Tofo beach or praia do Tofo on the coast of Mozambique has a beautiful white sand beach, good surf, and excellent diving. We were traveling around new year time and saw manta rays, whale sharks, variety of large rays and schools of fish. Mantas are seen year round with one of the largest recorded resident populations. Humpback whales pass through on their migration between June and October.

What to see

Logistics

Tofo beach in Inhambane province of Mozambique is about 500km north of Maputo along the coast. We flew from Maputo to Inhambane airport and took a taxi to Tofo which takes about 20 minutes. Tofo beach has several resorts, self-catering accommodation and a bunch of restaurants and bars. The place is small and you can walk around everywhere.

We were in Tofo for new year’s and the beach got busy with tourists and locals coming to celebrate the new year’s eve and day on the beach.  By January 2 most people were gone and life was back to chilled-out normal on the beach. During our stay at Tofo the winds picked up for a couple of days and the sea was too rough to go out diving.  We walked along the beach to the light house and the next beach called Barra. It was also nice to just hang in one of the restaurants along the beach enjoying the view and nice cocktails made with fresh fruit.

We dove with Peri Peri divers who run an efficient and professional operation.  We usually did two dives out.  The idea is to combine a dive at one of the further reefs either south or north of Tofo with a dive in the bay which allows for an “ocean safari” looking for whale sharks in transit during the surface interval.  We were lucky and saw a whale shark from the boat and then it came past us on the dive. We saw mantas on 5 out of 8 dives in Tofo.

Mantas come to get cleaned on cleaning stations along the reef and according to the researchers at Marine Megafauna Research Center who came along with us on some of the dives mantas can stay on the reef up to 8 hours getting cleaned. So basically we were diving in a manta’s spa!  The reef is at about 25-28 meters and it is best to dive on nitrox to maximize bottom time. All in all Tofo has exceptional diving and was an excellent trip in combination with Ponta do Ouro. Having heard amazing stories about humpback whales arriving in large numbers to the waters along Mozambique shore it is definitely on the list for a repeat visit.