Inhaca 4/28

Our second day in Inhaca. A lazy morning, we woke up around 8ish and headed to breakfast. Finally a meal with something Eric could eat. We had some beans, eggs, toast, some pastries, tea, and pineapple juice. Part of our plan was to load up on breakfast and skip lunch. On trip-advisor, a person had complained that they had ordered a fancy seafood platter but it took over 2 hrs for the food to arrive and by that time, they had to leave for the boat ride home....

We took it easy today, stayed in our room and watched some TV while we cleaned up. Then went to the reception area to drop off our bags. Played some billiards and went out to soak up the sun on the pool deck. I went for a swim in the salt-water pool which was quite nice. We also walked a bit more along the beach but nothing too excessive.

At 2 PM, we got ready to get back onto the boat.

Another picture of the sands in front of the lodge. Also at low-tide

 one of the many fishing boats.

 A cool purplish spiny seastar. I moved it into a slightly larger pool of water.

Me doing some relaxing. 

Locals out fishing for crabs and clams.

A front-side view of the Pestana Inhaca Lodge.

The beginning of loading the boat to return home. Almost dangerously overloaded....

So the small speedboat pulls up to the side of the large boat. And no ropes or ladders, the passengers are just supposed to start pulling themselves up.

As this gentleman is doing quite well. Not an ideal place for skirts

amazingly everyone gets on board safely. The boat takes about 3 hrs to get back. We caught a cab and asked to be dropped off at a nearby restaurant outside our place where he promptly gulped down some milkshakes and food. A nice way to top off a nice weekend. 

Sunset over the Maputo cityfront.

This will likely be my last post. We head out tomorrow afternoon. Will embark on a total of 35 hours of airport and airplane time. Maputo to Jo'burg, Jo'burg to Atlanta, and finally Atlanta back to San Diego. Will be good to be home. 

Inhaca 4/27

we just arrived back from our trip to the nearby island of Inhaca. Getting there was a feat in and of itself. There are 2 ferries that will take you there, a cheaper government run ferry and a fancier one called Vodacom that is double the cost but is a nicer boat and supposedly gets you there 1 hr faster. We had planned on using the Vodacom ferry and made reservations but got no confirmation # and had walked all the way to the harbor to pre-buy our tickets on Friday to find out the ticket kiosk was closed even though their website clearly says open on Fridays.... Based on this, we decided to just try the government ferry instead.

On Saturday morning, we took a taxi to the ferry terminal and was shocked to see a long line waiting for the government ferry. We got in line and hoped there would be enough seats available. Although we were supposed to depart at 7:30, the ticket stand didn't even open until 7:20.... this is Mozambique after all. The boat itself was quite old looking but seaworthy I guess. Eric and I made sure to sit on the upper level next to a door and with life-vests closely available. We finally set sail almost 45min- 1 hr after the stated departure time.

The trip was actually ok, not much rocking. Essentially took close to 3 hours. We started seeing Inhaca approaching and realized that it was low-tide meaning our boat had to stop quite some distance from shore. To transfer pts to the shore, we would be taking small speedboats. The crazy thing was there was no ladder or ramp available. You had to climb over the main boat's railing and lower/drop down onto the speedboat! I'll include a picture of the reverse process. The best part was after we jumped on, as our boat started to push off, we realized there was a ladder for snorkeling at the back of the boat that could easily have been used to get people on/off. But Eric already knew we were in for trouble because he took one look at the motor and started laughing. It was so old that there was no protective plastic cover and it was thoroughly rusted. As soon as the speedboat person tried to use it, the fuel line popped off. Suffice to say, another crew member had to row us into shore.

It was cool to be able to pop off into the shallows and walk our way to the lodge. Our first course of action was to find some food. Fortunately there are only 3 restaurants total  on this island. We chose Lucas where I had a nice grilled fish lunch. Poor Eric had no vegetarian options and resorted to eating bread, my salad, and my fries.

My yummy grilled fish lunch. Marinated in some garlic and butter, smothered with a local piri-piri (vinegar + chili) concoction.

After lunch we looked at our options. There were some snorkeling sites but they weren't cheap. Something along the lines of $40 per person. Coming from Hawaii, Eric was hesitant to spend the money and I agreed. Instead we just walked down the beach for several kilometers. We finally found a nice shade spot and the went into the water to swim around. Decent visibility though without contacts+goggles I was essentially blind. Water was pretty warm and very comfortable.

A view from outside our lodge. The tide shifts here are fairly extreme and lots of sand is exposed when it's low-tide. All of the fishing boats just end up sitting on the mud during this time. Lots of little crabs about.

A picture of Eric and me during sunset. So romantic! Too bad we missed most of it since we were watching TV...

We spent the rest of the evening watching some TV, grabbing dinner at another restaurant (had another grilled fish dish, Eric starved and ate some fries, some salad, and papaya juice....)

Probably some of the best photos from this trip were of the pool, palm tree, and sunset. A great way to essentially wrap up our rotation and foray to Africa.

Maputo 4/21

I can't believe that we are down to our last week in Mozambique. It has definitely been an interesting experience for both Eric and I.

I have purposely avoided talking too much about the medical aspect of our trip. Needless to say, it has been quite the experience. This is one of the government's best public hospitals and yet it barely has any of the amenities that you could find in any basic hospital in the US. Each room holds up to 8 patients and sometimes more because they will just throw a mattress onto the floor for extra patients.   Eric's sensitive nose has also been assaulted by the wafting smell from the less than clean bathrooms (the whiff I got was quite noxious). But that being said, you have none of the entitlement that we experience all the times from patients in the US. All in all, just a very different system and makes us appreciate so much where and how we can practice.

We haven't been doing very much on a daily basis. Life is pretty routine, wake up around 6-6:30 and go to work by 7:30. Will round with the team and see new patients and try to always come up with our thoughts and how we would approach treating/caring for the patient. Hang around till 12 and head home for lunch. Now we are going in the afternoon to round some more. We are preparing an afternoon lecture talk series for the residents in Mozambique about evidence-based medicine. 

Here are some photos from around home. Since Eric is vegetarian, we have been sticking to all veggie meals. Hortensia will come to our house in the late-morning and clean/wash and make lunch for us everyday. 

This one is similar to our Chinese xue chai. We added a helping of black beans for protein source. The meals are pretty carb heavy and it took us a while to realize why we were always hungry.

To help with our hunger, these are Eric's preferred snacks of choice. Look at the smile of glee on this face....

This is Hortensia. We communicate in a mix of Portuguese, English, and gestures. I would say my Portuguese is still worse than her English but surprisingly a bit of Spanish really does help.

 

We had planned on going to an island this weekend on 4/20-4/21 but the weather report stated possible thunderstorms and we did not want to risk getting stuck on the island and not to mention a 2 hr boat ride. Saturday stormed like crazy so we didn't even leave the house the entire day.

Sunday was a really nice sunny day but not hot. We walked around with Susannah, our coordinator, who has been in Maputo for almost a year now. We walked along some gardens with ocean-front view, had ice cream, and then went to check out a craft market where I purchased my first Africa souvenir to decorate the house with (shhh... it is a surprise to show Helen!)

Here is the Natural History Museum.

A view of the ocean and bay along one of the parks. Lots of bougainvilleas in Maputo which are quite pretty. They also have a type of willowy tree that I have seen in Taiwan.

this is the garden that Susannah took us too. apparently often on weekends, a lot of newlyweds will come here to take photos but unfortunately we didn't see any....

That's bout it. No major plans this week. Will try to plan another outing to the island Inhaca. Would be nice to see the ocean and spend some time on the beaches and maybe go snorkeling. It also would be a fitting end to our stay in Mozambique. 

Maputo 4/13

Maputo

This is our first full weekend in Maputo. We decided we should go see some of the sights. We have already seen the Natural History Museum so today's plan was to see the craft market, the municipal market, and the train-station. The train-station was ranked by Newsweek as one of the top 10 most impressive train-stations around the world so we figured it was worth seeing.

All of these sights were within the same block so we made our way out in the morning. On the way, we also passed by a garden which is a very loose application of the word. It may have been a park once but everything is overgrown and not maintained at all. More like an urban jungle.

Next to it is the 'Iron House". This was apparently built by some European designer who thought it would be cool to make the house all out of metal for the future governor. Unfortunately, it seems like he failed to realize this country's average temperatures are in the 70s and in the summer will reach into the 90s with 100% humidity.... Needless to say, the governor did not want to live there and it has now been converted into a museum.

The Iron House. Less impressive than it sounds. i thought it would be all iron running up but it's more like metal covers around the outside of the house.

the entrance to the gardens. probably the nicest most maintained part of the park but it's sign was missing....

a street view of one of the buildings.

a far away picture of the train-station. unfortunately can't appreciate it's color but it has a mint-tint green to it. Lots of people cluster outside of it to catch the bus. Not much inside the train-station itself but lots of open space and quiet.

Spent rest of day in home. Got chewed up my mosquitoes even though I had the net on.... hopefully no malaria and our chemoprophylaxis is kicked in

Mozambique

hello from mozambique. This is the first day we have internet courtesy of Eric's ingenuity. Let's say our first few days in Mozambique have been interesting.

We already ran into trouble on the day we arrived when we sat around the airport for 30 minutes with nobody to pick us up. Fortunately my parents and sister had forced me to get international roaming as i was able to call the coordinator and discover to our horror that everyone was expecting us tomorrow! But they rallied the troops and were able to whisk us away to the faculty pad (which we first sat by the curbside for 20 minutes) until we eventually got transferred to the resident house. talk about a miscommunication. This place is pretty awesome though. 4 bedrooms, huge living room but the best thing about it is our fortress door. 2 locks, 2 chain locks, and 2 barricade bars! It takes a while just to set up this place but short of breaking down the door, this thing is solid.

Over these last few days, we have found multiple problems in this house. First the internet, than one or both of the washers, and now the telephone. But we are surviving and turning this place into a clean bachelor pad. Cooking our own meals, hanging out. Have actually been doing a lot of reading of random novels other residents have left behind.

will continue to drop intermittent posts.

Safari Day 4 4/5

Our last almost full day of safari. Finally the weather looked like it was improving this morning. Sun was visible for the first time, nice sunrise as we set out early again. Plan was to make some loops, try out some of the dirt roads where people have reported sightings of lions and wild dogs and then eventually make our way out to Phalaborwa gate to catch our flight back to Johannesburg.

Morning sunrise. Sunbeams coming through

Lone elephant on the river bank.

A leopard tortoise! This was the second one we saw but Eric got much better shots on this one. I was so excited to see it!!!

Baby elephant!

Baby baboon sitting on mom's back.

Our airplane flying out from Phalaborwa. Literally the smallest plane I have ever flown on. Also the first prop plane although it ended up very stable in the air with minimal turbulence. Just very noisy.

And the Phalaborwa airport. One entrance on the left for arrivals and one on the right for departures. This airport only flies to once place. There is one counter for check in and the gate is just a bamboo fence. Security = question about any dangerous goods in our luggage, a hand-waved metal detector, and a very brief bag search. But the best part was we actually got drinks and a light meal on the 1 hr flight. We don't even get such good service in the US.

Safari Day 3 4/4

Our second full day of safari. We got lucky that the rain stopped overnight but this meant a lot of dirt roads may be in too poor condition for our low-clearance 2-wheel drive sedan to handle.... Either way, we got up early and hit the road. The weather still didn't look great and it was supposed to rain so we will try to maximize the amount of time we had. Pretty much same as yesterday, drove up and down the roads. Did have to cross some big mud puddles where things got a little dicey but made it through them successfully. Rain started around 1PM and let up a bit by the time we got to our camp in Letaba so we thought we were in the clear. This camp was neat since it had a lot of wildlife in the camp including monkeys and bucks (similar to deer). The camp also overlooks a river so we were hoping to see some wildlife but nothing super impressive. it's amazing how fast animal spottings soon become routine and it becomes almost like a checklist trying to cross off each animal you have seen. Ex: the impala, very boring. We had signed up for a night drive again but as it started raining again, we decided to cancel. The park will supposedly give us a refund but I doubt that will happen.

us outside of our car and our bungalow. Doesn't look like much outside but inside is all tiled, with our private bathroom. Also had air-conditioning though we didn't need it.

Frog along bathroom wall. Almost looks like one of the Amazon poison dart frogs, needless to say i didn't touch it.

The two of us outside Olifant outlook.

Our first sighting of a crocodile on the Letaba river bank. Unfortunately rather far away.

Family of velvet monkeys that were hanging out in our camp. Very naughty monkeys, they knew how to open cabinets to steal people's food.

A small herd of zebras.

Baby monkeys!

A reedbuck. Very common in our Letaba camp. Basically looks like equivalent of Bambi.

Safari Day 2 4/3

This was our official first full day of safari. Unfortunately when we woke up, the outside weather already looked like it was changing. So animals are apparently more active in the early morning so this meant waking at 5:45AM every day to head out by 6AM when the gates opened to start driving around. We were soon to find out how exhausting safari is with all the concentration required to scan the bush/grass. It's even worse when you are the driver since you need to watch the road and the right-side. Fortunately the roads are in good condition and there really aren't that many cars in the park at one time given it's sheer size.

We were heading upwards to our next camp Satara which is known for big cats. We drove around most of the morning time with occasional breaks at rest-stops but by the time we got to our camp, it was starting to rain and never let up all night. We just grabbed dinner and called it any early day and hoped the next morning the rain would stop.

A rare hippo sighting outside of the water. There was a straight on headshot but i was too slow with the camera and another car zoomed by and scared off this poor hippo who promptly ran into an elephant causing the elephant to trumpet at the hippo and make the hippo run even further.

A family of elephants crossing the road.

A bunch of buffalo, one of the Big 5

Wildebeest

A living giraffe

What once was a living giraffe. No clue if it died of natural causes or eaten by predators but clearly only a giraffe could have that vertebrae column.

Safari Day 1 4/2

Today was our first safari half day. We flew from Cape Town to a local town of Nelspruit and rented a car to make the drive. The roads were very full of potholes but drivers here are actually very courteous about letting people pass and will drive slowly and pull into the left shoulder. The park itself is one of the most famous in all of Africa, called Kruger National Park and is apparently the size of Israel. We are starting near one of the southern entrances at Numbi gate and will drive up to the middle of the park and exit at Phalaborwa gate.

There are paved roads and dirt roads. We were able to find a map eventually and just picked some random roads to drive down. Little did we know that this would be our most successful day of safari. The Big 5 refers to the elephant, rhino, lion, leopard, and buffalo. We ended up seeing a buffalo, elephant, and rhino all within the first 2-3 hours. Unfortunately the rhino was from very far away.

We finally made it into our first camp, Skukuza, and settled down. You have to be in by 6PM or else you get fined since they don't let people drive around at night. We were living in a bungalow that was actually quite nice. Very clean, no insects at all. In fact all of the facilities are pretty well maintained here. That night we went on a night drive with the game wardens. Didn't see much unfortunately, a brief glimpse of a leopard, a white-tailed mongoose, an owl, and some elephants. But that technically meant we saw 4/5 of the Big 5 in the first day which is not bad given the size of this park.

The impala. The single most common animal in the park. They would often be the only animals we saw even if it was rain or shine.

This was a cool animal: the water monitor. We saw it by the road in a puddle It was trying to catch a fish by using it's body and tail to make a U-shape and wall off an area to force the fish into the shallow and than eat it. The fish managed to escape several times and we got inpatient and drove off.

Cape Town 4/1

Cape Town Day 3

This will be our last full day in Cape Town as tomorrow we fly out to begin our safari! We plan to hit up some of the tourist destinations within walking distance and then drive to the wharf to see Robben island where Nelson Mandela and others were imprisoned during the apartheid era.

First up was the Company's Gardens. This was originally planted by the Dutch East India Company which seemed to have a lot of power over many parts of the world. It was nice walking through this lush garden in the middle of a city.

Dewdrops on rose petals

Goslings! Would have been cuter if they were even younger.

A scary true albino squirrel! Have never seen this one before. We knew it was a true albino since it actually has pink eyes.

Next up was the Castle of Good Hope. This pentagon shaped building was built by the Dutch but eventually taken over by the British. We got to see a cool canon firing demonstration twice! It was a nice place to walk around although it did start to sprinkle afterwards.

Eric the soldier.

Inside looking out. kind of weird to be in an old building surrounded by new buildings and skyscrapers. Can't even really see the coast where this fort used to be very close to.

Afterwards, we walked back to our hotel and got our car and drove to Victoria Wharf. We found out that all ferry trips out to Robben Island were booked out, oops. Will have to learn about about this time period through the internet I guess. Not much else to do, just walked around. Did eat at another farmer's market type square. Nothing too unique, a lot of stuff we expect to find back home. Did hit upon a new dessert, the aptly named chimney cake.

I know, i know. i can feel the shame coursing through me. Adding to the bad stereotypes about Chinese tourist but the giant man made out of stacked coca-cola bins was doing it too!

You take a ball of dough and roll it flat into a circle. Than pizza cutter to make it into a strip and wrap it around hot wood rod. Then put it into the oven.

The classic is just slight glazed sugar.

this is one of the chocolate and coconut covered one. Very tasty. The outside very thin layer is crunchy and has a slight lemon zest taste while the inside is all warm and soft and doughy. delicious! These would be a hit in the states. Apparently a Hungarian treat. yum yum yum

Went home early due to the poor weather and not wanting to drive in the dark. Will plan a relaxing night and do some blogging.