Week 1 of our LTO expedition was a jam packed one. We started the week off in mellow fashion, completing all of our training, learning about the local area and waiting out the awful British weather that Will brought with him. The sun made an appearance on Wednesday, allowing Harriet to complete her PADI open water diver qualification. After a quick turn around we headed on the cultural tour, where Pascoal graciously invited us into his home for dinner. Pascoal and his wife Christina taught us how to prepare and make matapa, starting by harvesting the ingredients and making friends with a chameleon in the process. Once we had collected everything we needed, we got to work on making the dish and all sat down together to enjoy.

After a long sleep with a full stomach, we prepared to carry out our first piece of fieldwork in the form of a SCUBA transect. Despite tricky conditions and a close run in with a scorpion fish, all went well and we collected species data from dive site.

On Friday we headed to Guinjata fishery to collect data on the fish caught as part of the sustainable fishing project. It started off slow going, which gave us time to learn some marrabenta dancing and have a swim. Despite the action packed morning, we still had plenty of energy to carry out a turtle nest excavation, and had the honour of assisting a baby turtle to the ocean.

After a busy week, the weekend was devoted to blowing off some steam. We began with a dive to our favourite dive site “Manta reef” where we saw huge shoals of fish and ended Saturday with a trip to Top of the World to watch a beautiful sunset with homemade caipirinhas. We closed out the weekend with a group trip to Tofo to surf the day away, relax with a massage and have a dinner with a view at Sunset Lodge. All in all, an unreal week.