Mocambique, La Ilha bonita

On Tuesday 26th October we skipped merrily to the aiport knowing we had avoided 2 days of bus and train challenges. A few hours later we were gripping the handrests with sweaty palms as the plane buffeted through what the pilot described as “light to medium turbulence”. Both myself and Muneeza are nervous flyers when it comes to choppy wind (oh er!) so we were delighted when the plane touched cloth and we were once more on terra firma.

We met a friendly French dude at the aiport who was heading to Pemba and needed to hit the central bus station like us. As he spoke good Portuguese he saved us from being stung for an expensive cab ride, so we returned the favour and let him jump in for free. We managed to find a chiappas bus to Ilha de Mocambique within seconds of getting to the station but this is when it all turned sour. The bus was rammed and still they crammed us in. We had to sit right at the front, Muneeza squashed between Big Mama and even bigger Papa. I had to perch on pathetic cushions behind the driver’s seat that apparently constituted a seat. My legs were jammed between the people facing me on the real seats. And still they packed more people in. After 20mins we departed and within 10 more I couldn’t feel my right leg. Now, I have a healthy paranoia about DVT and was convinced that 2.5hrs sat like that would kill me. My only option was to stand. So for what turned out to be an elongated 3.5hrs (thanks to officious police stops – officials here love to take their time, oblivious to the discomfort of passengers) I had to stand in a semi arched position with my feet rooted in one place and my head and neck twisted to cope with the curved roof. Needless to say we arrived at Ilha de Mocambique with me spitting bricks.

Unfortunately, due to the delay, we arrived after the last light of day had seeped away over the horizon so couldn’t explore the town. We headed straight to our hospedaje, Escondinho, that had been recommended by the French dude. It turned out to be a great recommendation – the rooms were big, we had a really cool external private bathroom and there was a large pool. The building is a classic old Portuguese colonial structure with a large open interior courtyard surrounded by terracing, in which now sits the pool. We were too worn out to explore so settled in to the restaurant at Escondinho and were pleasantly surprised to discover the food was delicious. I tucked in to the best tuna steak I’ve ever tasted and though at $8 it is more expensive than most local restaurants, the quality was worth paying for.

We spent the most of the next morning dozing in the humid heat. We then explored the old stone town. The island is roughly divided into two parts; the macuti (reed) town dominates the southern part where families live in basic mud & reed houses, crammed in below street level, and the old stone town lies to the north where the heart of the Portuguese East Africa capital once lived. Conditions range from basic to desperate (crumbling, leaning walls). Amongst this poverty you discover the occasional modern gleaming building where someone who has money has restored the property and lives in comfort.

Surrounding this ramshackle town is pristine Indian Ocean. The sea is clean, the sky clear blue and fisherman stretch out as far as the horizon in small wooden canoes. Looking out to see and then gazing back on the crumbling, broken town, you can imagine the splendour that this island once offered and just how incredible a place it would have been to live at the prime of Portuguese rule. You then rue the impact that the swift exit of the Portuguese in the aftermath of independence has had on the infrastructure and the people.

We have had 2 days on this island and, as with most of Africa, my experience is divided. On the one hand I love ambling along aimlessly, relaxing to the gentle rhythm of the Mozambique locals. In this heat you have to go slowly. Strolling through broken ruins, then stumbling across groups of children playing with a distant echo of the Green Mosque calling people to prayer can be incredibly evocative and calming. However, the fact that this place has such incredible poverty and lack of options also serves to slightly unsettle you and give a sense of the macabre. The old colonial buildings would have been incredible at their prime but they sit empty and forlorn. It just feels that the island has been left to its own devices and there is no plan or purpose. Perhaps it is not a priority for the Government to repair and restore but it is sad that something so beautiful could be left to fall apart like a house of cards. If this island was a song it would be Bittersweet Symphony.

So as our time on Ilha de Mocambique draws to an end and we retire to the veranda to sup on a cocktail as the colonial Portuguese would have, we prepare oursleves for the next challenge which is the 6 day climb of the mighty Kilimanjaro in Tanzania. We leave tomorrow, Friday 29th, for Nampula and then take a flight to Dar es Salaam on the 30th. Our climb starts in Moshi on November 1st. We’ll be 6 days without Internet and 6 days in a mental and physical battle to make it to the top and respect the mountain as we climb.

Take care, catch you on the flip side.

love james & muneeza x

You’ve got to adapt to survive

We arrived at the Girassol Hotel in Lichinga, Mozambique, tired and a little bit fed up. Travel through Zambia and Malawi was more draining than we had expected. Even though we loved Malawi, described as the Heart of Africa and to us well worth its moniker, the public transport, though quite an experience, is slow and painful. However, we had been warned by the guys on the ferry that Mozambique was a headache to get around quickly, that it takes days to go even a few kms.

Our fears were confirmed the first day when we took the chiappas bus to Lichinga. What is clearly less than 100km on the map took 4 hrs. The bus left, then came back to its original spot. It waited another 10mins, then left again. We progressed no more than 100m when it stopped. This pattern continued for the entire journey. The people were perfectly friendly but we were too tired to take it in our stride.

It seems that people do their weekly shopping on the bus – at every corner, in every town, by every shack, there are kids hawking all sorts of veggies and fruits and random items you could only find in an obscure haberdashery. The bus dwellers thrust arms out the window and haggle. Coins are exchanged, seldom notes. People know exactly how much each item is which saves time. In this respect, the bus inches forwards on its journey. We know that impatience is an ugly trait but when you’re tired this cultural insight is not something wonderful, it is mired in tedium.

Having first been led to believe by books and diffident officials that we could get our Tanzanian visa at the border, we discovered to our dismay that the land border at Kilambo we had planned to use no longer issued visas. This left us with a major dilemma – risk the border and potentially lose 3 days travel time and have to trace back, or divert to Maputo and get the visa from the embassy. Alas given the poor public transport, getting to Maputo from Lichinga would take at least 3-4 days, killing all our plans to see Mozambique. We were in a quandary. To further compound matters, I had fallen ill with a fever and my first dose of infamous bum wee. I thought it was over exposure to the sun over the past few days and insufficient sleep (you know how badly I cope with lack of sleep!). I hit a cold shower and then had uncontrollable shivers. I felt awful. We passed out but I was up most of the night.

My theory of sun stroke was dashed on Saturday morning when Muneeza awoke with bum wee as well – she had made sure she was out the sun all the time. Let’s just say the next 24hrs proved a unique bonding experience and perhaps good preparation for marriage. We now know each other’s breaking point in detail.

We had intended to catch the 5am bus to Cuamba on Monday to link with the 5am train to Nampula on Tuesday but late Sunday late I suggested to my jani that she was in no fit state to catch a bus and we should spend another day recovering. I’ve never known her to pay so much attention to what I say. I had her at hello. My poor jani was suffering much worse than me, so I did some investigating into travel options and the helpful chaps at the hotel called the main Mozambique airline and reserved tickets to Nampula on Tuesday’s flight. Having got this nailed, with renewed spirits we looked at the options to get to Tanzania and find a visa. Having called the embassy in Maputo, it was confirmed that we could get a visa on arrival at Dar es Salaam airport, avoiding the arduous trip to Maputo in the southernmost point of Mozambique.

We dropped an email to STA and managed to book flights on Sat 30th October, giving us time to enjoy the Ilha de Mozambique as planned.

Our learning from the past 2 weeks is that we bit off more than we could chew for the African leg. Not all countries are quick to navigate and public transport meant it was almost impossible to go everywhere we wanted in the time available. It is only by being here that we could grasp this clearly – the books don’t give you a full picture. Travelling requires the ability to adapt and change plans according to the environment. We discovered a few weeks back that the permits for Gorilla Tracking in Uganda have now gone up again to $750 per person – no matter how amazing the experience would be, we just can’t justify that amount of money for 1hr of gorilla watching. With a wry smile we agreed to can the Uganda leg and go direct from Tanzania to Kenya, saving our money to pay for flights from Nampula to Dar es Salaam, saving us at least 4 days of turgid bus journeys and tedious border crossings.

You can’t always get what you want but if you try sometimes, you just might get what you need. We hope that one day in the future the gorilla permits come down again (they change with the wind) and then we will come back to visit either Rwanda or Uganda to fulfil that dream and visit the country of Muneeza’s Dad’s birth.

Love james & muneeza x