Back to the main land... Pangani

My next stop was back on the mainland of Mozambique in a little village called Pangani. Between Metamo and Pangani we passed many pretty islands, all surrounded by the beautifully clear turquoise sea that we had been fortunate enough to be surrounded by for the past few days. But as we neared Pangani things began to change. The sea became murkier and murkier and by the time we arrived at Pangani we had to jump out of the boat into brown water full and rubbish and all sorts of bits of dead fish. Above is one of the islands we passed, and below is a picture of all the other guys getting off our boat in Pangani (yes they did immediately strip down to their underpants to brave the water).

Pangani was described in the Lonely Planet as 'the edge of paradise'. Fair enough it was pretty much on the edge of what to some could easily be considered as paradise, but to actually be called 'the edge of paradise' was perhaps pushing it a little far. We decided that really it should have been called the rear end of paradise. This was the second mistake in one day that we had discovered the Lonely Planet authors had made. The first one was that of the 'coconut crabs'. These apparently lived on one of the islands we sailed past, were impressively huge, climbed up coconut trees, shook them until a coconut fell off and then went down to the ground to eat it. On passing the small island however, we discovered that there wasn't a singly coconut tree there and our captain informed us that there were no such crabs!

Although we missed out on seeing any crabs climbing coconut trees, we were treated to witnessing a small boy very skillfully climb to the top of a tall coconut tree to get a coconut where we were staying.

Pangani wasn't all bad. Where we stayed the beach and water were nicer than where we got off the boat, and there was a market with an almost overwhelming amount of different things for sale. There was also a lot of drying fish!

Not a place we particularly wanted to stay very long in, we found out from the guy at our campsite that the one and only bus out of there each day left at 5am. So after a day relaxing, we couldn't face such an early start after the long journey the day before, we got up in plenty of time in the morning to be greeted by the camp site guy who angrily told us that the bus was there 'now'. We went along at 5.00 anyway as that was the time we could be ready by, seeing as that was the time we were expecting to have to get the bus. No bus was anywhere to be seen and we were informed by all the villagers that the bus always left at 4.30 and that we had missed it. There followed a very heated discussion in Portuguese with the guy at the campsite about why he'd told us to be there at 5am when everyone else was aware that the bus left half an hour earlier. His shouted responses were that he had told us when we'd got up in the morning that the bus was there, and that he was up and ready (although he wasn't planning on getting the bus himself and nor was he needed or planning to come with us to where the bus left from). Almost in complete despair about the prospect of having to stay an extra night in the rear end of paradise, we were saved by a very kind south african couple who were leaving that day in their jeep. Their jeep was full of belongings but they let me sit in the front with them whilst the others sat on the roof and we left Pangani along the only road, which was a little sand track.