Depending on where you are in Mozambique, the road quality can vary greatly. Some of the tar roads are in excellent condition, then all of a sudden, there might be a 30mile stretch where the potholes are big enough to swallow your tire and crack your axle. Fortunately the roads are not busy, so itś feasible to zig zag between both lanes to avoid the potholes, or even drive off the side of the road. And during some stretches, kids will fill in the potholes with dirt, and ask for money for their service.

Getting to Tofo required us to take a few poorly maintained roads, but we got there all the same. We stayed in a nice A-frame chalet, only meters from the beach, and spent two days diving. The diving was fantastic, with high visibility, and great sea life. We dove the manta reef, which as itś name suggests, there were manta rays. The mantas we saw were 18 feet or so, but they can grow up to 25feet and can weigh as much as 5000lbs. Watching them puts you in awe. They are so graceful and such beautiful creatures of the sea.

During the day, the locals walk up and down the beach selling fresh fish– prawns (tiger shrimp), baracuda (spanish mackarel), and crayfish (lobster). We bought a few crayfish and had a delicious braii (bbq).

While we were in Bulungula, we met a guy who told us about Blue Wilderness. These guys specialize in shark diving. We already knew about a type of shark diving in Cape Town where you don’t really dive, you just have a mask and a snorkel, and they lower you just below the surface in a cage, while they dangle bait in front of you. The Great Whites come to chow down, and apparently it’s quite a show.

Blue Wilderness does something a little different. They let you actually scuba dive with the sharks. That means no cage. No protection. No sh*t. Tiger sharks are what they’re looking for here. They’re big. 8-10 meters and they have stripes like, you guessed it, a tiger. More abundant are Black Tips which are much smaller, and have black tips on their fins. There’s also Whale Sharks, which are as big as a…you get the picture.

Oddly enough, the thought of jumping into shark infested water didn’t seems that crazy to us. They’ve been doing this for 10 years without any accidents. We were also diving with Mark Thorpe, a National Geographic videographer, who’s been working on a documentary about tiger sharks for the last 3 months and has done the dive 30 times so far. More importantly, no one in the crew seemed to have any prosthetic limbs, so we took that as a good sign.

Now keep in mind Christine just learned to dive 4 months ago. Ditto for learning to swim. Before that, she had a great fear of the ocean, and especially of everything that lives in the ocean that’s not already been grilled and served with butter. So who’s the last person you’d expect to be jumping in the water with 50 sharks?

Mayhem is the best way to describe the scene under water. There’s sharks everywhere around you, above you, below you. When they swim at you, it’s quite startling. Especially the tigers. They almost always turn before they get to you, or if they get too close, they tell you to simply push them away. That’s right, with your own hands. Luckily there was no need for either of us to do that. We let the guys with the giant under water cameras in front of them handle it The sharks are obviously mostly interested in the bait buffet which gets refilled by a brave guy who free dives 10 meters down with just a mask and fins. And if that wasn’t enough, they are also tossing in sardines from the boat above you just to keep things hopping.

In all, there were 5 Tiger Sharks and about 50 Black Tips. Once back in the boat, they toss in some sardines at the surface so Mark could get some shots of the feeding frenzy. On the way back we spotted a few whale sharks which are like 20 meters long and very peaceful. The only eat plankton. They are quite a site to see under water.

In related news Roy Scheider, went into the deep blue this week.

Here’s some video of our dive. You can see me in there around 1:20.

The Sinai peninsula has some of the best diving in the world, so we decided to check it out. From Cairo we flew to the Sharm El Sheikh, which from first impressions is much like a developing Cancun or Las Vegas and filled with German and Russian tourists. We weren’t so thrilled with the way this town looked, but after a few days, we settled into the convenience of having everything readily accessible to us. Not to mention, Cathy and Walid knew the general manager at the hotel we stayed, and we were upgraded to a suite. While we were on our Nile cruise we met a nice Canadian couple who just happened to be heading to Sharm and even staying in our same hotel. So, after a day of scuba diving, we met up for a beer and some apple flavored shisa.

We wrapped up our week at Profondo Blu Diving in Ustica and can honestly say it was one of the highlights of the trip so far. Their motto is good diving, good food and good company and they definitely provide all three. Paolo and Ann are the most gracious hosts you can imagine, sharing their knowledge of diving during the day and Italian food and culture during the evenings.  I’m not sure what took more out of us, the 2 dives a day, or the massive home cooked meals courtesy of their fabulous chef, Maria.  One of the best meals was fresh jackfish, so fresh we saw it earlier that day when a local fisherman sold it to us as we got off of the dive boat.  Fresh tuna, fish soup, rissotto, meringue with fresh cream, homemade limoncello…it’s a wonder we even needed weight belts to help us sink in the water!

I grew up in Michigan on Maple Lake and Lake Michigan was only a half hour drive from where I lived. In the summers during grade school, my parents would enroll my brother and I in swim lessons. My dad grew up practically in the ocean, but for some reason my brother and I ended up land lubbers, like my mom.

So, what would possess me to take scuba diving lessons?? With scuba, I thought how hard can it be? Even with out being able to swim so well, with scuba you have a respirator and a bcd (floatation vest).
Well…unlike most people, my first dive was in the Mediterranean jumping from a boat, rather than wading into a pool. Let’s say, it wasn’t so easy–in fact, I nearly panicked my way back out of the water. Especially since once geared up, I had another 50 pounds on me (with the tank and weight belt)–which in my mind equates to going straight down to the bottom and staying there.
The first ten minutes for me were sheer terror, my gut reaction once in the water was clutch onto my instructor Ann, but I thought if I did I would fail the class. It wasn’t until Ann told me we were only in water 6 feet deep that I felt a little foolish–i could almost touch the bottom!

The instruction book says to stay calm and relaxed, which is what I forced myself to do. And it worked. Once I stopped trying to breathe through my nose and trusted the respirator, things got much easier. And being underwater is pretty incredible. Looking at all the different sealife, and being a part of it feels just amazing. I’ve taken 4 dives now, and I prefer the feeling of being underwater to wading at the surface. It’s incredibly serene.

I only have one more dive before I get my PADI certification card. I’m going to keep my fingers crossed. Our stop over in Ustica has been terrific. It’s towards the end of the summer, so it’s a bit quiet, which means I lucked out with private lessons. We are staying in our own bungalow that our dive masters own and run. Our hosts, Paolo and Ann are entertaining and passionate about what they do; diving, eating and drinking. They have their own cook that has made our evenings very special. And we’ve made several new friends here.

Tomorrow we leave the island, back to Palermo for a night then we take a ferry to Stromboli island, to climb a volcano and see lava flow.

!photos to follow

From Cinque Terre, we took a train down to Civitavecchia then boarded a ferry to Olbia, Sardinia. From there, we went to Cala Gonome on the east side of Sardinia. Cala Gonome is home to the Grotta Bue Marino, which are these amazing caves accessible by boat. The caves are reportedly 23kms or so long, we only saw about 1km. It’s amazing, but we were not allowed to take photos, due to “issues of copyright”??? and because picture taking could possibly hurt the stalagmites and stalagtites, which apparently only grow about 1cm every hundred years. Even with these crazy reasons, we observed the rules and didn’t take any photos inside.

While driving around, we ended up on a dead end road. From there a small pathway led down a small cove. We climbed down the path, and ended up in a fairly quite and picturesque beach. Free climbers surrounded us, taking advantage of the natural cliffs. Which reminds me that I want to go rock climbing, again. Mike and I tried it in Thailand, and again at an indoor gym in Philadelphia. Anyone out there want to go rock climbing? There are tons of places to rock climb around the Mediterranean, but I found a place in Slovenia that looks pretty good. We’ll probably be in there towards the end of September.

After a picnic lunch on the beach, we drove to Barumini, to check out the ruins of Su Nuraxi which are these circular, castle-like structures built by the indigenous people of Sardinia back in 1750BC. Apparently the Nuraghe people built about 10,000 of them all over Sardinia, only a few are as well-preserved as this one.

We are now in Cagliari, spent two nights here. Currently waiting for a ferry to take us to Palermo, Sicily. It’s an overnight trip–our first ever, sleeping on a boat. Once we get to Sicily, we’ll take a hydrofoil to Ustica a tiny, tiny island north of Sicily, for scuba diving lessons. It’s a five day course on an extremely small island. Mike’s not sure if we’ll have internet for 5 days; so it’s potentially going to be torture for him… personally, I’m more worried about the swim test.