Mozambique, the Tofo Chapter

That night in Xai Xai at Casa Ericka was a crazy night. We played Drunk Jenga, which is just regular jenga with drinking games written on each piece. When a player succesfully pulls and places the piece the game on it must be played. We added a few of our own to spice it up, including some improv games.
The next day was a little slow going, but we left Xai Xai and drove another five or six hours up the coast to Tofo. Once again the ocean disapeared and we drove through miles of hilly countryside filled with palm trees and villages. Towards the far end of the trip we were running low on gas and filling stations were hard to find. Each one we did locate only had diesel and we began to panic. All of the girls were pretty much planning on cheering on the guys as they pushed the combi the final miles to Tofo beach. Finally, oh finally, just outside Tofo, we found a filling stations with gasoline. It was also the only ATM for several towns, and la ti da, it did not accept my debit card. TIA.
When we pulled into Tofo we drove through a small and very colorful beachside marketplace. There were bunches of small stands with tin roofs selling food, booze, soda, trinkets, and freshly cooked meat. We decided to stock up on booze and chasers while we waited for Mike (a mysterious guy from Mango Beach, our resort) to come and find us and take us to the resort in his 4WD vehicle. There was no way the combi was going to make it through the deep sand roads. A few yards out from the marketplace was the main beach area and it was crowded with both locals and tourists. The sand was white, the Indian Ocean was warm, and the palm trees were gorgeous. We knew we had come to the right place. Mike did show up in good time and he turned out to be an eye-patch wearing German with blond cornrows ending in a tight braid. He had copious amounts of beaded bracelets on his thick arms and an even thicket German accent. I immediately wanted my picture taken with him, perhaps posing with the thumbs up. Or better yet, myself doing a handstand on his shoulders while he swallowed fire and dolphins jumped in the background. *Sigh*
Mike loaded us and all of our baggage into the back of his pickup truck and we started the bouncy ride to Mango. The road was deep sand and lined with tall palm trees. We left the busy marketplace and beach behind and drove into a palm forest. There were groups of houses and cheerful kids waving at us. There were also goats. All in all, the view from the back of the truck was great, so we figured the view from our oceanside resort could only get better. We were right.
Mango Beach was, again, the furthest resort down the beach, and consisted of a dozen or more little houses with plam thatched roofs, cement floors, and electricity from 5 pm to 10 pm. In our little house there were two couch beds in a living room, two larger bedrooms, a kitchen, a bathroom, and a porch. Each bed had its own mosquito netting. It was the perfect sized place for six foreign exchange students spending a week on the beach. We dropped our stuff off and changed into our swim suits, ready to charge the beach again.