Fishing in Mocambique

For a while now I've been thinking - what the hell happened to that fishing story from Mocambique with Øyvind? I am so sure I wrote about it somewhere, but can't find it anywhere in all the articles. I've felt that I never got to rub it properly in for Øyvind... He being such a fishing enthusiast... whilst I'm pretty much waiting for wireless fishing to become a reality. To tell a long story short, I got fish and he didn't... I just need this excuse of an article to brag about my catch also of course.

It was pretty much thanks to the cyclones that the diving was kak, and we decided to give fishing a try instead. So, we went fishing with Wayne from Simply Scuba and Michael, a german tourist that seemed to be part of the furnishing of the place.

We were sitting there in the boat watching a shark leap out of the water... and some dolphins and flying fish riding the waves when suddenly something starts to scream. It was such an annoying loud sound that disturbed the peace and tranquility completely in the boat... the sun and the waves had made me nice and sleepy. Then this f**king screaching sound from my reel that had to ruin it all! Then as I'm slowly coming out of my sullenness... I realize that this sound is actually what we've all been waiting for!

Something down there is making an effort to run away with my bait... Not just away! To me it seems that this thing wants to eat in peace at the bottom of the sea, coz it's pulling down, down and down. After a hell of a lot of pulling it suddenly stopped... either it hit bottom... or it's tired. My turn now, so I started to pull back up again... "Hurry", Wayne tells me, "... or else the sharks will beat you to it"! Apparently it's a common problem that you only get half the fish out of the water... or just the head. So I'm working my rod like never before now... I don't want those sharp and nasty teeth to come anywhere close to my fish! No no, don't get any funny ideas... we're talking strictly about fishing here. That was unintentional!

Then the line is pulling out again... still down and down before it suddenly stops dead again. "Ahhh... there you go", a very disappointed and resigned look from Wayne and Michael. This was for sure the shark finishing my fish... killed it and ruined my trophy... I visualize only the skeleton left on the hook... but that is surely not the shark way! They bite it clean cut off and gobble the bones and everything... leaving whatever is left of the fish dead or at least unable to pull more line and fight back at all... I continue to pull in my direction... and something is still there?! Something with it's own will intact that doesn't agree to come up. Maybe the shark is still struggeling to bite off the spine of my fish or something. I decide to fight on until all my line and whatever else is out of the water. It's like football (soccer)! The match is not over before the referee blows the final whistle. I know this, coz I used to play football... and quite good at it too!! Wayne and Michael is like those old guys that always used to stand on the side of the field with their negative and sarcastic remarks when things weren't looking too good. "I told you!", or: "what did I say"! I'm not a quitter though!! Never was on the football field... and not now when it comes to fishing either. I'll show them! So I keep pulling and pulling something out of the abyss.

It's heavy, and I'm getting tired. As it comes closer now I can see that it's pulling sideways as well. This gives me new courage and motivation... My fish is still there! Maybe it's not about going down to the bottom for lunch any more... rather to escape the sharks... crossing and zigzagging in the water. Hold on fishie... I'll come to your aid and save you from those savages around you! What a bloody dilemma for my fish down there though! Between a rock and a hard place I'm sure... or between a pinnacle and a hard place in oceanic terms. No time for elaborate explanations though... communication is a problem in any event. Even with a thick wire, we're far from 3G or even GPRS here! I have to cut right through... make a decision and stick to it... Explanations later, when the heat of the battle is over. So I pull and I pull... until it's in the surface and Wayne can hook it with his handy tool and get it into the boat.
It's beautiful! Not a hair or a fish-shell is crumpled by shark teeth... so the sharks are safe of my wrath for this time. After about 15 minutes of eternity we managed to land it in the boat. Now it's writhing and jumping and trying to bite with it's nasty teeth as soon as I try to get near and unhook it. What kind of gratitude is that now after saving you from the sharks?! Bloody sardine!! It's a Cuda/Cuta though... or a Kingfish in english I think. Related to the Barracuda and part of the Mackerell family they tell me. Nice, shimmery and sleek it looks... but no manners whatsoever. So we give it a few well directed knocks to the head - and it's over! We're stating an example... that this is not acceptable behavior to all it's friends that are gonna follow.


We keep fishing! Me happy and high in spirit... and the other guys desperate now to catch up and silence this bloody first timer Norwegian. Øyvind also... the fishing expert of the two of us looking very tensed. I jack up a beer to celebrate... share with the other guys how good it feels and give them a few helpful tips... "The water is cold and unfriendly with sharks", they tell me??! What the hell has that got to do with the price of eggs? The fishing must have gone to their heads... surely! We keep fishing for a while... but nothing more. It's tensed aboard the boat. I get this mutany on Bounty kinda feeling... and I'm only too happy to feel the sand under my feet again.

The fish is photographed and weighed 9kgs... and then we (me and Øyvind) invite the whole divecamp to dine on the fish. That seems to ease up the atmosphere and make the not so lucky fishermen happy again. Wayne show off some of his magic when he fries the fish in some fritter concoction. I drink my beer as I observe and controle my fish being prepared. Potatoes and dip are thrown in to make it a full meal... and then we feast!

Diving with giants, Mocambique April 2nd

Ok, I’m often accused by my wife that I’m always after the big stuff when diving… instead of the cute small and colourful fishies. To an extent that is true, but that doesn’t mean that I can’t appreciate a good reef with colours and lots of smaller stuff. This time though we’re at Ponta Do Ouro, and I’m the only diver… and the conditions happened to be good enough to go out to the pinnacles. The deep pinnacles is a deeper dive and a bit further out than the other sites and can only be done when the conditions are very good. You don’t go to the deep pinnacles for sardines. It is one of those sites where you just have to go when the conditions allow it, and I was only SO happy. We saw lots of Zambezi’s, about 7 or 8 hammerheads in the surface and a few other kinds of sharks sliding by, lots of rays… and a huge Cuda/Cuta, like the one I caught fishing the last time - awesome. This Cuta must have been just as long as me though.

But the really cool thing about the dive was that I thought I’d seen a whaleshark for the first time, although at a distance. It was huge, so what else could it be? I was not in doubt - it was like a big fleet of something sliding past with pilot fishes big as Barracuda’s around. No spots on the back though… but the right square front, so of course it was a whale shark. Maybe I just wanted it to be a whale shark so much that I ignored other possibilities completely, coz back in the boat people where only talking about that f**king big tigershark! My god, I thought only the extinct predator Megaladon could reach a size like that. For sure it must have been fully grown! It kinda makes sense also since I didn’t see the stripes on the back. The stripes are distinctive on young species, but tend to fade with age. It almost makes me shiver to know in retrospect what it really was!! Awesome!!

Safari, Hluhluwe and Umfolozi, March 8-9th

Coming back from Mozambique we found accommodation as close to the park as possible. That way we could be at the gate when they opened up at six o’clock in the morning. The first day we saw some giraffes and some rhinos and lots of Impalas. We drove past a place where lions had been spotted, but the grass was just too bloody high for us to see anything. It was generally a good game-drive, and we got a feeling for some good spots in the park, but yet we didn’t have a really close encounter with any of the big guys. Until, right at the end when we were speeding like crazy to get to the gate, knowing that we were already too late. Then, suddenly two big rhinos decided to block the road very effectively. The female looked really nervous and agitated, running back and forth and throwing the head… and the horn around. I got the picture in my head of a matador pierced by the bull in the arenas in Spain… then we backed the car, thinking that we were the reason for this behaviour. Suddenly as we were sitting there looking and waiting for an opening I was aware of something in the side of my vision. A hyena was standing next to the car, only two metres away from me. It was looking at me, then the rhinos… walked a bit and all the time checking out the situation. Obviously this was the culprit, causing the distress. Just by the look of it I could feel the hair in the back of my neck was rising and we wound up the window… just enough so that the jaws of the beast couldn’t fit through the opening. With the powerful body and the dark big eyes it looked like pure evil… Even though it was a fraction of the size of the rhinos… I had no problem understanding the rhinos. Eventually we got out, and we had spent the entire day only in the Hluhluwe part. We had already decided we needed another day to cover Umfolozi as well.

The next morning we decided to just check out some of our favourite and most promising spots in Hluhluwe before we were gonna shoot down to Umfolozi. It turned out that we saw a hell of a lot of elephants, rhinos and water-buffalos in one place that we got so hooked up that we were still there at lunchtime… and far away from Umfolozi.

As we were driving towards the southern part of Hluhluwe the vegetation got less lush and more dry and open. We found it easier to spot the antelopes and the buck… hundreds all over the place… but we had the feeling that the really big guys preferred the thick bush where they could hide away. Further along, that theory had to be dumped when we saw herds of giraffes, rhinos and buffalos. Again we got hooked up and had to prioritize the really big ones only… in order to make it out before closing time. Still there was plenty of areas we did not cover in Umfolozi, and we could easily have spent one or two extra days there.

All in all, we saw masses of animals… but still not that feeling from other smaller parks that the park was so small that the animals were pretty much lined up for you. This was proper wilderness… and I’m sure for Oyvind it was a bit different from Elk-safari in Løten at home in Norway.

Punctuality, planning and closing gates, March 8th

Just a reflection. On the way from Durban to Ponta Do Ouro, we drove through Hluhluwe for a game-drive. We knew we had to be on the border at 15:00, for transfer… but missed it with 45minutes. Coming back to Hluhluwe, we also missed the closing of the gate with half an hour. The gate opens and closes at six o’clock. 12 hours we had, and still couldn’t make it. This was the northern gate (Memorial Gate), manned with quite a few people, and thank god some people there to open the gates for us. Today we had a beautiful plan. The two days we spent in the park before was only in the Hluhluwe part, which is only one half of the area. So today, we planned to just drop by a couple of “good spots” in Hluhluwe, and then head down to the southern Imfolozi part. We ended up spending far more time in “our spots” than intended, coz we saw a hell of a lot of Elephants, Rhinos and Buffalos. By the time we made it to Imfolozi we also realized it was a hell of a big area to cover in only half a day. To leave out a part was of course not an option, so we went on a speedy hazardous drive through the park… only stopping for the big guys, or blocking the road and such.. The fact that the park has got a gate on the southern side made it possible for us to conveniently drop the speed by 10km an hour. Still, when we reached the Cengeni Gate, it was 18:03. Three minutes past closing. Now this was no big gate, looking like a small headquarter or something, not at all! A plain prisonlike gate with chains and two heavy locks, and no people to see! This time I really thought we had to spend the night inside the park with lions and hyenas. We were shouting and screaming and hooting, and finally a black guy appeared from a small shack in the bush. “You are very late”, he said, and put on his gravest facial expression. As he locked the gate behind us I was instantly thinking… where the hell does this road go now???? The map gave the ruthless answer: through every little zulu village and all the small roads where you don’t want to be after sunset… And since we were staying at the opposite side of the park, we had to drive all the way around. 270km in total! Hell, that was a long drive through the black black black South Africa!!

Inspired now, since we were driving through the heart of Zululand, I had to pour out some of my knowledge about the Zulu culture for Oyvind. Among other things about the Zulu’s respect for great warriors and their custom to slit the great warrior’s tummy open as a respectful and honourable gesture. Oyvind wasn’t too impressed or happy… and all doors in the car were quickly closed from the inside.

The place of the beautiful killing

Bulawayo, or originally GuBulawayo by the Matabele/Ndebele. The name meaning, the place of the (beautiful) killing! It was historically a battle between the local Matabele and the white man… No need to tell how that went – beautiful as it was! Bloody story!! This was I believe under chief Lobengulas rule! Great respect for that man!!

Makes me think about one of the Voortrekker groups that moved into the North West… wonder if that wasn’t Matabeleland also? This particular group was led by a guy called Van Rensburg. Ok, according to the map it was not the Matabeleland, but in what is now part of Mocambique (just north of Inhambane). Van Rensburg made a route along the Limpopo river, but the trek ended abruptly in 1838 when all of them were killed. This is where assumptions supersede the facts… and my imagination takes over. But who knows, history is some times a lot juicier than imagination, fantasy and fiction altogether. The guys that Van Rensburg ran into was probably potent killers like the Matabele as well… and I just wonder what name they put on this battlefield… or place of slaughter if you may. I’d die to know the name of that place… graphic and descriptive… If forgotten it deserves a proper name..

And even better still. Lobengula and his men had great respect for great warriors, even enemy ones! A great enemy warrior would be killed and molested like the rest of the bunch… but as a salute they would slit open the guys belly so all the intestines could fall out and attract scavengers. Intestines can reach quite impressive lengths I understand, coz in battlefields you would some times find intestines still attached to the body… but quite far away from it! I knew there was a reason I never chose a military career.