The sky just opened up and expelled bucket-loads of rain. The rain beat down for an hour straight. I haven't seen rain like this here. The type of rain that is so heavy and thick it looks like chords of white frothy rope. Positive side effect, it's become nice and cool outside. It feels like early Spring in the States (er-rather the North Eastern part). My Easter week-end was fantastic. I spent my time in the city with Akisha and her former Peace Corps buddies. It was so nice. I got to catch up on LOST. I'm completely up to date now. Can't wait to see what happens next. Caught up on some movies as well. Akisha has a huge memory storage device hooked to her Mac and she's got seasons worth to television shows and years worth of movies.
We had Mexican night on Saturday. I love Mexican food. Everything was made from scratch and was so good. I hadn't been that full in a long long time. We topped everything off with passion fruit cocktails and good conversation.
Spending the weekend at Akisha's is like going to a luxury resort, she's got indoor plumbing and warm running water. I actually cringed this morning when I had to face yet another cold bucket bath. One week-end away and I've become spoiled.
On Easter Sunday, we made our way out to Barra beach. It's the other major beach here in Inhambane. It's much classier if you will, than Tofo and is more family oriented/summer home oriented. Tofo is more my speed. The crowd is younger and completely free-spirited. There are locals on the beaches and there are no major hotels. The Barra crowd is older and loaded. It was nice though. We had dinner at Flamingo Bay, a Conde Naste resort. It was beautiful. The resort was on stilts overlooking a bay of flamingos. The food was fantastic. Unfortunately, we could only afford to eat dinner, since the rooms started at $595.00/night. Ah, one day! But it was lovely and we even ate Cadburry chocolate bars in honor of Easter.
Akisha and I ate our Good Friday meal in the Central Market. There is a wonderful little vegetarian-esque food stall frequented by locals right in the center of the market. The food is amazing and cheap and the women who run the restaurant are a riot. We dined on coconut curried sweet potato leaves, manioch and fried potato. Since it was Good Friday and everyone was is a jovial mood, we were given complimentary cups of Palm Wine (which we were forced to drink, it was absolutely disgusting and smelled rancid but was a beautiful gesture). We were also given fish to eat. It is extremely rude here to leave anything at all on your plate. Our fish was staring back at us, literally, and we had to swallow it down, minus the head and vertebrae. It was gross, but you can't knock local customs and tradition. The women got a kick out of us and asked us to take pictures of them. It was a good time. I'll be going back to their restaurant stall quite often.
