Bucket list

“You want to go without me?”

“Yes. Well I mean No. It would obviously be better if you could come. But I can definitely do it without you.”

“You want to drive all the way up to Inhambane without me?”

“Babe, I am perfectly capable. We will be fine. I have been wanting to get up there for twenty years, and these kinds of opportunities don’t come around too often. Dave and Kirst will look after us and the kids will have such fun with theirs.”

He just looked at me. Fuming.

“So can I take the Cruiser?” I asked, cheekily.

“You don’t even have a valid driver’s license.”

“I have found some guy who is collecting it for me today. It is arriving at 3pm.”

“And COVID?”

“We have to go for tests this afternoon. We get our results tomorrow and we leave 5am Friday.”

“That is two days time.” He looked forlornly at his computer. Admittedly it was all a bit rushed. The schools had shut a week early for the winter holidays thanks to COVID and we had received a last-minute invite from friends with shares in a house in the Inhambane province on the Monday to leave on Friday for two weeks. Matt had declared it impossible straight away. I, on the other hand, was quite determined to go. This was Wednesday and I had been scheming for two days.

“Well, then you force my hand. I will have to come with.”

“What are you going to tell work?”

“That I am driving 14 hours up the coast on Friday and setting up office in Inhambane for two weeks I suppose. I hope that old modem still works.”

The COVID tests were negative, the border was empty. The Chinese road that Mozambique paid for in fish and hard wood, curved python like through the flat grassland. We crossed the Rio Future, a shallow depression filled with papyrus, then the Rio Maputo, a wide river supporting, at that point, the village of Salamanga.

A shock of a cement factory rose up on the side of the road amidst mine dumps of yellow sand. A Massive steel structure supporting pipes flanked by aircraft hangers full of product sat squarely in the middle. Hanzi on the walls. The tolls took Rands and returned Meticais. After nearly two years of lockdown the feeling of freedom and adventure was a tonic.

We could sense Maputo approaching with the increase in small homesteads along the road and then the shiny new bridge that spans the bay of Maputo from Katembe to the city hove into view. It stood tall above the bay, twice the height of anything surrounding it. The rural village of Katembe on the Southern side lay quiet and empty. Once the exciting point of departure for the other side, Katembe and it’s toy-sized ferry was now bypassed. The city crowded the point on the opposite side. High rises teetering on the edge falling over one another to reach the water. In a Daliesque scene, the sky and the water on that day were indecipherable from one another and the city of Maputo hung suspended in pure blue light.

We missed the turn to the Costa Do Sol and made our way through the back streets towards Xai Xai. The street was crammed full of pedestrians and vehicles wrapped in goods. It took an hour to do 2 kms. Eventually the backstreets opened out and the feeling of space returned as we sped up and slowed down past village after village. We stayed overnight in Xai Xai and from there on coconut palms and cashew trees joined the endless groves of mango and citrus.

We fetched up at the old Arab trading village of Inhambane, a few narrow streets lined by squat concrete houses with flat roofs. Whitewash peeling off the walls. Tantalising glimpses of the estuary and Maxise across the bay flashed through the gaps as we trundled through the early morning streets. We stopped for fresh Pau and a case or two of Mac Mahon before turning East towards the ocean and Praia da Rocha, a small estate of 15 thatched houses perched on a dune above a curl of a bay in the armpit of a palm topped coral point.

The first week slipped by in long walks up the beach, snorkels in the bay, shore diving off the point, surf missions to Tofu and Tofino, a scuba dive to Manta Reef and adventures to Barra. We slept in and went to bed early, we worked as and when we needed to, we had afternoon naps, we bought fresh seafood from the local fishermen, the children skipped old ropes with the local girls and swam in the cool bay. We collected too many shells.

On the Friday, back home in South Africa, Jacob Zuma, our ex-president, looter of the coffers of state, corrupt official with criminal alliances, went to jail. That night reports of unrest in Kwa-Zulu Natal filtered back to us up there in the midst of a still paradise. Over the weekend the situation escalated into an organised frenzy of looting in moral support of the biggest looter of them all. Saturday and Sunday saw us glued to our phones as blow by blow reports came in of friends and family patrolling their streets, their fences, gathering together to cut off access to specific areas, farms ablaze, shops trashed. Many men were armed. Businesses laid shattered glass around their premises, welded shut their doors and fled in the face of the storm of thirsty thieves who took what they felt they were owed with promise of little retribution to give them courage.

We woke on Monday morning braced for another day of reckoning and Kirst and I determined to go and find some magic instead.

I had read in my Dive Spots of Southern Africa guide book, which I had packed in the toy box, that one could go snorkeling in the Barra Estuary and find seahorses. I had been investigating the likelihood of this ever since. I had booked a tour. I had asked every local I met, which were few to be honest, what the chances of seeing one was. Over a Pina Colada on a spit of sand in a fancy restaurant at the mouth of the estuary, a dive guide told us that he hadn’t seen one in 20 years and that he did not think there were any left. I cancelled the tour.

Then Kirst met a woman who had identified 5 different species and told her where to look, and on the same day, we met a restaurant manager who promised we would find them, but that we would definitely need a guide.

The one thing I did know was that you needed to go at low tide. Ten o’clock that Monday morning was spring low and the perfect time to go exploring and see what we could find. Kirst and I loaded the kids into the Cruizer and took a slow drive through the coconut groves, past the little farm steads and the dusty soccer field and the school full of happy children, to the crossroads of Barra, where we waved at the guys trying to sell us prawns and coconuts and took a sharp right at a faded wooden signpost to Barra Land and Sea. The track wound though the rural small holdings of these gentle people that live off the land and the estuary, now glistening though gaps in the palms. Almost every house had a huge midden of large horse mussel shells outside. Transparent and very brittle, they formed haphazard piles of pearly white. Eventually we arrived at the Barra Land and Sea lodge, where four men, who seemed to be working in the gardens, came to greet us.

This was the right place to find the seahorses they told us. But we would need a guide if we had not been there before.

Would one of you take us? We asked. They looked at each other and then volunteered the youngest, who smiled shyly and went to fetch his straw hat. Then he hopped in the back seat with the kids and directed us down the sandy track towards the estuary, where we parked — specifically not directly beneath a palm tree. It took some organisation to strip down to our costumes, put booties on, and then, carrying two bags full of snorkeling equipment, follow José out of the cool shade of the palm grove, past a ripple of mangroves and a beached dhow, onto the mud flats, which stretched for miles ahead of us. The promise of deep water a narrow strip in the far distance.

Striding out across the flats, José told me about his life growing up in Inhambane. He pointed out his father’s fishing traps, and his grandfather’s; long lines of sticks planted in the mud in a soccer field sized V shape, ending in a small cylindrical reed trap of tightly packed sticks. The lines are positioned so that the fish, prawns and crabs are funneled into the small trap by the receding tide. Out towards the main flow of water, the lines of sticks grew thick. José was a chef at Land and Sea Lodge. He told me the best way to cook prawns and then step by step how to make his crab curry. He told me all about Pansy Island in the middle of the estuary way over there, and that next time we should take a dhow out to see it.

The four children hopped, skipped and jumped behind us, forever stopping and bending towards the living mud at their feet. Ring cowries with black lace mantles drew silver trails in the sand. Families of whelks created a huddle of four, bubbling black mud turned them into pirates. There was no end to the new and magical things that they could find.

We were heading towards a specific spot where I could see people working the shallows. As we approached, a long straight shallow structure materialised. A long low lying pier that struck out into the estuary extending the low tide mark and offering a solid structure for life to attach itself to.

Double and long spined urchins warned us off. Yellow, green, brown, red and grey beaded starfish lay scattered amongst the sea grass beds on either side. About a dozen men and women, half submerged, searched the shallows, around us. There was so much space out there that they barely marked our presence.

José walked straight into the water along a clear path through the urchins, bent down and with a pair of borrowed swimming goggles, peered into the cold water lapping at his thighs.

“Right kids, masks on, flippers on. Remember to float on the surface, don’t disturb the sand and the sea- urchins can’t move. If you get spined by one it is your fault. Watch where you put your feet and hands.” I ushered them into the cold water and followed suit.

Beneath us a shallow sandy bottom with clusters of thick leaved sea grass mirrored the green meniscus above. Smallscale Pursemouths, hunted in the mid-water, ovals of sliver flashing across my vision. Crabs scuttled for cover on approach. Beds of Horse Mussels dug into the sand. Zebra Humbugs with thick black and white stripes protected their patch amongst the spiny black needles of the urchins. It was a strangely desolate and yet alive place supporting limited species.

Slowly but surely the team peeled off and left the winter water for the dry land. I was cold to the bone as I came towards the shore, away from the harvesters. I skimmed over the field of green grass just beneath my body, scanning every clump for a seahorse shape. There were none and I could see the bedraggled group on the strip of land readying to leave. I headed towards them over a patch of thicker grass with less mussels and urchins. I floated across, barely moving a muscle. Nothing. Eventually I gave up and took a shot of a starfish in a field a grass, believing that somewhere in that vista, there might be a seahorse.

I headed for the shore and then stopped and reversed, using my hands to gently guide me backwards. I had seen an eye. An unmistakable eye in a small yellow shell shaped thing hiding beneath a clump of grass. Upon closer inspection, it remained a small shell shaped thing with maybe an eye for a while, although I was quite sure it must be a seahorse!

I lifted my head.

“I think I have one.” I remarked to the shiver of children standing in the cold wind.

“Really?” they asked skeptically.

“”I think so, let me just check.” I replied still not quite sure.

The broad scalloped ridge of its back almost confounded me as I peered at what was indeed a seahorse trying so hard not to be a seahorse, it almost succeeded. But once I was still a while, it unfurled and showed its true seahorse shape and complete inability to move anywhere at all.

I anchored myself in the sand with my hands and beckoned the kids. Who duly donned their masks, waded out to me in a few short steps and adhering to my admonitions of “don’t disturb the sand or you wont see it!” Floated to me one by one to see the ephemeral creature we had come to find. One by one they caught a glimpse of it and left. I stayed on and watched as it uncurled in the calm water. It came out from beneath its bushel, changing slightly its hold on the grass so as to face a different direction. It was yellow, with plated edges. All exo-skeleton. So defined. Its eye was red, which is why I spotted it, and had tiny rays of red dots radiating outwards.

I left it after a while and wet and cold we walked the long and exciting walk back across the flats, past the fishing traps, and the cowries and the pirate mud, to the palm trees and cruiser which delivered José safely back to his lodge and then took us home to Praia da Rocha triumphant in our discovery.

South Africa was still bring looted, but we had found magic, and somehow that made life seem OK.

The eight days of disgrace that included looting of malls, warehouses, schools and arson cost the KwaZulu-Natal economy over R20-billion in damages and led to the loss of over 300 lives — the majority of them looters.