Bom dia de Mozambique!

Hello from Mozambique, where I've finally found a cheap internet place. While Maya catches up on her emails, I'll take advantage of the time to send a quick hello.

We've been having a wonderful holiday in Mozambique and South Africa. We're all very relaxed, brown and fat after several weeks of eating all of the great foods that we couldn't get back in Eritrea. We have a week more in Mozambique, then we're heading down to Swaziland for a week before we head back to Eritrea on September 8th. Though it's been great, I'm looking forward to going back "home" seeing our friends and having our own beds again and yes, even to teaching once again.

Here are some of the highlights from our trip so far, with apologies if there's some repetition from my last blog entry:

South Africa:

1. We survived, were not mugged, attacked, robbed or otherwise mistreated in Johannesburg. It's true that we hung out in a fairly quiet suburb, with barb-wired fences and "armed" security systems..
2. Eating: all the foods we'd been missing: huge avocadoes for me, junk food for the kids, including chips, chocolate, pop, ice cream, french fries, and breakfast cereal. We were overwhelmed the first time we went into a grocery store and didn't know what to chose. After a year of lentils, rice, potatoes, tomatoes, cabbage, taita and shiro, all of a sudden our choices were multiplied by several hundred. But we adapted quickly to our situation!
3. Watching Kim learn how to drive on the left side of the road in our cheap rental vehicle. He only turned once into oncoming traffic but luckily it was a fairly quiet street.
4. Celebrating Lukas's birthday in Belfast, S.A. in a charming little Irish style pub with tons of atmosphere though very slow service. Lukas was thrilled when the Argentine waitress poured him his first "shanty", sprite with a bit of light beer in it. We finished the celebrations with ice cream floats, barbecued steaks (for all but me) and cupcakes in our hostel that night.
5. Kruger National Park was definitely the highlight. The national park system in South Africa was incredible. Our luxurious camp included huts for two, kitchen access, hot showers, a pool, and ... the first access to real washing machines and dryers since we left Canada!!!! We spent three days touring the park and were treated to just about every African animal you could imagine. The highlights were finding a huge extended family of elephants, including several babies, one of whom nursed very near to our car. We also enjoyed watched hippos playfight in a river and crocodiles sneaking up on impalas at a watering hole. Other than that we saw giraffes, zebras, lions, rhinos, and many kinds of antelopes. A particular favourite were the warthogs which look exactly like Pumba. When they run away their tails go straight up in the air and they look fairly hilarious.

Mozambique highlights:
1. Being able to communicate in another language (Portuguese) without feeling like a total linguistic idiot. After a year of feeling frustrated with Tigrinha it's nice to be able to be understood and to understand what people are saying again.
2. The beautiful beaches. The kids' favourite is Tofo (pronounced like the food, tofu) with it's huge waves that make for great body surfing and it's white sand beaches that go on and on, and it's vendors selling humungous baricuda and many different handicrafts. My favourite was Vilankulo, which was more of a laid back fishing village with long sandy beaches that turned into miles and miles of sandbars at low tide.
3. Snorkling at an island off of Vilankulo. We spent the day walking around this beautiful national park, and drifting with the current past hundreds of colourful fish along the reef.
4. Great food; including all types of seafood: 8 kg baricudas, humungous prawns, squids (yet to try), and a delicious coconut sauce that they cook it all up in. Papaya, pineapple, coconut, passion fruit...all those tropical fruits that we hoped for but didn't find in Eritrea.

The whole trip was especially nice because we shared much of it with Kim's cousin Shelley. She put up with our family disputes and spoiled us rotten with lots of treats. We're now hoping she's safely back in Canada as her return coincided with the events at Heathrow Airport.

Guess that's all for now.

Take care,

Barb