The Trip!

The Trip!

writing and posting these after the trip but i've tried to break it down into a day by day with help from the photos. ENJOY!

Day One Friday – Sexta-Feira (9^th May)

Man, I can’t believe it is over already. It was almost two months of build up and the poof!!!!!! They are back in America. So let me start from the beginning and see how this all goes. The day before I picked up Noel and Sam from the bus stop, I had a horrible Larium dream. I dreamt they were stuck at the border and had to bribe millions of dollars to get into Mozambique. It continued into that they were being held at Park Station and I couldn’t get the money or get to them. It was bad. I realized after a little bit that it was a dream and tried to wake up. Unfortunately only about 20 minutes had gone by since I went to bed. Getting the trip off to a good start no?

Anyway, true to Mozambican time, the bus arrives almost two hours late. I had gotten the bus stop confused and got there early because I thought there was a cool little café that I could sit at and just wait for them. Nope. Nothing of the sort was there, so like a homeless man, I camped out in a building entrance and waited and waited. Finally the bus came from the other direction where I thought it would be coming from. Oh well, can’t be right all the time. I saw Sam and Noel right away. They were sitting on the right side of the bus and waved as the disappeared down the street – to turn around that is. As I was waiting for them to get off the bus, an Indian man came up to me and said, “Don’t worry, your brother is on the bus.” Apparently he had said to Noel earlier on that his brother was outside on the pavement waiting for him. How did he know? The Indian man responded that we are practically the same person… and so it begins.

After getting the bags we trotted off to the hotel. 5 “oh my god you look so similar” later we’re in the room but not for long. I had planned to introduce them little by little to my life here in Mozambique so I wanted to bring them up to the Embassy quarter of Maputo where the houses are nice, the Peace Corps Office is open and there are bagels. I took them past the viewing of the Indian Ocean and Sam hadn’t been in the country 12 hours before she said “can I join Peace Corps yet.” It’s pretty here guys. Bagels and some more “oh my god you look so similar” brought us back to the hotel for a nap. Noel and Sam had just been through 3 countries in about 24 hours and deservedly needed to sleep. Little did I know what was coming later that night! While they were sleeping I went off for part two of the thyroid doctor debacle (see other post) and came back. Dinner was at Piratas Restaurant the first night and then we were going to call it an easy night. A friend of mine phoned and we were off to a nice apartment overlooking the cliff of the baixa or downtown part of Maputo. That was supposed to be for a few drinks so my friend could meet my brother and his girlfriend. That turned out to be a house party until 3 AM and that’s when I collapsed. I wasn’t the one who just trekked across the world yet I went to bed first. Iva wanted to take us all to a party higher up in the city but I just couldn’t go. Sam and Noel went and they met my friend Alex who woke up at 5 AM to leave to go up north. Not a bad night for the first night in Africa. I just was wondering that night how I was going to keep up this level of enjoyment. It was a high class, high energy opening act to what would turn out to be a highly enjoyable trip.