So every now and then even the underwater crew have to take a break and go on holiday. Due to the fact that Grant spends a disproportionate amount of time in the water we decided to go to the opposite end of the wildlife spectrum...the bush. So about a month ago Grant and I, armed with bug repellant and head torches, headed off to Botswana for two weeks of rest and relaxation.

Botswana is such an exquisite country, like nothing else on this planet. A friend of mine says that Botswana is the only place she can hear her own thoughts and I understand what she means. Out there I just felt more awake to life like I was using all of my senses for the first time. I have posted a few pics from the trip here but it is ridiculous to try and sum up an experience like that with just three pictures!

Coming back from such a pure environment, I have to wonder why human beings found it so much more appealing to emulate a capitalist, consumer driven society rather than one harmonious with nature...but then again, were we ever really given the choice?
- Leah B

I have to admit that I LOVE what we do. Through our footage, we are trying to tell you just a tiny story out of the vast catalogue of nature. We know what we have in mind but ultimately only nature decides what we are able to show you.  This is not a controlled studio where lights can be moved and actors can be queued...which is why capturing just ONE moment as perfect as you see it really is all the reward that is needed.

We can not wait to go through our footage and begin to weave together the story of Pomene which has been amazing, beautiful and sad. Finally, a big thank you to Neville and Wendy for having us and treating us like family.

Leah B

Now I am well aware that in rural Mozambique cooking over a fire is pretty much the only way to get the job done but it is still interesting to find subtle lifestyle similarities in a place so very different. The men here are also the ones around the fire, debating which sticks go where and when the fish should be turned. The atmosphere was also very lively and social as everyone waited for the fresh, smokey fish to be ready.

The villagers do not have much at all and we must have seemed so strange to them with our massive cameras and cables plugged in everywhere but at the end of the day our similarities still seemed to outweigh our differences. And everyone likes a good braai.

Leah B

Having said that, I truly believe that any other fishing practice around the world must be looked at individually and placed within its specific context before it can be judged. I am extremely against netting because this basically bulldozes an area, taking everything in its path and in an estuary such as this there is a lot of collateral damage. But the fishermen here in Mozambique still net massive areas of the estuary and set up fish traps throughout the mangroves.

Now, as I said, we need to understand the context in which all of this takes place. We are in an extremely remote and rural part of Mozambique. There are are no locks on our doors because there is no crime to speak of. Money here does not make as much sense as it does in a capitalist environment, this is a resource driven environment. The fishermen do not take fish to make any profit they simply need to feed themselves and their families and barter with it. There is no way to keep or refrigerate any excess fish, so they take only what they can use. And this novel concept is what sustainability actually means.

If you add up every fish, from every catch of every fishermans net in this estuary, over their entire lifetime, it will still come out to less than what one single deep sea trawler brings in in ONE expedition.

Leah B

Anyways, as much as I might like eating these nuts I only realised yesterday that I had never actually seen what a cashew nut looked like, at least not before it was roasted or salted or covered in pirri pirri.

So here it is folks, a cashew nut fruit and nut. The bizarre fruit on the bottom is actually delicious, the only thing I can think to compare it with is a sweeter, milky mango. It is an extremely juicy fruit that they actually use to make a type of beer out of as it ferments in just three short days. And finally that protected little nugget sitting on top of its giant orange cushion is the wonderful cashew nut, almost regal looking isnt it.

What I love about traveling is that as long as you open yourself up, you are going to see and hear and touch and taste something new every single day.

Leah B

After a far too intimate drive we finally arrived at our destination and unpacked all the gear. The F900 was left behind because we decided that if that camera got water damage we would have to sell our children to pay it off. So off we trekked with 200 kgs through the muddy, marshy water to finally get to the river. The 500 meter walk was as delightful as you can imagine, but I did manage to loose complete circulation in my finger tips early on, which was lucky.

Although once we reached the tea-coloured river and got onto our boats, all the pain in the world was forgotten. This narrow river is actually the origin of the Pomene Estuary. It is a fresh water system, the banks of which are lined with massive reeds that the locals actually use to build their homes with. Massive lavender water lillies were in bloom and bright red dragon flies adorned these stunning flowers. Grant jumped in the water to get some footage while the rest of us drifted further down the river.

This was one of the prettiest, most serene rivers I have ever seen and it was all going pretty smoothly until Boris and Sakhile were left alone for a moment in the row boat. They ended up drifting helplessly down the channel with one paddle each, going in circles, and arguing like an old married couple…

It is 18:24 and I am exhausted. It was a brilliant day though, one of those days where it feels like you couldnt have packed in a single thing more.
Leah B

As I mentioned in a previous entry, throughout the course of the day huge volumes of water push in and out of these areas as the tides change. Boris and Grant have both been doing surreal time lapses of this change but I think it is still hard to visually represent the magnitude of it all. We literally move from a desert like scene to an ocean with stunning white capped waves, all in a matter of hours. If you decide to have a sneaky little afternoon nap on the vast beach it is quite likely that you will wake up on a tiny strip of sand, sunburned, wet, completely disoriented with waves lapping at your feet. Oh well, its the price you pay for paradise.

I have pinched a few photographs from Boris to try and show you the shift between tides. Bear in mind that these pictures only represent a 3 hr time difference, whereas the full tidal shift roughly takes place over 6 hours.

Stay tuned.
Leah B

It is not dangerous by any stretch of the imagination, the deepest we dive to is only about seven meters and the most that could happen is a nasty, self inflicted sting from an urchin but it is incredibly eerie none the less. I think that because your vision is compromised every other sense becomes enhanced in order to compensate. The sound of your breathing loudly breaks into the utter silence around you and every piece of seaweed that lightly touches your arm feels like a giant squid about to devour you in one go. Although because this dive is so shallow, it allows us to be down there for up to an hour and a half and so about 10 minutes into the dive you have completely forgotten about being eaten which is when you start to see the most amazing little creatures around you.

These sea grass beds are like a humming little cities at night, there is just so much activity and life all around you. It is amazing to spend a little time with each animal and notice how perfectly adapted it is for its niche environment. The coordination and timing of this micro ecosystems is just mind blowing, to think that if we were to come out here during the day and snorkel around we would not see any of this, that every animal has a little hole, burrow or shell to pack itself into during the day.

These night dives make me feel like a kid again, exploring and finding so many things I have never even seen before, almost cant wait for the sun to go down. 
Leah B

The terrestrial cameraman is Boris von Schoenebeck. He hails from Durban North in South Africa and has crazier hair than most. He is an extremely hard worker and disregards thirst, hunger and general skin safety to get a quality time lapse.

Our underwater cameraman is Grant Brokensha. Grant enjoys spending time with the weirdest, creepiest animals in and out of the water. Thus he is likely to be found scrounging around the bottom of the estuary in the middle of the night. 

Sakhile Radebe is our trusty sound man and he is from Ladysmith in South Africa. He spends most of his time at the top of Sani-Pass but every so often Earth-Touch deploys him to a different location to get some sun.

And finally me, Leah Buckwalter. I am usually stationed at our Earth-Touch offices in Durban working on the logistics for new locations but thanks to my wonderful boss, I sometimes get the opportunity to be out in the field as well.

So thats us. We all seem to be working quite well together and cant wait to get our footage back to the office and see everything come together. But bye for now, we are off to spend the afternoon looking for crabs.
Leah B

Grant and I walked just outside our little house here and were greeted by the most epic sunrise I have ever seen. We stayed here for ages taking pictures and taking about the tides here in Pomene, which seem to govern the lay of the land. It is the last set of spring tides before equinox, which means that there are extreme tidal differences between high and low tide.

To give you an idea of the amount of water I am talking about, it is over 4 vertical meters of difference in the water levels, this is all moving into an estuary of about 10 square kilometers through two mouths which roughly equates to 400 000 cubic meters of water passing in and out of this estuary every six hours. And I thought I had a productive morning.

With all of this moving water, sandbanks are also constantly on the move. Inlets get carved out of the land by the intense push and pull of tidal energy. Casuarina trees literally get uprooted by the waves and are left upturned, like shipwrecks on the shore.

The most wonderful lesson you learn out in the field is that nature will always be in charge. Being exposed to these elements makes you realise that we need to be malleable enough to coexist with this beautiful planet and get the heck out of the way when she tells us too.

Leah B

Woken up at 6 am by the lapping estuary today revealed a slightly overcast and broody looking sky so we decided to hop into the trusty cruiser and just drive around, getting a feel for this exceptional stretch of land.

We headed over to the old hotel which is a stunningly eerie old place that must have been quite impressive in its day. We explored around there for a while but were anxious to get down to the blow holes, carved into the ancient rock formations on the beach. Unfortunately, you can only see water shooting out of these holes during middle tide and we were there at low tide, but the uniqueness of this landscape was no less impressive.

We continued to traverse the edge of this bizarre cliff, marveling at the changing geomorphology as we went. I have obviously never been to the moon but this is how I picture it to look. Minus the ocean, trees and thousands of crabs.

Finally we circled back to our car just as the rain began to come in. All in all, day one well spent. Mozambique never fails to impress.
Leah B

We descended down to about 25 meters along the wall and then began to make our way into the crevice, escorted by two rather large grey reef sharks. Once in there you are not even sure where to start looking, there is life above you, below you, to your left, to your right, it is almost overwhelming. I admire Grant for being able to translate the beauty of this place on film, because if I had the camera in my hands it would be like watching a hyperactive kid in a candy shop.

The star of the show today had to have been two gigantic potato bass. Grant for some reason caught the fancy of these 150-pound fish, and they stuck with him for the majority of the dive. They seem like quite intelligent, curious fish. They swim up very close and turn their bodies so that their large eyes meet yours when you are diving with them.

We explored this area for about an hour and then unfortunately had to begin our ascent. Time goes so quickly when you are exploring such a diverse and unique landscape. Three days left here, lets see what surprises are still in store.
Leah

Step two, peel it very carefully, like and orange.

Step three, let all the sections come apart and try your best to get them back together. (Success is not a guaranteed)

Will write more later on, but some things in nature are just too cool!
Leahb

We drove as close as we could then got out of the car and walked for about 10 mins, passing small baobab and amarula trees as we went. Our guides had gone ahead of us and asked if it was okay if Grant and I took some pictures while we visited and this seemed to be okay with the villagers. When we arrived there was a small group of men and woman working around a massive fishing net, salted fish was drying on various tables around the village and tons of smiling, happy children were running about. Everyone seemed a little reserved at first but the atmosphere changed very quickly.

I approached a lady holding her young daughter and asked (mostly in hand signals) if I could take a picture of her. She agreed, so I took a few quick shots. I figured she might like to see how nice the photograph had come out and I went over and showed her on the small camera screen. She could not believe it! She laughed and laughed as she looked from this picture to me, then back to the picture again. This may have been the first time in her life that she had seen herself and her child captured in a simple photograph. I think in the age of digital photography we have almost forgotten how special and unique a photograph can be and I am grateful to her for reminding me of that.

Her laughter soon got the attention of the children nearby and pretty soon I could not take photographs fast enough. You have got to love children because no matter where you are in the world they have the same uninhibited sense of curiosity and fearlessness. Grant wanted to get some footage of the village as well, but when the video camera came out he was surrounded in a matter of seconds, and it soon descended into utter chaos. These kids could not decide if they wanted to be in front of or behind the camera, but as long as they were close enough to Grant they knew they were going to see something cool. We may not have been able to get much footage from this visit, but seeing the smiles on their faces made it worth every second.

Our guides were keen to keep moving, because there was still plenty to see. We saw the school, the mosque, the cultural center, the sacred lake, a 400 year old building made out of coral, etc, etc. I could write an entire entry on each of these sites, but for now I must get back to work.

Leahb