To get to Inhambane we had to go by a Dhow (a traditional Arab sailboat) from Maxixi. From the port of Inhambane it was just a short drive to Barra Beach where we would spend the three next nights. It had been several weeks since we had seen the coast, and everyone were excited about the chance to eat proper seafood and spend some lazy days at the beach.
My goal for the stay was to go scuba diving. I had heard that Mozambique had some of the worlds best dive sites and I was eager to get out there to explore. The first day I was diving in shallow water (8-12 meters) where the water was muddy and the sight was not very good. But the dive site did not disappoint. In the muddy waters I got to see lots and lots of small fish in the reef, some lobsters or crayfish, many poisonous stonefish and even a turtle that we followed while it slowly swam away. So even with the bad sight it was a good diving experience.
On the second day of diving I had decided to go for an adventure deep water dive, and since I had not gone deeper than 15 meters before I had to start the day with some theory lessons on air consumption for deep water diving with my instructor. He also told me that at the depth we would be staying (25-30 meters) you could expect to see anything. I was really excited on the whole way out, especially when there was a school of around 100 dolphins that were surrounding our boat. Unfortunately since we had to go even further off shore, they did not come with us to the dive site.
When we dropped out of the boat we did a vertical drop going straight down as fast as possible. This ensured that we got to the same location at the bottom despite the current being strong. When we reached the bottom it felt like was standing in a huge aquarium with visibility as good as it possibly can get. It was an amazing feeling, and I promised myself there and then that I would never give up diving for anything in the world. After a couple of minutes we also found a cave, where a huge eel was hiding. And right after that came a sight that not even my dive instructor had seen during his over 100 dives; on the sandy bottom a manta-ray the size of a livingroomtable was laying by itself. Seing the two of us diving towards it, the manta ray slowly flapped his gigant wings and flew away. That was just a couple of minutes before we got low on air and had to ascend.
The excellent dive experience had made me a happy man, and later in the evening me and my brother drove off to the beach with our 600cc Yamaha quadbike that we had rented and watched the sun set on the Mozambican beach. The days at Barra Beach had truly been some of the most memorable days on the whole trip.
