One morning Oyv and I went out for coffee in Maputo. Mozambique’s capital is full of cafes, with good coffee and even better pastries.
Afterwards, Oyv left. I mean he left the country, I saw him off in a taxi and then went back inside the hotel. I started thinking about my next plan, alone in Africa again with nothing but time and space – and Mozambique – in front of me.
I wandered all over Maputo, availing myself of this faded Portuguese city’s cafe-and-restaurant scene. Mainly by eating curries, of course.
Designated the Portuguese colonial capital in 1898, Maputo was called Lourenco Marques at the time. Its present name came in 1975, when Mozambique finally achieved independence after a ten year long war of independence with Portugal, one of the last European powers to give up their African colonies.
Statues of Portuguese heroes came down, streets were renamed for first African presidents across the continent, and 250 000 Portuguese pulled out of the country overnight, leaving the infrastructure behind in a shambles. The newly independent nation turned to the Soviet Union for help (which I suppose is why my hotel is located just off a street called Avenida Vladimir Lenine). Bankrupt by the 1980s, Mozambique plunged into a long civil war. That finally ended in 1992 and the country is now considered stable.
Even so, Mozambique seems to be off the radar to most travellers in southern Africa – probably because of on again/off again conflict in the north, poor roads and a badly developed infrastructure. There also seems to be a general lack of information. When is the last time you heard something about Mozambique (besides all that…great…stuff I just mentioned)? Or maybe the devastating cyclone that swept through in early 2019 rings a bell. Either way, Mozambique hasn’t got the big parks and adventure activities you find in neighboring countries, and Maputo has a reputation for crime. But the stunning coastline has long been a hotspot for divers, and for South African tourists in general – the border is only about 125 kilometers away and driving up to the beaches is hugely popular, especially over school holidays. It’s hugely popular with me too. It’s my second visit already and it won’t be my last.
Two days after Oyv left I got up extremely early, for no good reason at all. I’d pre-booked a ride to take me to the bus station, knowing that I’d never find a cab in the streets at four am (and if I did, it probably wouldn’t be a good idea to take it). But this is Africa, and things run on Africa time, or not at all, and the cab never showed up. The nightguard at my hotel, and a nightguard staring at me from the gas station across the street, and a nightguard from the building next door, found a ride for me instead and I just barely made it to the bus station in time to catch a bus to Inhambane. From there it’s a short trip in a chapa (minibus) to Tofo, a busy little village on a long beach.
I moved into a beach hut and settled happily into Tofo-living.
I ran on the beach early every morning, dipped in the ocean, ate breakfast, and then spent the day eating fruit, walking to other beaches, or just drinking wine and swinging in my hammock.
One day I went on an Ocean Safari, looking for whale sharks. It was very different than swimming with whale sharks off Mafia Island in Tanzania. In terms of actual shark-spotting it was a letdown, but the boat trip itself was the highlight. This time, aboard a sleek inflatable speedboat thrashing about in the waves, the guide opened the throttle and took us on what amounted to a joyride on the Indian Ocean. When it was time to come back in, the guide pointed the boat at the line of palms and huts and little hotels backing the long white strip of sand on the horizon. ‘Brace yourselves’ he said. ‘I’m going to beach the boat’ and with that he drove full-tilt straight at the shore and didn’t stop until we’d pulled right up onto the beach with a hard jolt.
Travelling from place to place by public transport means that any day I’m on the road, I eat a bus-diet: hardboiled eggs, cashews or peanuts, bananas, maybe a samosa on a good day – food bought out the bus window. And, depending where I am or where I end up, dinner at the end of the day (if the day ever ends) is often not much better: maybe some chewy grilled meat or rice and beans, or possibly just a mango – whatever’s on offer in the market. But not so in Tofo, where I ate dinner almost every night at a place that does really fantastic pizza (if you go there, try the chorizo one).
They also do hotrocks – a chunk of granite straight out of the fireplace and onto your table, with a bowl of marinated squid, or octopus, or prawns for you to cook on it.
Basically, Tofo-living is like a break from…well, from everything. Not just from normal life at home, or winter. But a break from travel, or even from Africa.
Because sometimes, travelling is all about extremes, and no two days (or things or places) end up being alike.
Just a couple of weeks before, I’d stood on the beach in Ilha de Mocambique with Oyv, side-eyeing the hell out of the rising tide and our dhow bobbing on the choppy waves. But we needed to sail to our guesthouse, and it was getting dark, so we climbed aboard and Cesar the captain pushed off. The weather got steadily worse and we didn’t even get out of the port without nearly colliding first with the bridge to the mainland and then with part of the Old Town UNESCO-protected ramparts. After the second near miss I turned around to see Cesar suddenly wearing a lifejacket. I looked at Oyv in dismay. (This is not the same at all as when you see a taxi driver suddenly put on a seatbelt. All that means is, there’s a police check approaching and wearing a seatbelt is cheaper for him than bribing his way out of a ticket.) Having never seen a local voluntarily put on a lifejacket before I could only interpret it as a sign that our dhow was going down.
The pitching boat climbed up one wave and plunged over the next, Cesar and his crew wrestling the sails with all their might, while I held onto the side and thought grimly about the inevitable return trip.
But when we sailed back to Ilha a few days later, there was no wind. The ocean was flat and we barely moved. It took two hours and Cesar and his crew had to pole the dhow through the shallower waters.
Then there was our trip out to Mafia Island, way back in Tanzania. We arrived on a 10-seater prop-plane, a beautiful thirty minute flight from Dar es Salaam to the island’s tiny two-room airport.
This could not be more different from our usual type of arrival, anywhere: climbing stiffly off a bus, fingers slick with samosa-grease, maybe a mango-juice mustache, brushing crumbs off our clothes and slipping in vomit on the floor of the bus aisle (not ours. But there is a surprising number of motion-sick passengers on most buses).
Our departure from Mafia was more in keeping with our usual style. We trudged up the beach in the early morning darkness, and boarded an over-crowded wooden ferry moored to a long pier. It set off (still in darkness) around five and we spent the next four hours on a wooden bench, trying to ignore the cockroaches scuttling along between the cracks in the floorboards.
Reaching the mainland we climbed out over the side and straight into a slope of ankle-deep mud, and then clambered up the bank while a man on the roof of the boat shouted ‘Hey Mzungu!!’ at us over and over again.
After that, we walked under the scorching sun to the village and after a lengthy and bitter argument with touts, crammed ourselves into a sweaty share-taxi for the next leg of the day-long journey.
And then there’s this sort of voluntary exile in Tofo…it’s rare that something falls into the category of happy medium. One night you’re squatting in the market in a pile of dirt, eating fruit for dinner, mango juice dripping down your chin. The next, you’re swinging in a hammock at the beach eating chorizo pizza and grilling your own squid. Then you’re clinging to a dhow, sailing way too close to historical ruins. But before you know it, you’re washing up on a beautiful beach under the stars – or zipping around on a speedboat in a blaze of hot sun and wind, laughing like crazy for the sheer joy of it.
You know: travelling from place to place, or just from one extreme to another.
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For more of my adventures (and misadventures) in Mozambique, check out the rest of my stories from the road.
