Rural Entertainment – Wednesday, June 11, 2014

Woohoo! First day of Scuba diving!

Oh wait…except not. Apparently, first day of scuba diving, consists of sitting in a “classroom” watching “movies” “all day” while hearing the pitter patter and excited laughter of all the real scuba divers just outside and seriously suffering from a case of “why is everybody hanging out without me??”

Cory and I powered through the five lessons, which consisted mostly of listing out all the different ways one could die from scuba (or at least those were the only bits I remembered), and were out of there by lunch. Only to immediately discover that there was no reason  really to power through and get out of there by lunch because…now what was there to do??

Classroom selfies! Also...I think the only pics of me and Cory together from this trip were selfies. So don't hate.

Besides scuba…not all that much.  We discovered the town and market, which was embarrassingly close to our hotel (and on the beach!) to have missed the night before. We went on a loooonnnngggg walk on the beach. I learned (or most likely…re-learned) that I will never be adding “likes long walks on the beach” to any online dating profile.

Long walks on the beach do lend themselves to make great pictures however. And this might one day appear in an online dating profile. 

And then we hurried back to our hotel for “Whale Shark Wednesday”, an educational lecture put on by the Marine Megafauna Foundation for the benefit of locals and tourists alike. We were upset that we had missed Manta Ray Monday but were very excited for Fauana Friday. Except…oh no! The lecture was cancelled because the scientists in charge were stranded somewhere between Durban, Safrica and Tofo Beach, Mozambique. Their car had broken down as they were returning from “The Shark Conference” (which is how it was referred to by everybody around…as if they were referring to “The World Cup” or “The Olympics”…like obviously I knew that “The Shark Conference” had been in Durban – a place I knew – the week before). TIA.

But all was not lost, we learned some something else…A THING TO DO! A nearby hotel was having **MOVIE NIGHT** so, armed with our pre-downloaded versions of Google maps, off we went. It had been a long day of doing nothing and drinking on the beach, so I obviously had to make a pit stop. And when I came out of the bushes, I realized that I didn’t have our room key in my pocket.

“Umm…Cory…do you have the room key?”

[He slapped at his pockets] “No”

I was already back in the bushes with my phone flashlight – sun sets early in June in the southern hemisphere! – looking around for the key. It was nowhere to be seen.

“We need to backtrack.”

“When was the last time you remember seeing it?”

“I remember locking the door when we left, but don’t really remember having it after that.”

“Okay let’s go back to the restaurant.”

“And if it’s not there, we need to go back to the hotel and let them know.”

[It was 6:45 and the movie started at 7pm.]

“I say that if it’s not there, we just go to the movie. I don’t want to miss it! And it’s something to do!”

“CORY! This is a REALLY BIG DEAL…African hotels don’t have spare keys…if we don’t have the key we have to go back to the hotel and figure out what to do!”

“Well that sounds like your problem not mine.”

I understood. A day in Maputo followed by a day of travelling followed by a day of walking along the beach was really eating away at both our spirits…we were both just so excited for something to do that we didn’t want to miss the movie. And it would have been a little more understandable, had he not, 15 seconds later, patted his breast pocket and realized that he had actually had the room key all along. J

We made it to the movie. It was The Grand Budapest Hotel, which can actually go down in history as the first Wes Anderson movie I have watched all the way through, a tribute to the true extent of my boredom that evening.  

What is important to understand from this image is that when I went to take a screenshot of the supposed 16 minute route from Casa Barry (our hotel) to Mozambeats (the hip, movie hotel), I had flashbacks to the night that we were lost on the very dark, very uneven roads of Tofo Beach, circling the place that Google maps said was "Mozambeats Motel". We eventually asked some local children who led us quite a distance from that location to the real Mozambeats Motel. Just in case anybody else ever tries to use Google maps to get their in the future, I have now updated the location for them. You're welcome, future traveler!