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I decided to make an early start from Blantyre on Tuesday morning to reach the Mozambique border at Muloza. My next destination was Mozambique Island, which I guessed would take just over a day to reach. At least setting off at 05.00 in the morning I thought it would be possible to reach Nampula, Mozambique's third largest town, 180km from Mozambique Island. I walked the short distance to the bus park next door to Doogles, from where I had been told I could take a minibus to the border. This information was not quiet correct and there were no minibuses at this time in the morning, although I was told a bus would leave later in the morning for the border. To get to the border quickly it was suggested that it would be best to go to the bus park in nearby Limbe; this made sense to me as the road to the border left from this town, about 15km from Blantyre. I took a rather dodgy taxi to Limbe with a two man crew, one driving the other sitting in the passenger seat holding the fuel line in a can of petrol between his feet.
It was still dark when we arrived at the Limbe bus park, a couple of large fires were burning near the entrance, billowing smoke across the park, while some local men huddled around to keep warm. I found a minibus for the border and hopped in and waited, I was the first passenger. Soon the sun rose and by then there were only three passengers including myself; my plans for an early start to the border were quickly becoming undone. It had gone 07.00 and still the minibus was nowhere near full and ready to depart. A large bus arrived and pulled up alongside us that was heading to the border; we all quickly swapped over and by 07.30 I was at last on my way to the border, my early start completely wasted. We drove along the same road I had taken the previous week to reach Mt Mulanje, passing by the endless tea plantations in the Shire Highlands, passing the Mulanje Massif and eventually reaching the Malawi border town of Muloza.
A large rusting, white gate marked the end of the road in Malawi where the bus turned around and stopped. As soon as I got off the bus I was surrounded by hopeful bicycle taxi riders touting for business to take me across the border and the 3km to the Mozambique border town of Milange. I planned to employ the services of a bicycle taxi but did my best to ignore them all as I walked to the Malawian immigration post just past the gate across the road. After I had completed my Malawian exit card, which even included a section on how much money I had spent in the country, I walked back out into the sunshine and off along the road and into Mozambique. Most of the bicycle taxis had disappeared while I had been doing my paperwork and I wandered free of any hassle along the road. There was no traffic crossing the border, the gate remained firmly closed although it was extremely busy as hundreds of bicycles, all carrying sacks of maize made their way from Mozambique. The road lead straight from the gate past eucalyptus trees, as I walked a bicycle taxi pulled up alongside me and as we continued walking we negotiated and finally agreed on a fare to Milange; I hopped on the back with my luggage.
The Mozambique immigration post was not far along the road and was the easiest border I had crossed on this trip; there was no need to fill out any immigration cards or answer any pointless questions. Maybe not being able to speak any Portuguese, the national language of Mozambique, helped. We soon arrived in Milange and were cycling up along the main street, a four-lane road with the streetlights running along an island in the middle. Despite this large boulevard there was hardly a vehicle in sight, the most noticeable difference from Malawi. About halfway along the street was a small collection of vehicles, trucks and pickups; one of the pickups was stuffed full of people and cargo, this would be my transport the 200km to Mocuba.
It was 10.45 as I climbed into the back of the pickup (in Mozambique called a chapa) and tried to make myself comfortable sitting on my backpack. My timing crossing the border was excellent, no sooner had I arrived in Milange and I was off again down the road. I had no idea how frequently transport left this town for Mocuba, one source I read said that a truck just goes once every other day. I thought that my plans of at least reaching Nampula were back on track, as I didn't have to wait the hours I was expecting to leave this small backwater town. The pickup drove slowly around town picking up yet more passengers and cargo; the driver was becoming concerned at the amount of weight sitting on his rear axle. Eventually we set off down the long road to Mocuba. I had heard that this road was in poor condition, but it was not really that bad considering and we seemed to be making steady progress. A little way out of Milange we stopped yet again to pick up more cargo, some giant sacks almost the size of mattresses. It took a while to reorganise the rest of the load and to get us back in, now all carefully perched on the cargo. I was right at the back and it was a constant battle not to fall off as people and cargo always had a tendency to slip forever to the rear. There were two bicycles strapped to the back of the pickup, which really saved me from falling out over the many bumps. At one stage I noticed I was sitting past the rear of the pickup, only the bicycles and some sacks between the road and me. Twice along the way the bicycles finally gave in to the relentless pressure forced on them and slipped onto the road, handlebars suddenly dragging through the dust and gravel and the passengers banging on the roof of the cab to stop the driver.
It was about after 100km that we dropped off around half of the passengers, much to my relief. Now I had a 'seat' just behind the cab but with all the cargo I found I was sitting at the same height as the roof; I just hoped we wouldn't have to make any emergency stops. The road seemed to go on forever passing through the bush and past small villages of thatched mud huts and fields of maize. This side of the border appeared very different to Malawi and the endless carpet of tea bushes. Still we bounced along the road gradually getting caked in dust as the pickup threw up billows of brown dust in its wake. After travelling through so many English speaking African nations I found it odd to be suddenly sitting here not being able to communicate or understand what anyone was saying as they talked away in Portuguese.
At 16.15 we arrived in Mocuba, crossing over the airstrip covered in brown, dry grass and into the centre of the town. The pickup dropped everyone off at the market and then they gave me a lift to the Pensão Cruzeiro, probably the smartest hotel in town, but the only one listed in my guidebook as a reasonable place to stay. It was now too late to reach Nampula today so I was left with no other option but to spend the night here. I was slightly disappointed, I had hoped to get a lot further today. The Pensão Cruzeiro was a welcome place to stop and clean myself up; my day spent in Blantyre doing my laundry now seemed a waste of time as all my clothes were ingrained with brown dust.
Again Mocuba seemed a bit like a ghost town, as there were hardly any vehicles on the road. The market by the bus park was a busy, colourful place with hundreds of people on either foot or bicycle. The main streets were wide boulevards with the street lighting down the centre. The roads were badly potholed, the streetlights were all broken and an air of neglect seemed to hang over the town. The town no longer looked war ravaged from seventeen years of civil war but it definitely looked like no one had done any maintenance over the last twenty-five years. Windows were broken in many buildings, paint peeling and the bare concrete walls heavily stained by water, leaving ugly streaks of black down the facades. I ate that evening at the restaurant below the hotel and was again shocked at how expensive everything was in this town; I hoped that the rest of the country would be cheaper otherwise my budget would be in serious problems. I had an early night; after all it had been a long and tiring day since I had woken up in Blantyre at 04.30 that morning.
I once again planned an early start at 06.00 and was fairly confident that today I would reach Mozambique Island. I was thwarted in my attempt at the first hurdle, the front door of the hotel that was firmly locked. I looked around for a night watchman; I even found his bed hidden in a cupboard under the stairs but no one to be seen. I was becoming frustrated and went back upstairs to look around; again the place was deserted. I walked out onto the rear balcony and below me in a courtyard I saw the waiter from the restaurant next door. I shouted down at him and he soon understood that I wanted someone to come and unlock the front door. After settling my bill, totalling MET450,000, the most I had paid so far for a hotel in nearly four months of travelling, I walked down the main street to where I had been told buses leave for Nampula. I reached the bridge across the river at the edge of town and there were no busses or vehicles to be seen. It is then that a young Zimbabwean lad came and helped me, the first person I had met who could speak English since crossing the border. He told me that no busses leave from the end of the main street, again my guidebook had incorrect information, and he showed me back to the bus park by the market. It was great to at last be speaking to someone again, yesterday I had spent a very quiet day staring at the road from the back of a pickup.
There was a medium sized bus, slightly larger than a minibus waiting in the bus park with a sign in the front window saying, Nampula. It had just gone 06.30 and once again things were looking hopeful, all we needed were some more passengers to fill up the bus. Unfortunately this didn't happen fast and time began to wear on. A lad by the name of James was on the bus who could speak English. He was a Mozambican and had been learning English for some years and relished the chance of some practice; he saw his best opportunity for the future to learn as many languages as possible and was on his way to Nampula, his home town, before returning to study in the capital Maputo later the next week. I was happy to be able to communicate with someone, which whiled away the hours as it seemed to take an age for the bus to fill up. James' young cousin was the bus driver and he arrived at about 09.00 and James introduced me, also informing me that his cousin was a very fast driver. This kind of information, that tends to impress the locals, just filled me with fear; I hoped for the best for our journey.
The morning was becoming hot as we sat around in the bus waiting under the bright sun, with only the occasional cloud to give a shady respite. It was 11.30 when we eventually set off on our journey to Nampula, the bus having to be push started in the bus park. After filling up with fuel along the main street we crossed over the bridge and left Mocuba; I began to doubt whether I would again reach Mozambique Island today as we had left Mocuba so late. The road was fairly good north out of town, it was tarred with only a few badly potholed sections; I think the general good state of the road was largely due to the lack of traffic on the roads in the north. James' cousin drove at a fairly leisurely pace, much to my relief; the engine was straining hard with the amount of people and cargo loaded on board. The bus was crammed full and no one could really move, it was a mission just to try and open the doors. A steady stream of smoke blew out of the engine, situated next to the driver in the centre of the bus, as the engine burnt a lot of oil. Whenever we reached a hill this steady stream turned into a choking cloud that filled the bus; most people kept their windows open for ventilation.
It appeared that some foreign government, I think the Japanese, had been funding the replacement of this northern road, which had not yet been completed. At most of the rivers we suddenly veered off on a diversion along the old dirt road and crossed the river on the old bridge. Alongside would be the new bridge, standing alone like an island, the embankment to take the road to the bridge yet to be built. It looked like these bridges were already a few years old, the concrete was stained black where water had been running down the sides. The further north we travelled the more often we found sections of the new tarred road missing and the bus would carefully weave its way around the potholes at a snails pace. At 16.00 we neared a fairly large town, I hoped that this would be Nampula; the bus stopped in the centre of the town next to a petrol station. It was not Nampula. James told me that this was as far as the bus would be going today, but the bus operator would pay a truck driver to take me the rest of the way to Nampula. I asked James where we were and he told me Alto Molócuè, which I found on my map and then began laughing; we were only halfway.
The truck, which was fairly small but heavily laden, left at 16.30. I had a seat in the cab along with one other passenger from the bus, the rest of the passengers sat on top of the cargo on the back. It was not long until we were back on the road continuing north out of Alto Molócuè, the sun setting quickly and the countryside becoming enveloped by darkness. The road was in a terrible condition, no longer tarred and very rough with deep potholes and ruts. It didn't look like it had been repaired since the end of the rainy season and at times we literally had to crawl along the road, the locals on bicycles overtaking us and disappearing back into the dark in front of us. We passed by villages alongside the road, I could just make out the shape of mud huts at the edge of the truck's headlights and see the red glow of cooking fires. Many times I bashed my head against the roof of the cab when we hit an unexpected bump in the road. The base of my spine was taking a hammering as well and I was just glad I was not sitting on the back of the truck as that must have been almost unbearable. About 100km short of Nampula we crossed a fairly large bridge and we were once again back on a smooth tarred road. By now it was late and I was very tired and at last dozed off, no longer having to worry about being bashed around the cab.
At 00.30 we arrived in Nampula and the truck driver dropped me off outside a hotel. It was an expensive place wanting MET500,000 for a night; I decided to look elsewhere. I really didn't want to pay a lot of money just to spend a few hours sleeping until day break when I planned to hit the road again at first light. The streets were almost deserted at this time of night; night-watchmen sat outside businesses, some asleep, as I walked through the city looking for a quiet spot where I could sit down for a few hours and wait until daybreak. Every street I walked down there was a policeman and they all stopped me, some asking to check my passport and asking me questions in Portuguese that I was unable to understand let alone answer. Eventually one policeman escorted me to a cheap hotel, the grotty looking Pensão Nampula, which turned out to be full. The night watchman indicated that he could find me a room if I paid him now. I was immediately suspicious and decided I was not going to part with any money until the morning; it was obvious that the money he wanted was a backhander and I didn't want to wake up, find the night watchman gone and the hotel manager demanding payment from me. After what seemed like an age the watchman finally agreed to payment in the morning and showed me to a dirty, basic room. I didn't even bother to take my boots off and fell asleep almost immediately on the bed.
At 05.40 there was a loud knocking on my door. I tried to ignore it but five minutes later came the knocking again. It was the night watchman telling me it was time to go. I paid him as agreed last night and I departed happily as I walked up to the train station from where I should be able to pick up transport for the final leg of my trip to Mozambique Island. There was a large bus waiting and I jumped on board and it departed almost immediately. It was going as far as Monapo from where I changed vehicles and climbed into the back of a pickup. After two and a half days travelling I finally caught sight of my destination, Mozambique Island lying a few kilometres off the coast. I was once more back by the ocean, the smell of sea reminding me of home, the shores lined with palm trees swaying gently in the warm breeze.
I crossed the narrow 3km long, one-lane bridge in the back of a crowded pickup truck that connects this tiny, though historically important island to the mainland. At intervals along the bridge there were passing sections, but there was not much traffic and all of it restricted to cars because the bridge was so narrow. The island is crescent shaped and only 3km long and is 500m across at its widest point covering an area of approximately 1 sq km. The island is a coral formation and is covered in white sand. It is completely urbanised and divided in two, to the north, Stone Town and to the south Makuti Town. The bridge joins onto the island at the southern tip, just north of the cemetery from where we drove north along the main street, Avenida 25 de Junho through the centre of the island; I was dropped off in the centre of Makuti Town. A couple of young lads, Jackson and Gibson showed me the way to the guesthouse Casa de Luis, also known as The Private Gardens, just off Travessa Dos Fornos. Without their help I would never have found this place, as there were no signs, not even on the building. I had found that this lack of signs had plagued my trip through Mozambique since I crossed the border from Malawi. Apparently I later heard from another traveller that the locals don't bother with signs because everyone knows where everything is, so there is no need; obviously they don't get many tourists in the north of the country. I checked into a small room at the guesthouse and fell asleep for the morning. It was 10.15 and I was happy at last to be on this island after all the kilometres I had travelled.
The island was an important trading centre for many hundreds of years. The Arabs, who colonised both Pemba and Zanzibar, off the coast of Tanzania, also reached this island and established a base here as well as further south along the coast at the town of Quelimane. From here they developed a network of trade routes through East and Southern Africa trading in gold and ivory and later in slaves. The first Portuguese explorer, Vasco da Gama, landed on the island in 1498 and in 1507 the first permanent Portuguese settlement was established. The Sheik, who ruled in the King of Quiloa's name on the island up until then, was forced to leave the island when confronted with the superiority of the Portuguese military strength.
The island prospered under Portuguese control as both a strategic naval base and as a commercial centre. The island was used as a staging post along the long sea route from Europe to Persia, India and beyond via the Cape of Good Hope. The trade in gold and ivory continued with the east in return for exotic spices that were coveted back in Europe as well as the trade in slaves from the interior of Central Africa. One of the oldest surviving buildings from the Portuguese era is the recently renovated Chapel of Nossa Senhora de Baluarte, built in 1522 at the far northern tip of the island. It is said to be the oldest European building in the southern hemisphere and it is where the early settlers came to give thanks to God when they completed their long and arduous voyage, as many people fell ill and died during the voyage. Dominating the whole northern end of the island and overshadowing this small chapel with its huge stone ramparts is the Fort of São Sebastião. The fortress was constructed to defend the Portuguese interests on the island. Construction started in 1558 and it was finally completed in 1620. It is the oldest complete fort still standing in sub-Saharan Africa and was the largest fort in Southern Africa. As well as its economic and strategic position the island also became a major missionary centre with the various religious orders establishing churches here and mingling with the predominately Muslim and Hindu communities.
Stone Town, on the northern half of the island, became the administrative centre and capital of the colony of Portuguese East Africa until 1898, when the capital was moved south to Lourenço Marques (now Maputo) after the discovery of gold in the Transvaal. The architecture of Stone Town reflects the islands diverse heritage with an almost unique mix of European, Arabic, Indian and African influences. Stone Town contains the majority of the historic buildings on the island, about four hundred houses, which includes thirty monuments and administrative buildings; the majority of these were built between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries. During this time the local residents were banished to the mainland. The churches and the facades of the buildings are the most evident influence of the Portuguese, but the construction of most of the buildings was mostly influenced by Arabic architecture with all the buildings having flat roofs. Drains lead from the roofs to cisterns to collect rainwater, as there was no freshwater or groundwater on the island. The courtyards and gardens of the buildings are also very Arabic in origin and design. The Indian influences came mostly from the Goa region with the carved doorways and ornamentation of the facades that decorated some of the buildings, although I saw very little evidence of this left today.
Stone Town developed over hundreds of years but remarkably the buildings show a uniformity of style as the Portuguese adopted the local building techniques of using masonry walls and wooden beams to hold up the floors and flat roofs. They quarried the local coral limestone and used local timber and utilised these raw materials and methods continuously throughout the years, even keeping the detailing of the facades consistent. The floor plans of the buildings remained the same and are characterised by a rectangular layout, with the main entrance in the centre of the building leading to a corridor that connects the street with an inner courtyard; all rooms of the building are accessed from this corridor. This floor plan was also used in the buildings of Makuti Town in the southern half of the island, as well as using the same raw materials and construction methods. This part of the island is much newer and dates back to the late 19th century when the indigenous population were allowed to return to the island. There are about 1,200 houses divided up into seven quarters in Makuti Town. It is a mostly residential area and the whole district is a lot more crowded than the north of the island. The reed and mud huts look very different to the grand buildings to the north, but they still share this basic floor plan. This gives the island an amazing degree of architectural cohesiveness, even through to modern times. This almost unique architectural legacy was one of the main reasons it was designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1991.
I spent three days on the island exploring the narrow streets and alleyways of Stone Town and this extraordinary hybrid mix of architectural styles. Today the island is no longer a major commercial centre or port and is very much a backwater place. The economic decline of the island went in gradual stages and began a long time ago with the abolition of the slave trade in the late 19th century. With the discovery of gold in the Transvaal the capital was moved south in 1898 to present day Maputo. The opening of the Suez Canal also reduced the importance of the sea route around The Cape and ships no longer stopped here as a way station on their voyages to and from the east. The development of Nacala nearby on the mainland as a major port also added to the general economic decline of the island. In 1975 after independence the Portuguese pulled out almost overnight and the majority of the buildings in Stone Town were never officially transferred to new owners. This left the island almost divided in two, with the local town of Makuti thriving and the grand buildings of Stone Town falling into disrepair. The majority of the local people didn't move to Stone Town because of the lack of transfer deeds for the properties and also because these huge buildings were not really suitable for the local people who did not have the money to maintain them.
As the island became economically insignificant and the population decreased, less and less maintenance was carried out; this situation was exasperated after independence. It didn't take long for Stone Town to fall into ruins as drains from the flat roofs became blocked, roofs became waterlogged, the timbers rotted and roofs and floors collapsed. The lime plaster on the facades dissolved and soon vegetation and trees began growing in what were once grand buildings. The civil war that raged for seventeen years during the 1970's and 80's caused a large influx of refugees to the island. Timber from these historic buildings including floors, windows and doors were chopped up and used as fuel for cooking on. Today as I walked along the sandy, dusty streets and alleys I felt like I was walking through a ghost town as whole streets of houses lay abandoned. The floors had collapsed and the walls crumbled; the windows were missing, just large black holes, like empty eyes looking out onto the street. Some buildings had completely collapsed; all that remained was a pile of rumble.
It was easy to see what this town must have been like during its heyday as I wandered around. Some of the buildings had been restored with help from UNESCO; these included the bank, a school and most impressively the Palacio São Paulo near the northern end of town. Jesuit priests originally built the Palacio São Paulo in 1610 as a college; the college was destroyed by fire in 1670 and was rebuilt in 1674. The Jesuits were thrown out of Portugal and the colonies in 1759 and the college was adapted to serve as the Governor Generals residence from 1763 until 1898. After 1898, with the moving of the capital, the building became the residence of the District Governor until Nampula superseded Stone Town as district capital in 1935. The building then stood empty for a number of years until it was renovated and converted into a residence for the Portuguese President and his ministers in 1956. In 1969 the building was once again renovated and now serves as a museum. It gives a unique glimpse at what life must have been like living here during the height of the Portuguese colony. The rooms have all been carefully laid out with impressive antique furniture including a collection of heavily ornamented Indo-Portuguese pieces. There are also ornaments from Portugal, China, India, Goa and Arabia, reflecting the islands many trade links.
There are also numerous public gardens, complete with a bandstands dotted around Stone Town and unexpected squares and tree-lined streets. There is a huge hospital that is still used by the locals next to the former Colonial Administration Offices, although conditions looked run down and primitive. There was hardly any traffic on the island and most of the time it was the same vehicles you saw every day; everyone walked about the island, as it was so small. This gave the place a tranquil, quiet feel and added to the atmosphere of a ghost town. Meanwhile Makuti Town was always busy, children playing nosily in the street, women dressed in bright colourful fabrics carrying baskets on their heads. The markets were always lively and a hive of activity, including the fish markets along the beaches. It seemed as though nearly everyone in town was always carrying a bundle of fish with them. Along the beaches, the eastern beach being lined with palm trees, swaying in the warm wind that blew off the Indian Ocean, men repaired their multi-coloured fishing nets. The fishing boat harbour is situated on the eastern shore in a small sheltered bay formed by a peninsula where the Church of Santo Ant?nio sits. Small wooden boats were anchored in this calm bay and along the beach boats were being built and repaired using traditional methods.
I found this island to really be an unexpected, little known jewel of this eastern coast of Africa. Before I had planned this trip I never knew it even existed. In many ways it was like someone had taken Stone Town on Zanzibar and placed it on it's own little island and forgotten about it. The challenge now is how to preserve this unique architectural heritage for future generations. Being listed as a World Heritage Site is a major step in the right direction but the problem still remains of how to find a sustainable way to conserve Stone Town. There are a number of problems to overcome if any conservation efforts are to be successful. Two of the major problems are the lack of ownership of the buildings and the lack of finance needed to repair them. Most importantly though, is that any conservation effort must involve the local population; it would be pointless to restore these buildings and then to leave them as shells to once again deteriorate. There are also far more pressing needs for the local people who live in economic hardship, the need for basic services such as schools and healthcare. Without involving the islanders in the conservation efforts and making them realise that Stone Town is their heritage as well and now the islands only asset, any plans will probably be doomed to failure. Tourism is the only hope for the future of this island but I feel it will be a long and hard struggle to realise this dream. A start has been made with the recent opening of a four star hotel, the Omuhi'piti, near the fort. I must criticise why this new, ugly building was ever given permission to be built. Surely it would of been more beneficial for everyone to renovate one of the many abandoned buildings in Stone Town instead. This could have rescued a small part of this architectural heritage as well as providing an international class hotel on the island.
Another problem that I fear will hinder the economic regeneration of this island is its location and the communications connecting it with the outside world. Without good roads and reliable transport, people will not make this long trek to the north and the only visitors will remain the ones who enjoy the challenge of the journey to discover this enchanting, lost island.
After three very enjoyable and fascinating days spent on the island exploring and unravelling its long and colourful history, it was time again to move on and begin my long and tortuous journey south. It was a journey I was not relishing but knew at least that it would be an adventure and probably a journey I wouldn't forget for a long time. In the early morning gloom I walked down the sandy streets through Makuti Town for the last time and back to the bridge where the pickups waited. At 06.00 I left the island driving across the long narrow bridge just as the sun rose behind me, the island silhouetted against the vast backdrop of the ocean.
I caught my final glimpse of Mozambique Island in the early morning sun as we drove across the long bridge and back onto the mainland. The island will be one place I shall never forget and as we continued driving away from the coast my mind began to think about the marathon journey that lay ahead of me. In any other country a trip as far as Beira would not be a major undertaking, but this was northern Mozambique where there was little traffic, infrequent busses and poor roads. I settled down and made myself comfortable as best I could in the back of the pickup and prepared myself for some uncomfortable and tiring days ahead of me. I would be pleased if I reached Beira in four days.
The road passed through many small villages where we stopped to drop off or pick up more passengers; there was always room for one more to hang on the back. Everyone travelled in the back of pickups, old men and women, young women with babies and young children, the women breast feeding their babies whenever they began to cry and wail. Along the side of the road we passed signs warning of minefields, a legacy of the seventeen-year civil war that ravaged this country during the 1970's and 80's. One minefield had been carefully marked and the Halo Trust were busy at work clearing the mines. The pickup from the island took me as far as Monapo where we were transferred onto the back of a truck for the rest of the journey to Nampula. The truck was slow as it bounced over the many potholes in the road but slightly more comfortable than the pickup; there was more room for a start and I sat on my pack behind the cab that sheltered me from the wind. By 11.00 I was back in Nampula and was dropped outside the railway station. I knew that by now I had already missed any public transport along the next leg of my journey to Quelimane, but walked along the road to the edge of town to where the busses were supposed to leave to see what, if anything, was happening.
After walking a couple of kilometres I found a lay-by where the busses south departed from, there was one bus sitting there. It was the Quelimane bus but it was not due to depart until 04.00 tomorrow morning, a wait of almost seventeen hours. I had a choice of staying the day in Nampula until the early hours of the morning or trying my luck hitchhiking; I chose the latter and stood beside the highway waiting for some traffic to pass. There were not many vehicles travelling along the road, a lot of the traffic was just local traffic and looked very unreliable; there were few trucks going past, my best chance of a lift. Maybe Sunday was not the best day of the week to be hitchhiking. After a couple of hours a pickup pulled up in the bus lay-by looking for anyone who wanted a lift to Mocuba, there was one other man sitting there waiting for the Quelimane bus, so we both jumped in the back. It made a pleasant change to be in the back of an empty pickup with plenty of room to stretch out. I made myself at home and lay back in the truck with my pack as a pillow and listened to my Neil Young tape as we cruised along the road under a clear blue sky.
The journey began to get uncomfortable about 100km out of Nampula when we crossed a bridge over the Ligonha River and the tarred road came to an end. We were travelling far faster than the truck that I had travelled on north along this same road a few days ago. The pickup was a four-wheel drive with high ground clearance and we literally flew over the bumps and potholes in the road. The speed and the road soon began to take it's toll on the vehicle as we first lost an exhaust mounting and the engine began to rattle nosily; this was easily fixed with some rope and the exhaust pipe was once again tied up securely. Not soon after that and there was a crashing noise from the back of the pickup as the rear bumper was ripped off while flying over a bump. It tumbled along the road through the dust; we stopped and the driver threw it in the back with us. This stretch of road must be littered with car parts, nuts, bolts, springs, exhausts etc. Other travellers with their own vehicles had told me that every week they have to go over their vehicle tightening up bolts, I could understand why now after seeing the pounding this vehicle was getting. During the few days since I travelled north along this road they had began at last to repair it, some of the rutted sections had been graded and fresh red dirt had been bulldozed into the worst holes.
By late afternoon we had reached Alto Molócuè, halfway; at least we had negotiated the worst part of the road. The other man hitching decided to stay here for the night; in the centre of town we soon replaced him with another women, who was also trying to get to Quelimane. We continued as night fell, it felt chilly once the sun had disappeared below the horizon and I lay back down and sheltered behind the cab. I gazed at the stars as we drove into the night. At one point the pickup swerved violently and skidded; we were thrown about in the back as the driver tried to avoid a dog in the road. We were going too fast and the dog too slow; there was a yelp and a thud as we hit it. We didn't stop and we could hear the dog howling as it lay beside the road dying. At 20.00 we arrived in Mocuba and the driver dropped us off at the bus park. The other women and myself asked around at the bus park and found that the first bus to Quelimane was due to depart at 04.00; we crossed the road to a cheap hotel where we checked in. I was exhausted and sat down for a cheap meal of rice and stew before crashing out for the night in a tiny box room on the first floor. It was a basic place and didn't have running water or any bathroom facilities that you would recognise, although it did have electricity, which was a surprise.
I slept until 03.30 when my alarm went off, time to hit the road again. I had slept fully clothed so it didn't take long to gather my things together and cross the road in the dark to the bus park and climb into the minibus that had a stereo system blaring, waking up the neighbourhood. The minibus was crammed full and we set off through a deserted Mocuba while most normal people were still fast asleep. There were a couple of windows missing in the bus, the cold night air blew through the bus and everyone huddled under jackets and blankets to try and stay warm. The road was dirt most of the way to Nicoadala, where the road branches off 20km to Quelimane on the coast. The sun had just risen as we passed the junction that was signposted to Beira; a thought crossed my mind to get out here and try to hitch to the Zambezi River. It was still early and I guessed I could probably pick up transport to the river from the Quelimane bus park, so I stayed on board for the last 20km.
When we reached the bus park, at just past 07.30, I found that the next bus for Beira was not due to leave until 16.00 later that afternoon. The timing just didn't make sense to me as the ferries across the river only run during the day, I wished I had jumped off the bus at Nicoadala and tried hitching instead. I was too tired though to double back now and resigned myself to taking the late afternoon bus and probably spending the night sleeping on the banks of the Zambezi. I found a quiet spot in the bus park and curled up on a bench and slept for five hours until lunchtime; I was surprised that no one disturbed me as I slept. At lunchtime I woke up feeling slightly more refreshed after this mornings early start. I walked into town to grab a bite to eat; there didn't seem much of interest in the town despite the town's long history. Before the Portuguese arrived the town was a major Arab trading centre and the main port to the interior. Nothing of this Arab settlement remains today and the only major building from the Portuguese era is an abandoned cathedral by the waterfront of the Bons Sinais River. Today the town is the capital of the Zambézia province and seems to have little to offer the visitor. The buildings are mostly modern, ugly and grey and the whole town looks very similar to others in the north of the country. I walked back to the bus park where I only had a couple more hours to wait.
After waiting so long it was just typical that we left an hour late at 17.00. At first I was surprised that the bus wasn't crammed full, there was even room to stretch my legs out in the aisle. This comfort didn't last long as we drove out of Quelimane and stopped along the main road where a crowd of passengers were waiting; within seconds the bus was packed and I couldn't move. The bus had the loudest stereo system on board I had yet encountered on this trip, it was absolutely deafening and what made it even worse was that they were playing the same tape over and over again. The music pierced through my eardrums, I'm not one to complain about loud music but this was becoming painful. In the end I resorted to putting earplugs in my ears but they proved almost useless as the whole bus vibrated to the beat of the music. There was no let up in the music and I had to struggle to find a bit of leg room to stretch out my legs as my knees began to ache as I sat cramped in my seat. It was 170km to the Zambezi River and took just over three hours along a good paved road.
It was a relief to get off the bus and at last the stereo was turned off, much to the relief of most of the passengers. I found myself standing on a dusty, dirt road beside the Zambezi River lined with makeshift shops, bars and restaurants. Most of the buildings were just mud huts with corrugated or thatched roofs. There was no electricity, only a few places had generators, most light came from kerosene lamps. This temporary settlement that resembled more of a refugee camp, was a hive of activity as people wandered about in the gloom. Small fires burned where people were cooking giving the whole place an eerie feel, it almost looked like the end of civilisation. Rubbish lay everywhere, plastic bottles, cans and remains of sugar cane stalks and the whole area smelt like a farmyard as goats and chickens wandered about freely. Trucks, busses and cars were parked alongside the road, everyone waiting for the ferry in the morning. People slept in their cars, some in tents others under their vehicles and some just anywhere there was space to stretch out. I walked into one of the makeshift bars that had a generator going to have a drink and a bite to eat. Inside I found a Swiss woman I had met last on Mozambique Island, having a beer. She told me that the bar had a shack out the back with a few rooms to rent for MET50,000 for the night. I took a room in this mud shack that came with a bed and a mosquito net and then sat down in the bar for a much-deserved beer.
The food didn't look very appetising, fish and rice; the fish looked very sad and I guessed that it had been cooked a long time ago as it sat on a plate on the bar covered with flies. The rice was cold and stodgy; I ate some bread rolls I had in my pack instead. By 22.00 there was not a lot to do here so I went to my room for the night. The people at the bar told me that the ferries start crossing at 04.00 in the morning, I doubted this but didn't want to be left behind as most of the other passengers spent the night either sleeping on or under the bus.
It was still dark when my alarm went off and I packed my bag and walked out to the bus. I was right, no one was going anywhere at this time in the morning and all around the bus the road was littered with sleeping bodies. I found a space on a reed mat and lay down gazing at the thousands of bright stars in the night sky. Gradually the distant horizon began to brighten heralding the start of another day and one by one the stars disappeared until only a dozen or so were left hanging on in the sky. The huge orange globe of the sun rose above the horizon casting the first warm rays of sun over us as one by one people woke up and wandered about in the dawn light still looking half asleep. Smoke lingered in the morning air as fires were lit to cook breakfast on. The business owners busied themselves in a fruitless task of sweeping the mud in front of their shacks, they only managed to brush the rubbish from one place to another. I walked down to the giant river where mist hung above the water and waited for the ferry to appear. Time slipped by and the only boats out on the river were dug out canoes and a few small motorboats, all of them fighting with the strong current as they made their way slowly across the river.
Soon a rumour began to spread around that the vehicle ferry was not running today. There were four other people on the bus who only spoke English and did not have a basic grasp of Portuguese; there was one man from Malawi and three brothers from Somalia and they were all heading to Maputo to visit relatives. The five of us found ourselves hanging around together trying to work out what was going on in between discussing the up coming football world cup and who we thought would win; the South American teams seemed to be favourite. By about 07.30 the consensus was that the vehicle ferry was not running and that rather than take the bus across the river we would simply swap busses with the one that came up from Beira, which now stood on the opposite side of the river. It was not long after that that a small motorboat appeared through the mist carrying all the passengers and their possessions from the bus headed for Quelimane.
It was a chaotic scene as the passengers disembarked down a slippery plank and men stood in the water and mud passing the luggage ashore in a chain gang. We all waited patiently on the muddy bank until the last sack was unloaded; now it was our turn to try and walk up this wet and muddy plank. I really thought I would slip into the river as I tried to board the boat. With my pack on my back, every other step I took up the plank I slipped back down, I was sure my time was up and that I would slip into the muddy river. I reached halfway and desperately grabbed for the railings on the boat and hauled myself up. Much to my relief I had made it aboard and I placed my pack on the roof and took a seat at the back next to the wheel. This turned out not to be the best place to sit as the exhaust pipe from this ancient boat was right beside me and periodically spluttered and covered me in black soot. As we sailed across I could see on both banks the concrete embankment for the road from a long forgotten plan to bridge this huge river. They just stood there now as silent reminders of some governments grand plan.
We crossed the main channel of the river and sailed up a small branch against the strong current. The banks were covered in reeds and in the distance we could hear the steady thud of a large diesel engine. Around a corner came the ferry that was not supposed to be running. It didn't look like the safest ferry in the world; it appeared to be a number of pontoons lashed together with two large, yellow diesel engines bolted to the back. On board were some large trucks and a few cars and the deck of the pontoons were barely above the level of the water. If my car was on board I would of definitely made sure my insurance policy covered me for accidental sinking. We sailed past and on to the slipway on the opposite side. It was a similar scene here along the banks, as dozens of cars and trucks waited patiently for their turn to cross; I didn't envy them and was now glad we had taken this small motorboat.
The other bus was waiting by what passed as the slipway where people were busy washing pots and pans as well as doing laundry. To my relief this bus didn't have a mega decibel stereo system. Once everyone and every thing was either in or on the bus we set off, the time just past 08.00. The queue of traffic waiting to cross on this side was huge, mostly they were large trucks; I would estimate that the waiting time would be measured in days rather than hours. The dirt road immediately from the river and past the town of Caia was in fairly good shape and currently being repaired with aid from the US government. This was the first aid project I'd seen funded by the US on this trip, either the European Union or the Japanese government funded every other major project. The road followed alongside a disused railway line that ran from Beira and across the border into Malawi, the bridges had been destroyed and the rails left hanging helplessly into the river.
It wasn't long until we turned off this fairly smooth, wide road and onto a small, sandy, bumpy track. The road was in a terrible condition, mainly due to the soft, sandy soil. Eventually, as the road passed through a fairly thick forest, it narrowed to just a single track and looked more like a forest hiking trail than a road. The bumps in the road were huge and the poor passengers sitting at the back of the bus were forever hitting their heads on the roof, in the end some of them decided to stand instead. This road was the worst I have ever travelled along. I was glad that this was the dry season as during the rains this road would be impassable. In places where the vehicles had struggled through the mud and sand, the road was almost a metre lower than the surrounding land. The whole way to Beira the road closely followed the railway line. All along the railway line lay the remains of trains, most of them derailed and the rusty hulks lying amongst the trees slowly decaying. The few stations we passed lay abandoned, overrun with vegetation, a train going nowhere, the rails slipping down the embankment. We also passed by deserted villages, just the shells of houses remained, the occupants long since gone.
As we slowly drove along this rough track we began to develop some kind of mechanical problem. Whenever we slowed down to negotiate a series of bumps the engine stalled; this began to start happening far too frequently for comfort and soon every time we slowed the engine would die in a spluttering cough. We met another bus from this company coming the other way along the road, well in fact it was a truck but the cargo was people. They had a spare fuel filter on board that we fitted onto our bus. As we stopped in the middle of nowhere people from the bus wandered off the road into the trees to go to the toilet. I stayed on the road, ever wary of the risk of landmines, especially as the road was next to the railway line that had been completely destroyed during the civil war. Soon we were once again on our way but it didn't take long for the same problem to begin again and before long we were stuck beside the road. Eventually the driver managed to fix the problem, there was a blockage in the fuel line, and we continued on our way without any further problems.
It was a relief when finally we reached Dondo and the paved road that took us the 30km to Beira on the coast. I was just thankful that we didn't end up stuck in the middle of nowhere for most of the day. It was 15.00 when I arrived in the centre of Beira. From there I took a minibus out of town along the coast to a bar, restaurant and campground called Biques; they also had caravans to rent on the beach for MET250,000 a night. After three days, which felt more like a week, I had arrived back in civilisation, feeling totally exhausted after all the hard journeys and early starts over the last week or more. I planned to spend a day in Beira resting before continuing my journey south to the beach at Vilankulo, where I planned to spend four days doing nothing. I went to the bar at Biques with a huge smile on my face and ordered a cold beer, a burger and chips and watched the news from the BBC on the satellite television. Civilisation tasted sweet.
Beira is Mozambique's second largest city and is situated almost halfway down the coast between Mozambique Island and the capital, Maputo. Beira is a fairly modern city dating back to the late 19th century when the port was developed, which is now the country's busiest, and the railway line was constructed to Harare in Zimbabwe. Mozambique definitely felt like a country divided in two between the north and the south, the divide being the Zambezi River. Unlike the northern towns, Beira felt fairly well developed. The services were functioning, the most noticeable things being the street lamps that worked, which also stood at right angles, traffic on the roads and no potholes. On the edge of the downtown area was a Shoprite supermarket and a branch of Hungary Lion, a real sign that I was back out of the wilderness.
It was absolute bliss to again have a complete nights sleep without having to get up in the early hours of the morning to catch a bus. Still I didn't lie in late, after so many early starts getting up at 08.00 felt like I had wasted half the day. I had a great fried breakfast and a real cup of coffee at the bar at Biques before heading off into the city. Biques was about 4km east of the city centre by Makuti beach. The road into the city lead alongside the white sandy beach where a rusting wreck of a commercial trawler lay stranded. There is not an awful lot to see or do in Beira but it is a useful place to spend a day or two resting and using the city's facilities. After stopping at an Internet cafe for a couple of hours at the telecom building I went for a walk around the city. It is a fairly ugly city comprising of many tall, grey, concrete apartment blocks. The architecture is typical of former socialist countries, a legacy of the governments experiment with socialism during the 1970's and 80's and it's links with the former USSR and East Germany. I found a certain beauty in this bland, grey, monotonous architecture, the way that one building effortlessly blended with another and the uniformity of style. No money was spent on making the buildings pleasing to the eye, they were just practicable and served the purpose for which they were designed.
Despite the town now looking like a soviet suburb, remnants of the colonial era buildings still remained. Most of these buildings were around the port area and the majority of them were dilapidated. I could still get an impression of what this city must have looked like during the Portuguese administration. The most notable building in the city was the cathedral built in the early 20th century using stones from the fort at San Caetano in Sofala. The ancient town of Sofala lies on the coast about 40km south of Beira. The town was founded around the 9th century and was one of the most important ports and influential centres along the East African coast. The main trade through the port was gold and it had links to present day Tanzania, Madagascar, India and Indonesia. The Portuguese built their first fort here in 1505 with stones that were shipped from Portugal. Today nothing remains of Sofala and even the ruins of the fort have been swamped by the sea, so I didn't go and visit.
Beira is also the political headquarters for the countries main opposition party, Renamo. They originally fought against the Frelimo government during the country's seventeen-year civil war; Frelimo was Mozambique's independence movement during the Portuguese administration. In a sense the war in Mozambique was not really a 'civil' war. Renamo was set up by the governments of Rhodesia and South Africa during the 1970's to counter Mozambique's support for the independence movements in the two countries, ZAPU and the ANC. Renamo's only aim was the destabilisation of the Frelimo government by the destruction of the country's social and communications infrastructure and had no ideology of it's own. They destroyed roads, railway lines, and bridges and terrorised civilians by murdering anyone with a profession, doctors, teachers, engineers etc. It was the collapse of the USSR and the end of the cold war that sent a tide of change through Africa, including Mozambique. The Frelimo government abandoned its socialist ideology and switched to a market economy and announced multiparty elections. A ceasefire was agreed in Rome during 1990 between the two warring parties and a formal peace agreement was signed in October 1992 followed by a successful UN monitored disarmament and demobilisation campaign. The first democratic elections were held in October 1994 in which Frelimo won 44% of the vote and Renamo became the main opposition party winning 38%. Renamo's transformation from guerrilla organisation to political party was complete.
After spending the best part of the day strolling around the city I jumped on a minibus and returned to Biques. I was going to visit the nearby Makonde woodcarving workshop, a kilometre or so east along the coast by the lighthouse, but I felt exhausted and fell asleep in my caravan. By the time I woke it was dark and too late, one of my main regrets during my visit to Beira. I consoled myself with the fact that there were workshops in Maputo, where I was heading next, and that I would be able to buy some good Makonde carvings there instead. I had dinner at the bar, the woman who owned Biques was very friendly and helped me out sorting out my transport to Vilankulo the next day. The busses leave downtown Beira at 05.00 in the morning and the owner phoned and arranged for a taxi to pick me up at 04.00. I set my alarm clock for 03.30 and resigned myself to yet another middle of the night start to my journey.
By the time my alarm clock went off I had just fallen asleep, I should have learnt by now not to sleep during the afternoons. I really hadn't been feeling too well though, I had caught a slight cold that on top of everything else had drained me. I stumbled out into the dark; the only sound was the waves crashing onto the beach. I locked up the caravan and as I gave the keys to the night watchman the headlights of the taxi appeared turning into the sandy car park outside the bar. Of course it goes without saying that the taxi driver ripped me off and by 04.30 I was standing in a street downtown shouting expletives at the driver; at least the day could only get better from now on. I climbed onto the bus and as I walked down the aisle a friendly face stood up and said hello. It was the Malawian man who had been on the bus with the Somali brothers and me from Quelimane; he too had spent a couple of nights resting from his journey so far from Blantyre. He was now travelling all the way to Maputo, which would take another day and a half, I didn't envy him especially because in a week he would have to make the return journey all the way back to Malawi.
I had heard that the safety record of the busses in Mozambique was appalling and that the killing of dozens of passengers in road accidents was a common occurrence, especially in the south around Maputo. It seemed that the major causes of these accidents were drunken drivers and driver fatigue. In addition, the condition of the busses was very questionable. So often during this journey I had seen busses coming down the road sideways, where the front and the rear wheels were out of alignment. Straight roads are not too much of a problem but when going around a corner the back end of the bus would dangerously drift out onto the opposite side of the road. To counter this problem the government had banned busses from travelling through the night. How that ban worked was fairly much open to interpretation with the local police force on whether the bus could pass through a checkpoint. This explained why we sat and waited until 05.00 at which point all three busses parked alongside the road departed.
It was still dark though as we drove out of Beira, there was not much other traffic around although pedestrians appeared in the headlights of the bus shuffling along the side of the road as if they too were half asleep like myself. As the sun rose we past by fields where mist hung over the crops like a blanket encircling small villages of thatched mud huts. This journey south was proving to be uneventful, compared to my previous travels in the country; I wasn't complaining though. It was the first full sized bus I had been on since crossing the border from Malawi and it wasn't packed full of people and their possessions, there were even spare seats. In this relative comfort I soon found myself falling asleep. I periodically woke up but found it hard to keep my eyes open for any length of time and dozed for most of the journey. I was aware though of the bumps in the road and woke up as we slowed to cross the Save River. This giant of a river flows down from the Eastern Highlands of Zimbabwe and was bridged here by an impressive suspension bridge.
After what seemed like a long time we stopped at the junction to Vilankulo. I looked at my watch and was surprised to see that it was only midday; after such an early start to the day it felt more like late afternoon. I rode in the back of a pickup the last 20km to Vilankulo and the coast. I was dropped by the market and before I even climbed out of the pickup a young boy approached me to show me the way to the Baobab Backpackers. We walked from the market along sandy streets lined with palm trees, past reed and thatch huts; it was a quiet town and was more like a large village. The Baobab Backpackers was to the south of the market in a peaceful location beside the beach. It had almost everything I needed for the next few days to relax under a shady palm tree and recover from my exhausting journey from the north of the country. The accommodation was in a number of traditionally built reed huts that were dotted about just back from the beach. I took a hut for myself that had it's own small veranda, the only disappointment being that none of the huts were right down on the beach; I was still close enough though to hear the waves gently rolling onto the white sand. The only facility the place didn't have was a restaurant, but the owners had grand plans to build a restaurant, a new bar and a swimming pool; they had already started on the restaurant.
I spent the afternoon sitting on my veranda until about 16.00 when I felt tired and decided to go and lie down and snooze for an hour or so before going into town for something to eat. I lay down on my comfortable bed and immediately fell asleep. I woke briefly at 20.00 and while I was still half asleep I shut my door and fixed the mosquito net above the bed; the whole time I could barely keep my eyes open. The next time I woke up I saw daylight shining through the reed walls of my circular hut, I checked my watch and saw that it was 08.00 the next morning; I had slept almost solidly for sixteen hours. That was the longest I had ever slept in my life and it was only after I woke up that I really realised how fatigued I had become from the endless days of travelling. I still didn't feel fully recovered that morning, I still had a slight cold and the last meal I had eaten was playing havoc with my digestive system. I rested for another day.
Vilankulo is one of Mozambique's main beach resorts. It's name comes from the former chief of the area, Gamala Vilankulo Mukoke, although during colonial times it was changed to Vilanculos and even today I heard the town referred to by both names. The town stretches along the endless white sandy beaches fringed with palm trees with a harbour in a small bay to the north. Off the coast between 10 and 25km is the Bazaruto Archipelago, which consists of five main islands, Magaruque, Benguera, Santa Carolina, Bazaruto and Bangue. Most of the archipelago is a national park and the islands are a major tourist destination with crystal clear waters, coral reefs, abundant marine life and many opportunities for diving and sailing. The majority of lodges on the islands are top range and out of my budget, there is though a campsite on Benguera Island but I didn't have a tent. The ocean between the coast and the islands is very shallow and at low tide the sea turned into a maze of sandbanks. It was impossible to swim at low tide unless you were prepared for a long walk. While I was staying high tide was late in the afternoon so I managed to have a swim at the end of the day, just as the sun began to disappear behind the palm trees and the shadows stretched out across the beach.
The town didn't feel that developed for the countries major resort. There is still a lot of potential for the tourist industry to grow here and there were quiet a few people, mostly South Africans, looking at buying up land to build tourist lodges. I could also see the potential for the town to turn into tourist hell with the large influx of visitors taking over the place to the detriment of the local population. Already kids would continuously approach me as I walked through the town asking me what I was looking for and where I was going. After a while it became tedious and I doubt that it will get any better especially as the growth of the tourist industry will highlight even more the disparages between rich and poor.
I spent four days living beside the beach in my little reed and thatched hut, spending my days reading and writing on my veranda and swimming in the ocean once the tide was up at the end of the day. Three other people I had previously met in Livingstone, Zambia about six weeks ago arrived at the backpackers. It was interesting to catch up on our journeys. The last day I spent there was my birthday, I didn't do much, my digestive system was still crook but it made a change to spend my birthday on a white, tropical beach sitting under a palm tree doing nothing. My next destination was Inhambane further down the coast. The people I had met from Livingstone had their own car and were also heading south to the beaches at Tofo and Barra on the same peninsula as Inhambane. Unfortunately they had already picked up some other hitchhikers and had five people in the car, together with their luggage and there was no room for one more. I decided I would hitch a ride from the main highway instead.
I planned to make an early start from the Baobab Backpackers in Vilankulo, but ended up talking for a couple of hours that morning with some other travellers around the bar while drinking a few cups of tea. Eventually I decided to leave, it was one of those places were you could easily stay a long time and I forced myself to pick up my pack and walk back to the market to find a pickup going out to the main road. On my way out of Baobab I passed the friends I had met in Livingstone who were packing their car and getting ready for their journey south too. I told them to wave if they saw me standing on the side of the road or sitting on the back of a truck. At the market I didn't have to wait long for a pickup to leave. We went on a short tour of the town to collect some more cargo and passengers to fill up the back before stopping at the petrol station and then heading out of town. The journey was only 20km and I was soon standing back at the dusty junction with the main highway.
There were no vehicles in sight travelling along this flat, straight road except the pickup I had just travelled in, disappearing north into the distance. Parked alongside the road by the junction was a large truck carrying sacks of maize and plantains. There were also a dozen or so hitchhikers sitting on the back so I walked up to the cab and asked the driver, using my very basic grasp of Portuguese, if I could also climb on too for a ride to Inhambane. He nodded and told me to climb on board. I found a comfortable place to sit on the maize sacks and greeted the other locals travelling on the back. Apart from the cargo and the hitchhikers, there was also someone's double bed and the obligatory African farmyard, which included goats, ducks and chickens. The truck didn't travel very fast, but it was a relaxing way to travel watching the endless bush pass by. I hadn't been travelling long on the back of this truck when my friends from Livingstone overtook us, waving as they passed.
It turned out not to be the best day for travelling on the back of a truck. The skies were overcast for the first time in weeks and before I left Vilankulo a shower just clipped the coast dropping a few large drops of rain. The clouds to the south now looked very grey and threatening. It wasn't long until we hit the first shower and we all huddled as best we could behind maize sacks to keep dry; luckily the shower wasn't too heavy and didn't last long and we were soon back out in warm sunshine. At the next town we stopped at I quickly dug out my jacket from my pack and prepared myself as it looked like we would be hitting another shower soon. It was a wise move and soon after setting off again we found ourselves huddling behind the maize sacks once more as the raindrops hit us like bullets; again though, it was only a short but heavy shower. We stopped at almost every town along the way selling sacks of maize beside the road. As soon as we had stopped women with empty sacks and buckets, that were quickly filled, would surround the truck. To me it looked like a chaotic way to do business, as one by one sacks were unloaded to the waiting crowds beside the road.
The trip to Inhambane was taking a long time with all these stops and the slow speed of the truck, especially while going up the hills. Somewhere along this journey we crossed over the Tropic of Capricorn and for the first time on this long trip through Africa I found myself outside the tropics. By the middle of the afternoon we were travelling past an endless forest of palm trees as far as the eye could see. We stopped at a junction where the driver haggled with a crowd of hawkers all selling bags of prawns. While we waited a pickup pulled up on the opposite side of the road and in the back I saw another white man, it turned out to be the guy driving the car from Livingstone. At first I didn't recognise him because he was out of context sitting in the back of a pickup with the locals. Using sign language he managed to communicate to me that he had been involved in an accident further down the road. That was all I could understand, he looked uninjured and I just hoped that everyone else was okay. It wasn't long after leaving this junction, the driver with a couple of bags of prawns in his cab for dinner, until we reached the scene of the accident. His car was beside the road, the offside front smashed in. On the opposite side of the road was the car he had hit, head on. The other car was far more damaged, the front offside was wrecked and also the whole offside of the car had been smashed in. It looked like he had somehow crashed into this oncoming car. I later found out the cause of the accident when I reached Maputo from someone I had met in Vilankulo who received an email from one of the girls who was hitching a ride in the car. Apparently there was a minibus on their side of the road travelling very slowly, they were driving too fast and didn't have time to brake when approaching it from behind and had to swerve around the minibus. They couldn't swerve to the left because there were people walking alongside the road so swerved around the minibus to the right and hit an oncoming car. They were very unlucky to hit someone considering how few vehicles travel along this road. The driver of the other car received a serious injury to his arm and had to wait over twenty-four hours at a hospital before a doctor could treat him, no one else was hurt.
By late afternoon we arrived in Maxixe, a busy town along the highway; Inhambane was on a peninsular on the other side of a bay. I was dropped by the slipway where there were either small motorboats or slower, cheaper dhows making the short crossing to Inhambane. I took my chances with one of the overloaded motorboats and paid my MET5,000 fare. It was high tide and the water slightly choppy, waves breaking over the bows of this small, wooden boat. I wouldn't have liked to make this trip during bad weather, I had heard too many horror stories of these small ferries sinking in Africa. We made it safely to the pier at Inhambane and I disembarked, happy to be back on dry land and walked the short distance to the Pensão Pachiça on the waterfront. The railway line ran down alongside the main street in town, Avenida de Independencia, and out along the long, concrete pier, a rusting link to the towns former position as a major port.
Inhambane is a friendly, relaxed town with a backwater feel to it. When the Portuguese explorer Vasco da Gama first came here in 1598 he named the place Terra da Boa Gente, the Land of the Kind People. It didn't feel as though much had changed over the last few hundred years, I found the town to be welcoming, quiet and hassle free. It is one of Mozambique's oldest and most historic towns. Even before the Portuguese arrived the town was an important trading centre and port for the Muslim dhows that sailed along the African east coast. The town remained the main commercial centre in the south of the country and one of the largest towns in the country until Lourenço Marques, present day Maputo, became the capital in 1898. During the 1950's the road was built from the capital to Inhambane and the port fell into disuse. There are many old and historic buildings around the town, including the church of Nossa Senhora de Conceicão, which was currently being restored. The tower of the church is a landmark all around the town and the bay, although it looked like no-one had got around to restoring the clock faces yet, which had all stopped showing different times. The old Mosque on the northern waterfront of the town was built in 1840 and just a couple of blocks along the road was the far more modern looking new Mosque.
I spent a day exploring the town and wandering along the streets. Again I could see the evidence of the country's socialist past with street names like Karl Marx Avenue. In the park by the pier in the centre of Avenida de Independencia stood the Frelimo emblem that was erected after independence from Portugal in 1975 and replaced the marble statue of Vasco Da Gama, which is now hidden behind the Xiphefo building further up the avenue. Also staying at the Pensão was another English lad, Andy. He had sailed back from Maxixe on a dhow and had been talking to the captain who had offered to sail him around the peninsular to Barra for MET250,000. This sounded like a good idea to me and the next morning we walked down to the pier to find Captain John. We soon found him but his dhow was already fully loaded for a trip across the bay to Maxixe, so we began negotiating with some of the other dhow captains who were anchored alongside the pier.
It soon became obvious that no one wanted to take us to Barra; the main reason was that the sea was too rough for these dhows once they got out of the fairly calm bay. We changed our plans and instead negotiated to go to Linga Linga, about 15km north of Inhambane at the top of the bay. The haggling proved to be very frustrating but eventually we thought we had agreed a price with a captain for MET150,000. Time was against us as the tide was going out during the morning, which we needed to sail with as the wind was blowing from the north. If we left it too late we would end up sailing against both the tide and the wind and probably would end up sailing backwards. We quickly walked into town to pick up some food and water for the trip and returned to the pier to board the dhow. Suddenly it appeared that the captain and the crew had changed their minds while we had been away and now refused to take us. At this point I lost patience with them; the first rule of negotiating is that once you agree a price, both parties stick by it; they had gone back on the agreement and their word and really pissed me off for wasting so much of our time. After a short argument and once I was happy they understood how I felt about them, I walked off. Just then another dhow sailed up alongside the pier and dropped anchor. We tried one last time to negotiate a fare to Linga Linga and back. The first price they offered was MET175,000, we agreed and within minutes we were wading out to the dhow and set sail heading north.
By now it had just gone half past ten, we had wasted far too much time standing about negotiating on the pier. Our captain told us that it would take two hours to reach Linga Linga, where we would stop for lunch for an hour, and then two hours to sail back to Inhambane. I had a feeling that it might take a bit longer as we were tacking up the bay against the wind and the tide by now had already gone out quite far and would soon turn. Like the ocean off Vilankulo, this bay was also very shallow and we were soon faced with an obstacle course of sandbanks. We soon began to doubt the ability of both our captain and two-man crew, one of whom was only a young boy. I think it was lucky that we couldn't speak a common language because I'm sure that if we could of understood their conversations we would of only worried more about their ability. After a couple of hours we were nowhere near our destination and were forever running aground on sandbanks. At one stage we all had to get out and push the dhow over a sandbank through the shallow water. It felt strange to be so far out from the coast but yet to be walking through only knee high water. The highlight of our voyage though was when a school of dolphins came swimming alongside the dhow, between us and a long sandbank; they looked so elegant as they effortlessly powered their way through the sea. Looking back on this voyage, which by now was turning into an epic, we should of taken control of the boat; the captain and the crew did not have a clue how to sail or tack against the wind. In the end the captain left the young boy in charge of the rudder and by then we came to a standstill. The tide had now turned as well and the battle to reach Linga Linga became just about impossible.
I had almost resigned to the fact that we would never reach our destination as we slowly sailed sideways just a few tantalising kilometres from the shore, where we could even now count the palm trees and see people sitting on the beach. We struggled on against a strong incoming tide, the sun getting lower and lower in the sky. At last, after over five and a half hours, we reached the beach, I couldn't believe we had actually made it. As we approached I dived overboard and swam to the beach, getting caught in the strong current that washed me down along the beach towards a rusting wreck of a ship beached in the sand. I was determined to have a swim today, it could be my last chance to swim in the Indian Ocean on this trip. As I sat on a coconut on the sandy beach drying off, the sun set casting an orange glow across the bay; so much for having lunch here let alone stopping for an hour.
Meanwhile Andy wandered down the beach and found a local man who could speak English. The two of them came back and the local man acted as an interpreter between us and the crew of the dhow. Now it turned out that they didn't want to sail back to Inhambane tonight and suggested that we spend the night at Linga Linga and they would sail to a nearby village and stay with friends. This discussion went on for a while and I pointed out to them that we had agreed on a return trip, I could easily see us spending the night here and then becoming stuck at Linga Linga as it didn't look like a busy place and I doubted whether the crew of this dhow would return. Andy was in two minds about either staying the night or sailing back through the dark to Inhambane; I really wanted to get back because tomorrow I had planned to travel to Maputo, so I would be there for Friday and the start of the World Cup. I really didn't think the return voyage would be as difficult as the trip we had just completed. The tide was flowing into the bay, the sandbanks had been submerged by the incoming tide and the wind, even though it had dropped since the sun set, was still blowing gently from the north. My only concern was sailing through the dark on this small, unlit, wooden boat, but there was very little shipping in the bay and most of the dhows had moored up for the night.
We eventually agreed to return and set off into the dark back towards Inhambane, the lights of the town flickering in the distance. At first we made slow progress from the island, the wind hardly touching the sail, I began to think that we had made the wrong decision. I feared that we were in for another five-hour epic voyage across the bay. Luckily we were just sheltered by the island from the wind and soon the sail began to bellow for the first time all day and we could feel the boat surge through the water. Suddenly the whole mood on the boat changed as we felt for the first time as though we were getting somewhere. The crew who had been sitting in silence since we left Linga Linga began to chat again and Andy and myself relaxed feeling confident that we had made the correct decision. We lay down on the dhow and watched the stars in the sky and the lights on the shore slowly slip by. Gradually the lights of Inhambane became brighter and brighter until suddenly the town was hit by a power cut and it literally disappeared into the blackness in front of us. Everyone on board the boat began laughing, it was as though someone didn't want us to find our way back and just flicked off a switch. After a while the lights came back on and we found ourselves very near to the shore. The captain sailed the boat straight to the shore and beached it on a small stretch of sand on the northern shores of Inhambane; the return trip had taken just over two hours. Everyone was happy to be back and we paid the captain and also gave him a generous tip because I really felt that he didn't realise what he had let himself in for when he agreed to take us on this trip. The day ended perfectly when we walked into town and found a highly recommended restaurant open, the previous night it had been closed. We were starving, after all we never did have time for lunch on Linga Linga. The voyage across the bay will be one I won't forget for a very long time.
I left Inhambane the next morning to travel to Maputo. After paying my bill at the Pensão Pachiça I just hoped that the MET150,000 left in my pocket was enough to get me to the city. I had tried to change some US dollars at the banks in town the day after I arrived but none of them would do any foreign transactions. I really can't understand these banks attitudes because all they end up doing is harming the local economy. After all, if I can't change money I have no money to spend in the local hotels, restaurants and shops and have no alternative but to leave the town. That was the position I found myself in today. I took the ferry from the pier back across the bay to Maxixe and tried to change some money at a bank there; again with no success. I decided to try and hitchhike to Maputo and save my money for a taxi fare when I arrived in the city. I gave myself until 11.00, if I didn't get a ride by then I would flag down the next passing bus to Maputo and worry about how I would pay a taxi fare when I reached the city.
Just after 11.00 I climbed on board a TSL bus to Maputo, the fare was MET90,000, which just left me MET60,000 in my pocket. After standing in the hot sun for a few hours beside the dusty highway I felt tired and once again spent a lot of the journey fast asleep. Whenever I did open my eyes the scenery looked the same, palm trees as far as the eye could see. By the middle of the afternoon we had reached the town of Xai-Xai. During the devastating floods in February 2000 this was one of the worst effected towns. The Limpopo River flows past the southern edge of the town on it's last leg to the Indian Ocean after flowing from the north of South Africa forming the border with Botswana and Zimbabwe. Today it looked very calm and innocent; it was hard to imagine that this river brought so much destruction to this area. The road crossed a huge flood plain south of the river. All along the causeway new bridges were being built so as to stop the causeway becoming a dam in any future floods.
It was dark when we arrived in Maputo, stopping in the suburbs to drop off passengers and our cargo of two-dozen goats that had been tied to the roof. I was finally dropped off at the TSL bus depot to the north of the downtown area. One of the staff at the depot negotiated with a taxi driver on my behalf to take me to the Base Backpackers on Patrice Lumumba Street. I didn't have enough money for the fare of MET150,000, which I was sure was too high but was not in a good position to argue, especially as I didn't have the money anyway. The taxi driver agreed to take me on the assumption that someone at the Base would be able to change some dollars for me. I kept my fingers crossed and rode into the city. After a while we found the right house on Patrice Lumumba and I was greeted by Mandela at the reception. I quickly explained my money situation while the taxi driver stood in the background of the reception. Mandela immediately went off and came back with MET150,000 to pay the driver; at last everyone was happy and I could relax.
I hadn't eaten all day and by now I was very hungry. Mandela gave me another MET150,000 and told me where there was a good restaurant just around the corner on Avenida 24 de Julho. I was soon sitting down and indulging myself with a giant size pizza; it felt good to be in this city after a tough journey down from Malawi over the last couple of weeks or so. The Base Backpackers was a fantastic place to stay, at the time it was not listed in any guidebooks so everyone who was staying there had heard about it from word of mouth. It was kept spotlessly clean, the dorms were a good size and not overcrowded and the kitchen well equipped with cold drinks for sale from the fridge. Lou, who owned the place with his wife Fran, had left Mandela in charge for a few days who was from Mbabane in Swaziland. He welcomed the chance to come to Maputo for a while to escape the cold of winter in Swaziland.
I had heard a lot of good reports from people who had visited this city and had been looking forward to my stay here for a long time. I had only been in the city for one night and I already had fallen in love with the place. There was an energy to the city that I hadn't felt in many other African cities I had visited, it almost felt as though the city was alive. Unlike other cities I had visited on this trip where my general description would go something like, this city would never win any prizes for cultural heritage (Lusaka and Lilongwe spring to mind), Maputo was the opposite. The city was full of museums; there was the National Art Museum displaying contemporary Mozambique art, the Chissano Museum containing sculptors by the artist of the same name, the Museum of the Revolution documenting the country's struggle for independence as well as the Money, Natural History and Geology museums.
The whole layout of the city was very pleasant with wide avenues lined with jacaranda and flame trees. The city sits on a small hill with a cliff facing south to Maputo Bay and the Indian Ocean to the east. The main commercial areas are along the main thoroughfare, Avenida 24 de Julho and around the port area. There is a lot of interesting architecture around the city including two buildings designed by Gustav Eiffel (he also designed a tower in Paris). He designed the dome on the extraordinary train station, built in 1910, which has to be one of the worlds great train stations, the most impressive I have yet seen. He also built the experimental Iron House with its metal clad exterior as the governor's residence in the late 19th century. This is next to the colonial style Centro Cultural Franco-Mocambicano with its veranda's, balconies and intricate ironwork. Just to the north of the Iron House is the large square, Praca da Independencia, which is dominated to the east by the modern, white cathedral and to the north by the neo-classical City Hall. The oldest part of the city is around the port where there is a mid 19th century fort built by the Portuguese; today the fort looks very much out of place surrounded by modern concrete buildings. The area between the fort and the train station to the west is full of interesting colonial era architecture, although some of the buildings were very dilapidated and a few were nothing more than empty shells.
The World Cup kicked off on the 31st of May and at the Base, Mandela acquired a television and set it up in the dining area next to the kitchen. The opening match was between the world champions, France and newcomers, Senegal. Senegal won the match one, nil much to the delight of everyone in Maputo. The football began to dictate my days, I would watch the matches during the morning and walk off around the city in the afternoons. Disaster nearly struck on the day of England's first match against Sweden. The kick off was at 11.30 but at 08.00 that morning the whole city was hit by a power outage. By 11.00 power still had not been restored so I rushed into the city to find a bar with both a satellite television and a generator. There was only one bar, down on Avenida Julius Nyerere, that was still in business with a truck parked outside with a generator on the back; the bar was packed with people from all corners of the world.
I could of easily stayed a long time in the city but in the end spent four very enjoyable days there. It would be a great city to start or finish a journey through this continent; if you had just arrived it would ease you into African life or if you were leaving you could relax and enjoy the many amenities the city has and prepare yourself for life back home. It was Tuesday when I left Maputo and Mozambique. Lou, the owner of The Base was driving to Swaziland with Fran for a day trip and offered me a ride to Manzini. We left around 07.30 in the morning and within an hour or so we were at the border town of Namaacha, my adventure through Mozambique over.
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