There are six land border-crossings between Malawi and Mozambique: we used the one at Chiponde (Malawi) to Mandimba (Mozambique). Crossing there brings you into far northern Mozambique. If you’re planning to explore in the north, the Chiponde/Mandimba crossing is the obvious entry point to catch the twice-weekly train that runs from Cuamba to Nampula. From Nampula you can easily travel on to Ilha de Mocambique, or to Pemba and out to the Quirimbas Archipelago. There’s also information in this post about taking the train from Cuamba to Nampula.

Before You Go
The Route
Nkhata Bay to Lilongwe/Mangochi
Mangochi (Malawi) to Cuamba (Mozambique)
Taking the Train from Cuamba to Nampula
Onward Travel: Ilha de Mocambique

Before you go

Most nationalities need a visa for Mozambique, and they are officially available on arrival at ‘most’ land border crossings. I couldn’t find an actual list anywhere of which borders ‘most’ actually means. Our local Embassy strongly recommended bringing the visa from home (or picking it up in a neighboring country) to ‘avoid problems at the border’. Bring your Yellow Fever vaccination certificate.

There are plenty of unofficial money-changers hanging around at the border on both sides, with bad rates. On Malawi’s side the closest ATM is in Mangochi and on Mozambique’s side, Cuamba (not sure about Mandimba).

The route

It takes two days to get from Nkhata Bay (Malawi) to Cuamba (Mozambique). Remember, all times are approximate and you may have to wait for a vehicle to fill up. Expect delays along the way like interminable police checks and so on.

In this post I’ll outline each step as we took it but if you want to break it up, you can stay the night anywhere along the way:

Day 1. Leave Nkhata Bay very early for Mzuzu, about 45 minutes by taxi. Get a bus to Lilongwe. It’s about a four hour trip. Take a minibus to Mangochi, another almost five hours, and sleep there.

Day 2. Leave Mangochi early by share-taxi to the Immigration office in Chiponde, about an hour. Take a moto across the border to Mandimba, stopping at Mozambique’s Immigration office on the way. You need a bike, it’s about 7 kilometers altogether. In Mandimba, get a chapa (minibus) to Cuamba, a 3 hour trip.

The train from Cuamba to Nampula departs at 5 am on Thursdays and Sundays, and is a full day’s trip. Unless you really want to linger in Cuamba, keep that in mind.

Here are a few other things to keep in mind: in Malawi we found buses were optimistically scheduled but rarely left on time. Don’t plan on getting online much if you don’t have a local sim card. Including the long-haul buses, taxis and minibuses, hotels and food, we spent 40-50 USD each per day – costs go up noticeably in Mozambique, and we picked better places to sleep, plus decent coffee and wine. English, prevalent in Malawi, almost disappears when you cross the border.

Nkhata Bay to Lilongwe/Mangochi

Ideally, book your bus ticket to Lilongwe at least a day ahead. You have to go to the bus company’s office in Mzuzu and do that in person. We didn’t. It was a gamble but we showed up at the Sososo bus office an hour early and literally got two last-minute no-show spaces on the bus. Most buses generally leave by 7 am.

To arrive early enough in the morning book a private taxi from your guesthouse in Nkhata Bay straight to the bus office in Mzuzu, 45 minutes. There is nothing much around in the way of food so don’t get your heart set on breakfast. It’s about 4 hours to Lilongwe, where you get off at City Mall and can take a taxi to ‘the depot’ (the station for local transport, minibuses and so on). Find a minibus to Mangochi, another 5 hours away (the minibus stops in Monkey Bay on the way, if you want to break your trip up there).

In Mangochi we walked to Fort Johnston Lodge. The restaurant there is pretty decent. The rooms are very basic. Security is tight…at least, the night guard takes his job seriously: we awoke to find him standing on a chair in the hallway peeping in the window over our door. There is no WiFi. There are ATMs in town and an astonishing amount of bicycles (bodabodas) – that seems to go for any town in Malawi actually.

Mangochi (Malawi) to Cuamba (Mozambique)

Walk out of town over the bridge and straight up to where you see the cars gathering. Try to be there by 6 am (less waiting time). Get a share-taxi (so, 12 passengers in 7 seats) to Chiponde. The taxis stop right next to Immigration, where you can go inside to stamp out of Malawi, and get chased by swarms of moto-drivers and money-changers.

The two countries’ border posts are about a kilometer apart. From the Mozambique post, it’s another 6 km to Mandimba, the first town. Moto-drivers will offer to take you from Chiponde to Mandimba, stopping and waiting for you to process immigration in Mozambique on the way. Negiotiate your price, and make sure it’s clear that you expect to go all the way to Mandimba. Watch out as they might tell you the Mozambique border post actually is Mandimba, and try to ditch you there. It’s not. Insist on going the rest of the way to town after you process Mozambique Immigration.

Chapas accumulate in the road going out of Mandimba. It takes about 3 hours to Cuamba. The road is in pretty rough condition but it’s just such a beautiful scenic route it really doesn’t matter.

There are a couple of pensions in Cuamba which are really dismal (and expensive considering how depressing they are) so we opted to just pay some more and stayed at the former Castel Hotel – now called Vision. It’s nice, has decent food, and WiFi which was ‘not working’. There are plenty of ATMs in Cuamba, and not much of anything else.

But, you’re on the road in beautiful Mozambique! Bem vindo:)

Taking the train from Cuamba to Nampula

The twice-weekly train that runs from Cuamba to Nampula is an experience in itself and probably a better means of travel between those two cities, than going by road. Nampula is your gateway to Ilha de Mocambique, or to Pemba and out to the Quirimbas Archipelago.

The train departs Cuamba at 5 am on Thursdays and Sundays, and is a 10 hour trip (give or take). Get to town the night before, and buy your ticket from the window at the train station. I believe you can also buy it on the morning of departure, assuming there is space and you want to queue up in a pushy crowd even earlier. It’s very cheap: approximately 10 USD for Executive Class and around 3 USD for Second Class. I am no stranger to overcrowded vehicles and absurd levels of discomfort – and even I would still recommend going Executive Class (but don’t get your hopes up. It is by no means anything like what its name suggests).

In the morning, arrive at the station by 4 am. The crowd is huge and you want to be close to the front. When the guards open the gates for boarding it’s a free-for-all. Executive is easier to board – if you find scrambling around in long wet grass beside the tracks and then hauling yourself up a rusty ladder in total darkness into a vestibule that reeks of urine, easy. Second Class is about the same, but with a better chance of being crushed to death.

There’s no food available onboard. Vendors rush the train at every stop: you need small/exact change to buy food – fast – out the window. Be persistent: the locals are clearly grocery shopping and there aren’t enough vendors, so buying food is a competitive sport on this train. Oyv tried to get us two bananas for breakfast, but the conductor beat him to it and bought the whole stalk.

In Nampula, we stayed at Ruby Backpackers which is a quick walk from the station and a really cosy spot.

Onward travel: Ilha de Mozambique

From Nampula we set off for Ilha de Mocambique. I’ll be adding a post with the details about how we got there and what we did, as soon as I get around to writing it:) In the meantime, I’ve written a story about it: Fears, Phobias and Mozambique, Finally

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For more about travelling in these two countries and things to see and do while you’re at it, check out my stories from Malawi and Mozambique. And, if you’re in Tanzania trying to figure out your next move you might want to read From Tanzania to Malawi: How to Get Around Lake Malawi by Road

The post How to cross the border from Malawi to Mozambique appeared first on WhirledAway.

But then there’s Mozambique, which among all its more orderly neighbours is vaguely reminiscent of the other side of this continent. Chapas (minibuses) are the main culprits: vans with too many rows of seats to start with, and then an extra row crammed in for good measure. This extra extra row is right behind the front seat, facing backward so the passengers in those seats are nose-to-nose with the passengers in the actual first row, limbs woven together in a sort of accordion-effect. Overall the result is something like a crossword-puzzle of sweaty people, with a fold-out seat or a crouching passenger inserted into any gap left by intersecting rows. No matter how full a chapa may look when you flag it down on the side of the road, there is always room to stuff you in, half-standing, hunched over the laps of the people suffocating in the seats underneath you.

Burkina still wins though: I’ve never seen anyone riding on the roof over here.

Overcrowded bus or not, it didn’t really matter – I needed to leave Tofo. I’d had my fill of lazy days at the beach, and started to get restless. In contrast to that, travel days are sometimes hard days, tiring, or even stressful (like when the sun is sinking fast, along with my hopes of arriving in an unknown city before dark). Still, I’m happiest when I’m on the move – or on moving transport at least, bound for someplace new.

So, before the sun was even up one morning, I got on a bus to Maputo. The bus was parked – stuck, you might say – in the sand on the side of the road. After loading it, the driver tied a rope to the front and hauled it onto the road, and then the conductor and some passengers pushed it for a running start. Hours later, another bus hit mine on the way into Maputo and I waited around on the street while the two drivers and a lot of (completely uninvolved) bystanders bickered endlessly. Oyv didn’t bat an eye when I told him about my day later on WhatsApp. It’s not like anything unusual happened.

When I travel in Africa, or anywhere for that matter, a lot of my time goes to exactly that: travel. But this is Africa, after all, and sometimes you might think ‘Yes, that’s a lot of busses and boats and things. But what about all the animals?’.

I haven’t exactly been all over the wildlife-encounters lately. That’s not to say that wildlife hasn’t encountered me. Back in Kenya, for example, a bright green snake fell out of a tree and landed in my hammock with me. I lay very still for a second and then shook it off my leg. Then I started googling ‘deadly snakes in Kenya’ (there are plenty).

So there’s that…And as I sit writing this in my guesthouse I’m momentarily disturbed by the metallic clang of a shovel striking concrete – the security guard is bludgeoning a poisonous snake to death in the garden outside my window.

On a less reptilian note, there’s also the guesthouse I stayed at where a large family of bushbabies came to the bar every night at 7 pm sharp to eat bananas:

And, I went to a giraffe conservation centre that allows visitors to feed the inhabitants, like a petting zoo with gigantically overgrown goats.

But when you think of African animals, I bet you don’t think about the sort that take kindly to eating pellets and posing for Instagram. Me either, usually, so I thought I should do something about that and get my fix of real animals (not snakes though. I’ve had enough of them).

And so that’s why I went from travelling by overcrowded chapa in Mozambique to safariing with two new friends in a Kia Picanto (proportionally speaking, it is almost the same thing) in South Africa. Maybe we’d all just got used to space-issues, but the three of us saw nothing uncomfortable about stuffing ourselves, our backpacks, and the results of a hunger-fueled minutes-before-closing grocery shopping spree into the little car and heading off into Kruger National Park for a few days.

Overcrowding inside a vehicle is one thing. But in Kruger I discovered it’s also possible to feel overcrowded outside the vehicle too, like when we found ourselves in the midst of a herd of elephants crossing the road. Looking out and up at the massive grey legs like tree trunks just outside the window, I really started to wonder if economy cars are cut out for this sort of thing. Getting back to camp after dark, we had to write an excuse on the camp guard’s clipboard. We came up with ‘Elephant in the road’, pretty much the safari-going equivalent of ‘My dog ate my homework’.

And as for overloading the car with groceries, a baboon solved that problem for us on the second day. There aren’t many places in the park where it is safe to eat. Safe for humans to eat, I mean, without being eaten ourselves, which is why you aren’t allowed getting out of your vehicle anywhere other than at designated picnic sites – which aren’t safe either, as it turns out. I was just about to eat an awesome sandwich (ham, turkey, avo and cheddar, in case you’re wondering) when a baboon suddenly ran out of the bushes and leaped onto the picnic bench right next to us. I say that like it was funny, but even now I’m upset about my sandwich. We jumped up and fell over ourselves and each other trying to get away – that baboon had some serious fangs – and then watched from the sidelines with a dozen monkeys waiting for the scraps. Whatever the baboon didn’t eat, he trashed, and then he ran off taking an unopened bag of Doritos with him, although he did leave our phones and the car keys where we’d dropped them on the table.

I’m not sure the baboon’s actions were intentional (I’m not sure they weren’t, either), but if so, this wanton destruction backfired on him as we got a free dinner at camp and a night game drive, when we reported the incident. Lesson learned: if you don’t want to overload your car with food before a safari, you can always hang out at picnic sites with a bag of Doritos and see what happens next.

‘We meet again’ I said to the millionth impala that bounded across our path one day. These beautiful, soft-eyed creatures are here in countless numbers (along with their friends, the gazelles) and as numbers go, they’re the main attraction on any safari – or they would be, except that nobody cares about impalas after the third or fourth herd.

But the point was to see animals, after all. And along with the enormous ones that wave their trunks and flap their ears menacingly at your car, and the greedy ones that steal your food, we saw most of the other usual safari-suspects too. Adorably ugly warthogs running fast with tails straight in the air like antennae; baby elephants galore; beautiful, tawny, arrogant lions basking in the sun; and my personal favourites – giraffes. Wild ones, stalking across the road and placidly nibbling on treetops, not feeding from my hand (they’re still quite amenable to photos, though).

Later on we drove out of the park and stopped in Graskop for the night. The small town looked familiar to me. I recognised a pancake house (it’s always the food, with me) and then I remembered: Oyv and I had been here on our way down to Cape Town – from Cairo – a few years ago. I was tempted to travel onwards by car with my friends, rather than catch another overloaded bus with strangers. But you know, getting there is half the fun and all that, so I stayed behind when they drove on. And sure enough, only another day went by before I was back on the bus, to Johannesburg this time. Nobody was on the roof, of course, so Burkina still wins.

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Check out the rest of my stories from the road, for more of my adventures (and misadventures) in Mozambique and South Africa.

The post Overcrowding and animals: it’s Africa, after all appeared first on WhirledAway.

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.

The post Tofo living and other extremes appeared first on WhirledAway.

This lake hosts bilharzia, a parasite that can invade human skin, causing fever and other flu-like symptoms. Many lakes host worse things and plenty of other people were swimming, so I hopped in and swam too, deaf to Oyv’s protests.

When I returned to our front porch he was busy googling all the things that might happen to you if you get infected with bilharzia, and the ways you can prevent it (such as not swimming in Lake Malawi, for starters). I’ll revert to this subject again in another month if I develop a raging fever and headache.

Of course, if you run into the wrong parasite you can end up very sick. But I tend to be more afraid of really tangible things: the giant beetle sharing our room, for example, or deadly traffic accidents brought on by insane driving. This is a major difference between us. I’m brushing my teeth with tap water, while Oyv sighs at my reckless abandon and gets out the filter. I eat all the crispy, raw vegetables I can find; Oyv eyes my plate warily, as though he can see the potential stomach bugs crawling on the salad, and he sticks to cooked food. But he is unfazed by any giant insect that crosses his path, including the deep-fried ones he’s eaten on more than one occasion. And I have yet to see him bothered by anybody’s reckless behaviour on a bus (except mine. Oyv hates it when I start rebuking drivers for talking on the phone).

So between us we’ve got most phobias handled: one to cover parasites and germs, one to cover insects and accidents. It’s all good. We encounter one or another of these every single day on our travels.

Anyway, the entire reason we were in Malawi in the first place was because we’d faced a couple of hiccups on our way into Mozambique by road. And by hiccups I mean, heavy rainstorms that washed out roads and collapsed a bridge we needed, plus armed conflict just over the border. ‘It’s not safe. People are getting killed there’ we heard more than once, as we prepared to set off and cross. This is not something you want to hear when you are planning the next leg of your trip. United in being worried about the same thing for a change, we re-routed around the lake and into Malawi to approach northern Mozambique from a different angle, and that’s why we now found ourselves eating roast turkey and confronting other phobias head-on, instead.

Emerging from intense turkey-comas (it’s been a while since we saw a turkey at Christmas – we may have overindulged), we continued on our way around Lake Malawi toward another Mozambican border post.

‘Bem vindo’ said the first officer we met when we climbed off our bikes: finally, Mozambique.

The big buses and smooth paved roads of Malawi stopped abruptly at the border. We hitched a ride with a local family, packed into the backseat amongst piles of luggage. They seemed to have been on a cross-border shopping run…for bags of chips. We tried to ask, but English stopped at the border too.

Banging slowly along rust-red dirt roads we eventually reached Cuamba. One of the largest towns in the interior of the country, it’s the proverbial end of the road in Mozambique. Further west is the empty space we hitched through with the family of chip smugglers; further still than that, and you’re back in Malawi. Starting from the end of the road in Mozambique, we bought tickets for the twice-weekly train to Nampula.

During the day Cuamba is quiet. Deserted even. But when we showed up at four in the morning to board the train, armed guards were forcibly holding back a surging tide of rowdy passengers battling each other to get on in the dark, and so we joined them. Guards, and excessive pushing and shoving: some things neither one of us is the least bit afraid of.

Some of these desolate and remote towns like Cuamba aren’t up to much. But the wild green interior of Mozambique is a beautiful place, and the real star of the show is this country’s long, beautiful, and often undeveloped coastline.

Oyv found us a guesthouse on an empty beach, said to be the very spot where the Portuguese explorer/conqueror Vasco de Gama first stepped foot in 1498 (not sure that’s something everyone wants to commemorate, but it’s an interesting thought). The place had an unexplored feeling to us, too: we sailed there on a dhow, and climbed out onto the beach in total darkness when the wooden boat struck the shore with a soft thump. Our captain led us on a forty minute walk-and-wade through the low-tide mangrove swamps, the starry sky and the moon our only light. Reaching the guesthouse we went to bed without any real idea of our surroundings – and woke up the next morning to a windswept retreat backed by mangroves, perched on the dunes overlooking the ocean. Nothing but an expanse of white sand stretched out on either side of the little clutch of guesthouse buildings, all of reclaimed materials patched into a ramshackle beach paradise.

And of course, what is a beachfront paradise without seafood that comes straight from the ocean to your plate?

So after all the rough and raw travel, life suddenly slowed down for us.

One day we sailed languidly back from the beachfront guesthouse to Ilha de Mocambique.

The oldest European settlement in Africa, Ilha is not just a town, but, as its name suggests, an island. It’s a tiny one too: a coral outcrop just three kilometers long and six hundred metres wide.

Already an important Swahili trading centre, by the early 16^th century the Portuguese made it the capital of their East African empire. A port to rival Mombasa, the main activity was a booming trade in gold, ivory and slaves – by the 1820s, around thirty thousand captives a year passed through Ilha’s markets. The first battle in Africa between European powers took place here too, when the Dutch tried and failed to seize the town in 1607. The Portuguese shifted their capital to Maputo in 1898, and like so many other coastal settlements in East Africa, Ilha de Mocambique slid into economic decline.

Today the island is a UNESCO world heritage site, home to some of the oldest buildings in the southern hemisphere. It’s a quiet place, inhabited mainly by African Muslims. Forced out under Portuguese rule, they drifted back after the Portuguese left. The massive Fortaleza de Sao Sebastiao is the only original 16^th century building that survives to this day.

Catholic churches and mosques share the streets, and there is a statue of de Gama himself near the beach where the local dhows pull up and anchor just offshore.

Ilha is undergoing a sort of renaissance – crumbling villas restored and converted to boutique hotels; new restaurants and cafes springing up.

And as for the weather: when the rains come in northern Mozambique, they come with a vengeance. Washed out roads and collapsed bridges are one concern, but possibly the least.

During an intense afternoon downpour as we scrambled to pull the banging shutters closed and mop up the water pooling on the bedroom floor, we found ourselves just hoping it wasn’t a cyclone. One of the worst cyclones on record in sub-Saharan Africa swept through here in early 2019 and devastated much of the coastline, leaving a massive humanitarian crisis in its wake. Maybe we were unnecessarily concerned – the hotel staff weren’t bothered, they probably know a cyclone coming when they see one. Even as the power went out and the rain pounded down on the steel roof, the receptionist approached me. He shouted at the top of his lungs over the deafening roar: ‘Would you like something to drink, madam?’. So I ordered some wine, and gave up mopping.

As you may have gathered from this post, northern Mozambique is not the easiest place to reach, nor is it easy to travel around in, if you do manage to get there. The rains and the conflict on the road stopped us travelling south by bus, so we flew in a rainstorm of biblical proportions to Maputo. My transport fears usually don’t apply on planes but in this case I made an exception; Oyv’s only concern that more mosquitoes might be out after the rain and we’d catch malaria. In the end none of our fears were grounded. We landed in Maputo safely as ever, and as far as I know right now, neither of us has malaria. Although I suppose I’d still better watch out for bilharzia.

Read more

Check out the rest of my stories from the road, for more of my adventures (and misadventures) in Malawi and Mozambique.

The post Fears, phobias and Mozambique, finally appeared first on WhirledAway.

We’d read and heard some bad stuff. Other travelers we’d met along the way (even including a couple we met last year in Myanmar) regaled us with tales of robberies and theft, unsafe beaches and at the very least a lot of dodgy attempts at all sorts of sneaky scams. There was the story we heard about a man riding in the back of a cab with his computer on his lap and the window down. Perhaps not a smart move. Sure enough someone yanked his PC out the window and when he instinctively reached out after it the thief chopped at his forearms with a machete. Or the father and son who arrived at their guesthouse, got out of their taxi, and were mugged in the driveway before they could reach the front door.

Maybe we felt a bit like this guy we saw in an advert back in Harare:

But we went ahead and crossed the border from Zimbabwe, figuring we’d just stay inside at night, split up our valuables and watch each other’s back constantly.

Twelve days in, and we still can’t figure out where these reports are coming from. Maybe we’re just lucky or really really savvy but we’ve not had even the slightest problem and neither has anyone else we’ve met in Mozambique. Maybe everyone just wants to keep this chilled out, Portugal-meets-Africa beach front country a fabulous secret. And so they should. The scenery is divine, the atmosphere is relaxed and easygoing. Locals, expats and travelers mingle together on the beach and in the bars and restaurants. It’s a Mecca for surfers and divers. There are no package tours and the long, serene beaches are as yet mostly undeveloped and unspoilt.

Ready for some relaxation, we lost no time in heading for the coastline.

Of course, we did some hard travel to get here. A very drunk man ‘assisted’ us in organising our bus tickets, which didn’t do much to inspire our confidence in the public transport. We set off early in the morning, leaving the heavy rains behind in Chimoio, the first major town after the border with Zimbabwe. Chimoio doesn’t seem to have any paved roads and the rains had turned the streets into a mudbath. I don’t know if my feet have ever been so dirty, my legs were coated in muck after a short walk down the street.

But as we travelled towards the Indian Ocean, the skies cleared into a magnificent blue, and the sun beat down on the palm fringed red dirt road ahead. At the top of every hill another stunning tropical vista unfolded in front of us. The bus stopped abruptly at a junction and the driver, together with most of the passengers around us, announced that we should get off here. We were still 22 kilometers from our destination, Vilankulo. We climbed down and stood in the hot dust as the bus pulled away. Soon enough a small boy befriended us and pointed us to the back of a pickup heading to the town.

So we lost no time settling into life in this beach bungalow in Vilankulo:

In the mornings we’d swing in the hammock or lounge on the verandah with coffee.

At night, the peace and quiet was interrupted only by drumming and singing on the beach, and the crashing waves.

We spent the next two days exploring the Bazaruto Archipelago. First, we took a dhow – that’s a traditional wooden African sailing boat – to Margaruque island.

The archipelago is a protected national park and it’s absolutely stunning.

We explored the long empty beaches, stopping to swim whenever it got too hot to walk. The skipper made us a lunch of fresh barracuda and calamari before we sailed back:

The next day we took a speedboat, first to Bazaruto itself and then to Benguera. In case you’re wondering, Africans drive speedboats the same way they drive any other vehicle (recklessly).

We climbed up a huge sand dune on Bazaruto for the view and then burned our feet on the run back down.

The boat dropped us off in the ocean and circled while we snorkeled Two Mile Reef.

After five days of this we tore ourselves away to travel on to the next beach.

First we caught a minibus to Maxixe. Like most other countries around here, Mozambique should consider placing a sign at its borders saying ‘Leave any notion of personal space here.’ When a van meant to hold 12 or 14 people is packed with 25 passengers, you find yourself getting cosy with your seat mates. The ones who actually have a seat, anyway. You can just barely see Oyv here, under this guy’s arm:

The bus inevitably broke down a couple of times; but not to worry, the conductor fixed it by removing the first row of seats, opening up the floor, and banging the engine really hard with a wrench.

Next we took a ferry (let’s be honest, it was a suffocatingly overcrowded fishing boat) to Inhambane and then, a bus on to Tofo.

In Tofo, pretty guesthouses and bungalow operations back the long white beach.

We moved into a seafront room with a big terrace and proceeded to while away the days with early morning runs on the beach, browsing in the markets, and conversations with other travelers.

I had a capulana dress made at a local tailor. We ate as much squid, prawns and fish as we could fit. We went regularly to a little place where the menu consisted of marinated squid or beef that you grill up yourself on a sizzling hot rock at the table.

Enroute to Tofo we’d stopped overnight in Inhambane. It’s a sleepy little town and both pretty and peaceful. We liked it, so we went there again for another night on our way to the capital, Maputo.

In towns like Inhambane, it’s easy to see that the Portugese have been here.

For better or worse, the Europeans have left their mark all over this continent. In Mozambique’s case, it all started when the Portugese explorer Vasco de Gama arrived in 1498.

In Zambia and Zimbabwe we saw reminders of the UK in every day things like the food and shops, and even in colloquial expressions. Here in Mozambique it occurred to us that if you’re going be colonized you might at least hope for southern European invaders. You’ll get good food and wine, and siestas. Along with the enslavement, exploitation, and decades of conflict, that is.

We met an expat here who called Mozambique ‘The Brazil of Africa’ and it was easy to see what he meant. Then again, he also characterised the beach we were on as ‘The Koh Phagnan of the ’90s’ so maybe he’s just looking for that hippie vibe. It’s got that, too. But whether you compare it to Brazil or Thailand, or just admire it for its own unique self, it’s easy to love Mozambique.

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For more of our adventures (and misadventures) in Mozambique, check out the rest of my stories from the road.

The post Mozambique: Welcome to the Brazil of Africa appeared first on WhirledAway.