Our Dow Ride

For those of you who were a little worried after the last blog post... this one isn't much better! While we were in Mozambique we took a trip to Inhambane (mentioned before as the largest city near our backpacker) so that we could take a look at their market and spot some unique purchases. Their market was quite large and while most of the stands sold similar goods, it was possible to find a few real treasures. The markets in Africa are very similar to those found in Mexico. Everything is up for negotiation, and the more you buy, the better the deals. My flatmates and I decided to approach three stands, sort through the stuff to find what we wanted, and then negotiate a price collectively. This method worked rather well and I personally walked away with a number of paintings, masks and jewelry for $23 US dollars. The currency in Mozambique is Metacash and the exchange rate for the US dollar is 23.



After our journey through the market we decided to take a dow (African boat) across the inlet to the neighboring city of Maxixe. Upon seeing the boat I became very nervous and knew that if my mom were there she would not approve. But what was I to do when traveling with a group of people who were game for adventure? (Actually, we all had our doubts) I guess the two things in our favor were that a) the water was very warm and b) the inlet was extremely shallow. The ride across the inlet turned out to be very smooth and very slow. Wanting to spend the least amount of money possible, we picked a sailboat with no other power source besides manual labor. Before making that decision we probably should have taken the wind into acount, because once we got out a ways we realized we were not going anywhere very quickly. The boat ride to Maxixe took about an hour and the ride back took nearly two. Damn were we happy when we were finally able to get off!