From Tofo, I headed up to another beach town, Vilankulo, with Anna and Maria, to women I had met in Tofo. After a couple of fairly lazy days Anna, Maria, Alex and Kieran (who had by now caught up with us), Andre and Terran (a South African couple we had also met in Tofo) organized a dhow trip to go out island hopping and snorkelling.

The first couple hours of our trip were spent moroting through beautiful and clear multi-colored blue-green waters. The waters were clear and shallow with the occasional sandbar just barely reaching the surface. It was very calm at first, but the swells got immediately bigger just past the islands. There was one really neat area of whitewater where there were breakers over barely submerged sandbars. We soon found ourselves at Two-Mile Reef, one of the best places for snorkelling.

Soon we were all in the water exploring the beautiful world below us. There were fish eerywhere. There were angel fish, surgeon fish, and big multi-colored parrotfish. There were fish that were bright ble on top and yellow on bottom. Fish that had some blue and yellow but which were mostly white with perpindicular sets of black strips. Big fish, small fish, striped fish, spotted fish, red fish, blue fish, yellow fish, schooled fish, lone fish. There were also lots of corals and big blue starfish.

A lovely time was had by all and before long we were back on the boat motoring over to an empty island for lunch. In addition to our lovely lunch, we got to spend time hanging out admiring the sand dunes and the perfect-colored water. When we got back on the boat the sail went up and we had a lovely afternoon's sail over to Bazaruto island where everyone but Terran and Andre would be spending the night.

Our excitement for the evening was preparing dinner. The man that organized our dhow trip said he was going to buy us fish to cook for dinner. What we ended up getting though, was cuttlefish, which is more like calamari than like fish. This would have been a total disaster had there not been a chef on the island who taught us (and by "us" I mean Alex) how to cook it. In the end we had a lovely dinner of cuttlefish, rice with veggies, and a mango salsa. The chef gave us a 7 out of 10 on dinner. Which I believe was a bit generous given that the rice was about the consistency of rice pudding.

The next morning we relaxed and got a late start. Our dhow picked us up just after ten and we we went over to another island for some more snorkelling. Again, the snorkelling was amazing. We just swam alongside the shore which was also a reef and it was just teeming with fish -- for the most part very similar to the fish we had seen the previous day, but no less fascinating. After an hour or so in the water we ate our lunch (real fish this time) on the shore. Just before we set sail Anna, Maria, and I were standing on the shore and saw a school of fish jump out of the water, completely synchronized, three or four times, making a very distinct noise as they all plopped back into the water. Very cool.

Back in the boat we saw many black and white striped fish with yellow and blue trim swimming just next to the boat. We also saw a rather long odd-looking fish. The general theory is that it was probably a trumpet fish. Our island-hopping adventure ended with a relaxing sail back to Vilankulo. The five of us spend a wonderful afternoon, mostly just laying down on the bow or the benches, contentedly enjoying the peace of being out at sea. The perfect way to spend a Monday afternoon.