One week of underwater safari in Tofo, Mozambique

After Kruger, we boarded a plane from Nelspruit to Inhambane in Mozambique. Mozambique is supposed to be one of the last frontiers in scuba diving, unspoiled beaches and hoards of big critters in the water. We were going to put this to the test!

The dive shop we chose was the one who answered all our questions on internet and were willing to take us crazy motivated divers for three dives a day for the whole week - Diversity Scuba. This is no Thailand liveaboard. We have to launch the boat every dive from the beach, the boat gets pushed into the water by the car, but then we have to push the boat into the water, us, divemasters, and boat crew included. Then it’s a bumpy, initially scary ride into the big blue...



The weather was great, the temperature was hot (mid thirties) and water temp at surface was about 28 centigrades. We hit a few thermoclines around 25-26 degrees into the deep.

Nitrox proved useful on this dive as a lot of dive sites were in the 25-30 meters range. Beginner divers aware, this is no easy diving like Thailand. We are very proud of D who dove all dives! I’m thinking of divemastering at that dive shop one day, just for fun J

And were the critters ever there!!! On our first day, second dive and first deep dive, less than 24 hours after having spotted the leopard in Kruger, we saw at Galeria 1) four manta rays 2) a whale shark (!) 3) fifteen devil rays dancing around at the safety spot.

On the 15 dives that I did, less than five did NOT include any manta ray sightings. Having hit low season right after the holidays, we were the only group of the dive shop (three of us!) with the odd solo person joining our bunch. Visibility was awesome, the reef was pristine, and the fish were plentiful. Of note is the world-famous Manta Reef, which we dove no less than four times. Our last dive (yesterday!) on manta reef finished with four mantas dancing around at 21 meters for an eternity. And we did our own whale-shark safari by swimming with a little juvenile of oh, just 6 meters, as a surface interval between dives. Pretty amazing!!!

One of many mantas that indulging in posing


Little mobula dancing


Mobulas aka devil rays dancing at the surface intervals
Seeing mobulas = there are no sharks (they eat them!)


Mozambican bubbles


Very curious grouper who followed us around


Crocodilefish eye


Praia da Tofo