mozambique: the mind-bendingly awesome beach of morrungulo

i dont really think i am a stranger to awesome beaches. i cant say i am a beach connoisseur or anything BUT the few beaches that i spend time on are awesome. but, boy do they pale in comparison to morrungulo....but first, our trip to massinga:

one of the places that mozambique is starting a remote translation office is called massinga. so we had the opportunity to drive up and assist with pulling cable and installing the network. on the map it looks like maybe a 1 hr drive but in reality the country is so huge that it took us 8 hours to get there.

it was nice to get out of maputo and see a bit of the country side - a lot more rural than maputo, but some things still remain - the houses were still painted bright colors, people were still amiable and easy-going. the local transport is open pickups. the people in the middle stand and towards the edges sit.

marty gave us strict instructions. 'the second time you see the ocean, stop right there at the little restaurant, get some chicken and chips and walk across the road and theres a nice little beach there.' we are nothing if not obedient. (by the way, marty and his wife amy have featured in this blog before...here as the 'welder extraordinaire' and here as the guy keeping an eye on my messing about. its really cool to be with them in a totally different and unexpected place.) heres marty's beach...

...and no, thats not the mind-bending beach. although we thought it was a the time. more on that later. we finally get to massinga and hector, the international servant who has been renovating the place, was waiting for us...

dont let his intimidating pose scare you! he and his wife are a wonderful couple - mexican / american. they and a french brother (fabian) married to katie, a lovely scottish sister, together with a kenyan and a kenyan-canadian all worked together somewhat harmoniously :) actually we worked crazy hours and especially fabian was doing generator testing at odd hours but his special favorite was when someone was having a hot shower. after working till 7 then it was time to cook supper (everyone pitched in), eat, clean up and fall into bed. it was awesome and we loved it. oh, and one night hector made some of the best pizza i have tasted in his home-made pizza oven.

anyone out there thinking of international volunteer work should put in those applications immediately, you dont know what your missing. who knows, you may get to see the face-melting beach of morrungulo...but more on that later. this is what the r.t.o. in massinga looks like.

on sunday afternoon after the meeting hector says, 'you wanna go to the beach?' and were like, 'ok cool.' what he should have said is, 'you wanna see the MOST mind-bendingly awesome beach in the ENTIRE world???' and so we found ourselves driving down this road...

and walking down this path....

to the mind-bendingly awesome beach. sadly the pictures cant really describe it. but as far as we could see either way, it was only us on this beach. a few times we saw fishermen from a distance but apart from those rare instances we were alone.