Day 105 – 106 – Casa Msika
5th – 6th January 2012
05.01.2012 - 07.01.2012
31 °C
Well, if everyone didn’t suddenly start speaking Portuguese I’d have been damned. One minute communication was sixty percent speech and forty percent body language; the next it was thirty percent speech (English with an ‘o’ at the end of every word and not as effective as first hoped) and seventy percent charades. After the border we’d made a bee line for a place we’d seen advertised on the road and in ‘the book.’ It was called Casa Msika and offered fishing and camping. Set on the shores of a dam whose name I’ve forgotten and you probably don’t need to know anyway the place was a fairly pretty spot. There were mountains in the far distance, blue skies above and mango trees heavy with fruit all around us.
That same evening we bumped into the children of the current owners as they came running to see what Laura had stepped on and subsequently squeaked at. Laura had bent down to wipe the ants from her feet, when a chameleon simultaneously decided that the upturned heel of the flip flop looked like a nice spot to relax. As Laura set off she partially squished him. (No bones were broken you nature lovers.) We’d noticed the girls feeding a rather large juvenile African Hawk Eagle just seconds before the incident and over the next twenty four hours they introduced us to a Spotted Eagle Owl, two duikers, a pig, about fifteen million cats, a duckling, two rabbits and a baby bush baby.
Casa Msika was my chance to break my new rod’s duck and catch a fish. As I marvelled at the snail lined shores of this freshwater lake I wondered how long it would be before Laura and I both get bilharzia. Yet after two days fishing the duck was not broken; I had caught no fish. We got back to the campsite to find an overland truck of Germans and a very recently engaged Irish couple. Sadly for the Irish couple the Germans were complaining that the Irish had organised a private dinner the previous evening and now had their own room to ‘celebrate’ their new status. The Germans believed that Irish bliss was segmenting the group. Everyone else believed the Germans were idiots.
Posted by ibeamish 18.01.2012 23:39 Archived in Mozambique
