged about fifty dives (mostly in the cold waters of the British Isles) but hadn’t dived for years and had just gotten back into the waters a few days before in South Africa; Paul, who hadn’t done much diving since getting certified some time ago; Jola, who’d gotten certified a year ago in Lake Malawi but hadn’t dived since; Jolanda, who’d coincidentally gotten certified a week after I had and done seven dives on that certification trip; and me, with ten dives under my belt (plus two resort-course-like dives a year before getting certified). Most of the rest were planning on taking a resort course at one of the stops on the trip (PADI, of course; I guess they even market in Mozambique).

Over the course of this trip, I managed four dives and a few snorkeling trips. (I went to Greece after this and did four dives, though that’s a story for a different report.) I’m just going to concentrate on the details of the dive logistics and the dives themselves, because talking about the rest of the trip (the activities, the lodging, the food, the transportation) would be a book in and of itself. My apologies for the incredibly long delay in writing these posts -- I’d quit my job to go on this trip, and only got good computer and Internet access (i.e., a connection that didn’t flake out after 30 seconds) long after the school term started. Thanks to everyone who supplied advice on diving in Africa and Greece!

So now...on to the diving.

Morrungulo, Dive #1. Dive op: Island Style Diving, which is the dive op associated with the campground where we were staying. In addition to diving, it arranges fishing and snorkeling trips. When I was there, it was run by a South African couple (Jake and Veronica) who’d been there 18 to 20 months, having been asked by the campground to replace the previous managers of the dive op.

We arrived at Morrungulo around noon, too late for the non-divers to take a resort course but in time for an afternoon dive for the certified divers. Four of us -- Lynne, Jeremy, Jolanda and I -- decided to take the plunge. We had a briefing at HQ, a sort of glorified hut on stilts that doubled as office and living quarters for the people in charge, and then went to a nearby hut to get suited up. We were told that the water was generally so warm (typically 31 C, though when we were there, they said temps were more like 24-25 C) that we only needed shorties (though I also snagged booties, because they ran out of fins in my size and had to give me booties so that I’d fit the next size up. But don’t start thinking horrible things about the dive op -- in Mozambique, everything is in such short supply that you might even find charter boat owners borrowing gas from other people to take paying clients out for the day).

We were trucked to the beach (a three-minute walk, I estimate, but that’s not a fun walk if you’re lugging gear) and piled into a little inflatable boat that was just big enough to hold us. We were headed for a site called Mid-Reef, about 45 minutes away; there were other sites that the divemaster would have preferred, like one called Caves and Overhangs featuring a 20-meter tunnel just big enough for two divers, but the weather had apparently been strange lately, and conditions weren’t great. The plan was to do just a one-tank dive for 45 minutes, since Jake, the divemaster, had done a dive that morning and didn’t want to stay down for longer. At the site we paired up (Jake with Jeremy, Lynne with Jolanda, and me with Jake’s daughter, who’d done 11 dives), rolled off the boat, and started swimming.

The dive itself was a mixed bag. The same weather conditions that had ruled out the other sites meant that our site also wasn’t at its best. I don’t know what the bottom temp was, but the air temp was about 75 F, and I definitely hit a couple of cold spots that would leave me shivering the entire boat ride back. Probably because of the cold, there wasn’t as much life as usual at the site. Also, the visibility was poorer than usual (10 m, by Lynne’s estimate), so the coral wasn’t as colorful as normal. Still, I got a kick out of maneuvering around the big boulder-like formations (give me a break, I’m still a newbie), and the critters that were hardy enough to stick around were impressive. I saw the biggest lobster I’d ever seen (makes the ones in the Keys look like the crustacean equivalent of 98-pound weaklings!), plus crayfish, stingrays, brilliant black-and-yellow Moorish idols, and snappers, not to mention a lot of other colorful fish I’d never seen in the Caribbean. Jake also found us some Spanish dancers -- are those the same as nudibranchs? -- whose ruffly orange skirts were so bright that they looked neon even in the murk.

As for dive stats: Well, there was quite a bit of variation. Jolanda ran out of air quickly -- a leak, she thought later -- and had to ascend after 25 minutes; Lynne, ever the divemaster, went up partway with her to make sure she was OK and didn’t come back down close to the end of the dive. Jeremy, being a big guy, also ran out of air early and ascended alone. In the end, I think I made it to 24 m (though much of the dive was shallower), logged 47 minutes of bottom time (plus a safety stop hanging out with the deceptively cute jellyfish -- let’s just say they’re not my favorite diving buddies), and used 160 bars of air (sorry, they’re metric).

Believe it or not, that was it for the diving at Morrungulo, which had been the main diving advertised in our trip. A storm kicked up that night, soaking one person’s tent and flinging coconuts across our campsite, so diving (and fishing) was out for the remainder of our stay. The weather cleared up just in time for a morning of snorkeling at the beach of a hotel that had been abandoned during the civil war. Spectacular setting, as the ruins were perched on a promontory with a perfect crescent of smooth sand on one side and rocky coral points and tidal pools on the other. The tidal pools were admittedly a bit shallow for snorkeling -- we had to lie sideways in one pool to watch the fish, and we couldn’t even get our masks entirely underwater -- but then, it also meant the fish you were eyeballing couldn’t go far. Again, I haven’t a clue what kind of fish we were looking at, but they put on a nice show :-).

Next stop: Vilunculos. We weren’t even supposed to come here, but because a cyclone had wiped out the bridge on the road north to our original destination a few months back, we ended up staying a little further south. Could have been worse -- our guide had gotten stranded in Vilunculos by that very same hurricane on his previous Mozambique trip, and after a few too many nights of sleeping in the mud, his clients had to get airlifted out. But I can’t badmouth the hurricane too much, since it was probably the reason we got to stay at a hotel instead of a campground. Business had been slow, and when we turned up at the resort of Aguia Negra to arrange dives with its on-premises operation, the manager struck a deal to offer us a place to stay for not much more than the campground cost. So much for the idea of roughing it and loving it!

The dive shop there was called Dive Nautique. It was run by another South African couple, Renoir and Debbie, though I’m not sure they’re still there either, given the amount of tension and politicking that seemed to exist among the staff at the resort. (It’s a small place, with not a lot of places to go or new people to meet -- can’t blame people for getting cabin fever!) They’d been there about nine months and were still learning the fish and the dive sites. They tended to dive various parts of the same reef, a point of coral that featured some garden-like patches, some boulders and some channels. This reef, which they called Two-Mile Reef, was located on the far side of one of the islands lining this stretch of coastline; eons ago, the island had probably been part of the mainland, and even now the water between the beach and the island isn’t too deep -- I’ve seen locals wading out ankle-deep so far that you can’t tell if they’re male or female, and at low tide whole catamarans get beached. Between the tidal flats and the many locals fishing with nets and boats, the beach wasn’t the best place for swimming, and there wasn’t much fish life close to shore (the fishermen sweep nets along the ocean bottom, which pretty much ruins that area as a breeding ground). Still, when you’re looking at acres of squeaky white sand that stretch as far as you can walk and picturesque boats moored in particularly photogenic places, you’re not in the mood to complain. At the time all the equipment was kept in Renoir and Debbie’s chalet, but the resort was in the process of building a more permanent dive shop closer to the beach. Not that the lack of public rinse tanks was a problem -- for some unimaginable reason, people traveling in this part of the world tend to pack light and get all their from the shop. Apparently there was another dive operation affiliated with a resort or campground on one of the islands, but I didn’t have an opportunity to check it out.

Dive 2: Vilunculos, Dive Nautique

I’m almost afraid to write about this dive, because there were so many mistakes/problems/questionable decisions that you veterans can rip. But since all of this actually happened, I don’t think I can be sued for libel. So I’ll just relate what happened, and you can supply the commentary...

I suppose we should have worried when Dive Nautique almost couldn’t offer the resort course to our five aspiring divers. It turned out that they only had two people who could take down resort divers -- Renoir and Debbie -- which meant a total of four people could go. But with Lynne being a divemaster, it was decided that a fifth could accompany her, and the class was set for 7:30 the next morning and a dive for 10 am.

That is, 10 am Mozambique time. By the time the students had warmed up from the lessons in the (unheated) pool, it was close to 11. By the time the dive operation was ready to go, it was inching toward noon. We hadn’t even been fitted for gear -- they’d taken a quick poll of BC size and foot size (and did I mention, this was all some obscure European sizing that looked more like an age than a shoe size to a dumb American?) and piled everything into the boat for us (without a formal fitting, btw).

We did get a preview of the interesting wildlife awaiting us: On the ride to the reef, we encountered a pod of 20 or so dolphins. Though they never actually poked up their heads to check us out (guess Sea World isn’t the best place to form expectations of dolphin behavior), they did arc up above the water every so often -- and, it turned out, would be the only sea life seen by some of our resort divers. But more on that later.

Back to the reef: Here’s where things started getting sticky. Because the reef was about 45 minutes from shore, the dive leaders preferred to have everyone get suited up at the dive site. With 12 people diving and some surface waves churning, it wasn’t exactly fun, but since they said it was too warm to bring wetsuits, we only had to struggle with BCs and fins. Another hitch was the visibility: A storm a few days ago had churned up some sediment that hadn’t completely settled, so we couldn’t see the bottom from the boat -- not typical for that area, according to the divemasters. Finally, there was a slight change in the buddying plans: Instead of Renoir and Debbie taking down most of the resort divers, they paired some of the resort divers with some of the certified clients. I was paired with the person who’d gotten certified in Lake Malawi the previous year but hadn’t dived since.

The plan was to have Debbie go down first with the line, send the certified divers in next, ease the resort divers into the waters, and then meet at the bottom and follow Debbie around the bottom for as long as our air lasted while the boat followed our buoy. So after Debbie headed down with the line, I rolled into the water and started my descent. Partway through, I noticed that I was descending faster than my buddy, so I added some air to my BC. Yes, I know, that was a dumb move, but don’t worry, I paid for it: Because I was so busy watching my buddy and trying to stay at her level, I didn’t realize that we were actually going UP until we hit the surface. We tried descending again, and this time not only did my buddy have trouble equalizing, but I also lost sight of the buoy line in the meter or two of visibility. Lynne came swimming toward us to point us in the right direction, but we lost her again because my buddy was still trying to equalize. Fortunately, just as I was deciding to go back up, the entire group emerged from the murk, salvaging our dive.

I’d like to say things went smoothly after this, but no such luck. My buddy kept having trouble staying down -- at one point, I lost her and eventually looked up to find her getting tangled in the line above me. Between her buoyancy and equalization problems, she ran out of air so fast that she hit the turnaround point when I had half a tank left. So she signaled to me to stay down and went up by herself, and I tagged along with Debbie, the dive leader with the line.

By now there were only five of us left underwater. Though it was a bit chilly (76 F and no wetsuits!), the visibility at the bottom was better than it had been closer to the surface (5 to 6 meters), and the crowd of course was much smaller. I wish I could name all the fish, but the only ones I knew by then were the powder-blue surgeonfish (as common as damselfish are here, it seems), the emperor angelfish and the Moorish idols (my favorite!). The coral was as colorful and undamaged as anything I’d seen in pictures. We even spotted a sea turtle in the distance, and best of all, just as we decided to start reeling in the line (50 minutes bottom time, BTW), I spotted a massive white shape cruising behind the DM -- a giant manta ray, the first I’ve ever seen. It didn’t stop, more’s the pity, but it made for a stirring finale.

I surfaced to find that things hadn’t gone quite so well for the others. Two of the resort divers (one who’d been paired with the instructor, and one who’d been paired with one of the newer certified divers) had tried twice to go down through the cloudy waters and couldn’t do it (they said afterwards they thought they could have done it, given more time and a few more attempts). A third one had been under weighted and had spent his entire dive swimming in large circles in an effort to stay down, while Lynne, his buddy, frantically followed him. Between chasing her buddy and keeping an eye on the rest of us, she had more of a working dive than a fun one, she said later. Jeremy had somehow wound up with a self-inflating BC and gear that left trails of bubbles wherever he went, so he’d run out of air fast. My buddy told me she thought she’d had another one of those self-inflating BCs. Another certified diver had buoyancy problems, a couple of us were shivering seriously, and a resort diver came back with a cut on her knee from a close encounter with the reef bottom.

As at Morrungulo, we only had enough tanks for a single dive, so it was time to head back.

So...the verdict? I guess we were lucky not to have had more serious problems. No one got lost, no one got bent, and a third of us actually enjoyed the last half of the dive. Still, I know I certainly made some mistakes and less-than-perfect decisions. I think after the near miss at Morrungulo, everyone had a hard time passing up what could be their last chance to dive. Some of the other issues can be blamed on conditions in Mozambique: I suspect that with equipment so hard to come by in a place where even gas is scarce, most dive ops would have trouble fitting a group so large. But it’s also understandable that with the recent drop in tourism (which was never booming to begin with), a dive shop would have a hard time passing up such a big group even with less-than-ideal water conditions. As for the one-tank issue...they probably didn’t have enough tanks or air compressor capacity for more than that. (In fact, when I was diving in Greece later on in this trip, I was told by a DM there that they didn’t have enough capacity for two-tank trips either. Shows me how spoiled I was in the Keys, where even the smallest shops scheduled four to six dives a day!) Good luck to you if you get bent -- I’d guess that the nearest decompression chamber would be in South Africa, and I for one wouldn’t be optimistic about your chances of keeping all your nerve cells before you could be airlifted out. As for other comments...I’ll let you guys argue that out.

Now here’s perhaps the most stupid decision: Two of us actually decided to leave the trip and stay in Vilunculos for more fishing and diving. Foolhardy? You bet your life. But visibility did clear up over the next few days, and, well, let’s just say that our idiocy got rewarded. 

Dive 3: Vilunculos, Dive Nautique

I got suited up for an 8:30 dive, though the boat didn’t actually leave till 9:30. Then on our way out, we ran over and cut a fisherman’s net -- oops. There went another fifteen minutes, as we stopped to find and retie the ends. We picked up another guy who was catching a ride to the island, then stopped at the island to pick up the rest of the divers. We arrived at the reef around noon for a one-tank dive, following the same drop-to-the-bottom-and-follow-the-dive-leader plan.

By now, the visibility had cleared to the point that you could actually see people several meters away from you descending. At the bottom we had 10 to 12 m of visibility, and though the water was 22-23 C, I was reasonably warm in the long john they’d brought for me. Aside from two divers who got cold and surfaced early (they hadn’t asked for wetsuits in advance, so no neoprene for them) and my buddy, who seemed to have gotten Jeremy’s self-inflating BC, I think people were reasonably happy with the scenery. We saw plenty of schools (of more unidentified fish, sorry), plus more Moorish idols, emperor angelfish, soldier fish, parrotfish and rock angel butterfly fish. There were starfish sticking to the bottom, and yellow trumpet fish hanging vertically and looking just like aquatic clarinets. We took it slowly and stayed down for 58 minutes and 155 bars of air, maxing out our depth at 14.5 m.

I didn’t dive the next day, but we did go out to an island called Paradise Island (really!) for some snorkeling. Supposedly the first beach we stopped at had been significantly eaten up by the cyclone, and it did indeed drop fairly steeply into the water, but there was still so much pure sand left that we didn’t mind. The snorkeling there consisted of floating among the boulders in the calm, warm waters just offshore. There wasn’t much color on the bottom, as the people who’d been quartered on the island during the war had pretty much netted/fished it to death, but the fish were out in force. In every crevice you could be reasonably sure of finding Moorish idols, emperor angelfish and powder-blue surgeonfish, while in the open water you could see trumpet fish hovering and schools of little fish swarming around. As usual, I couldn’t name most of the fish I saw (that’s why I keep talking about the same five fish over and over) -- but if any of you can ID an oval-shaped fish with black stripes and yellow-white shading, pinkish-blue fish, and things that look like sea slugs, I’d be much obliged :-). Back on the boat, we stopped to do some snorkeling just off the point of the island, where the fishermen hadn’t done as much damage, and got to chase fish around the coral heads (some pretty massive brain coral below!). According to my snorkeling partner, it was some of the best snorkeling he’d seen, even better than the Red Sea.

Dive 4: Vilunculos, Dive Nautique

What a ride! The sea was the flattest I’d ever seen it here -- barely any height to the wavelets. And on the way out, Renoir spotted something that was truly worth stopping for: the tail of the elusive dugong, an endangered animal that supposedly gave rise to the mermaid legend (may be the same as the manatee? not sure). I have to admit that they look more like walruses than mermaids. They’re so shy that we never saw either of the pair there in its entirety, sad to say. (While I was there I was told a story about some World Wildlife Conservation types coming out there to check out these endangered beasts, and being honored with a feast featuring a local delicacy -- dugong meat. Please tell me it isn’t true!)

We could have watched them for hours, but we had to race out to the reef to fit in some snorkeling before the tide got too high. The plan for the five of us (three clients, plus Renoir and Debbie) was to snorkel at one site for an hour, then move to the shallow tip of the reef for some diving. Inexplicably, we only had two snorkels on board, including the one I’d brought, so I ended up going without. (One divemaster wanted to do a semi-snorkel with one of the tanks, but knowing that a) I have buoyancy issues on a shallow dive and b) I wanted to dive deeper later, I didn’t go for it.)

If I tell you the site is called the Aquarium, you can probably figure out how great the fish life was. And I have to say that if snorkeling were always like this, many people wouldn’t even bother getting certified to dive (heresy, I know, but you can’t imagine how amazing the scene was). The Aquarium is an amphitheater-like U in the reef, with coral lining the “seats” and a sandier area on the stage. I’ve never seen so much coral in such good shape -- we’re talking about forests and forests of staghorn coral (or maybe elkhorn; I’m still learning my sea life). I did see one piece of coral broken off, probably by people anchoring carelessly, said our DMs, but that was all the damage visible. Fish were thick on the ground here, either darting among the coral or schooling farther below. In addition to all the usual suspects, I spotted goatfish and tilefish, plus cleaner fish in action. Meanwhile, the water looked like poured glass, not a crest in sight.

It was finally time to get back on the boat and head to the dive site. Today we were cruising over a shallower, patch-like part, without the channels and boulders of the previous dives (my max depth today was 12 m). Water temps were 77 F, and visibility was maybe 20 m. Besides the Moorish idols and surgeonfish and angelfish, we were treated to butterfly fish, cleaner wrasse, some fish with “chocolate” in its name and tropical halfbeaks. On the bottom we came across sea urchins, a big clam opening and closing, a tiger cowrie and a starry moray eel. Special sights: Debbie spotted a type of scorpionfish, Renoir found a sea turtle and a brindle bass that had to be at least as big as me, and we encountered a clown triggerfish whose crazy coloration showed how it got its name. Used up 57 minutes and 150 bars of air -- every one of them worth it.

Final thoughts

So would I recommend Mozambique? I’d have reservations telling you to go there just for the diving. Yes, the scenery was gorgeous by the end, but was I risking my life every time I went out? I wouldn’t call these operations the best-equipped that I’ve seen, and I have a feeling that the people in charge were still ironing out some kinks. Between the gas shortage and availability (or lack) of air, I counted myself lucky to get one dive a day. Also, whether it’s due to the small size of the tourist industry and the relative newness of the shops, or the nature of the reefs, experienced adventure divers might not be satisfied. On the other hand, this IS Mozambique, and it’s asking too much to expect the equipment and service of a plush Caribbean resort. The country doesn’t even have a train system reestablished (the infrastructure was completely destroyed by the war and the fleeing Portuguese colonials), and inland you’re not supposed to walk off the side of the road lest you have a close encounter with a leftover land mine. If you want a diving trip without the, uh, adventure, you may be better off in South Africa.

For obvious reasons, I’d also tell those looking for luxury to hold off a year or two. There was no TV and just five CDs at the bar at Aguia Negra, and the nearest phone was the $10/min. satellite phone at the resort next door. Though I certainly didn’t get the “exploit the tourists” feeling that I’ve sensed in some parts of the world, I certainly felt some guilt about being the rich American in a poor country. Transport is still irregular; taking the bus seemed only slightly safer than playing Russian roulette.

If you have a taste for roughing it and aren’t just there to dive, however, this could be the time to go -- before all the development takes over, etc. The forests and beaches were picturesque beyond belief; in fact, before the war, this stretch of the coast was a playground for rich Rhodesians and others. And the seafood -- the only fish I’ve had that was better than the fresh barracuda steaks I ate at Aguia Negra was raw (read: sushi). There are plenty of companies offering camping trips there (perhaps the easiest way to travel there, since they bring their own transport, lodging and food with them); I was happy with my Mozambique trip (though I’d just taken a different trip from the same company with a guide whom half of the group considered militaristic and racist). It’s definitely a country I’d revisit, whether as tourist or volunteer, in the future.

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