Mozambique - Day Four

Had to leave Inhambane today to head for Xai-Xai. The road is no better and it took us all day to go 250kms. Once again, a recommendation led us to a place called Paradise Magoo's - this time the rec'd came from South Africa's version of Outside magazine called GO! You can only find this place with a GPS - the "road" is completely unmarked and looks like a cattle track at the start. 

To reach Magoo's you have to deflate your tires to about 1/2 the road pressure and drive through deep sand!  It was worth it though - check out the beach!

 

Magoo's is a beautifully executed camp with private campsites all landscaped with terraces and plants, and a thatched-roof palapa on each camp. The ablutions house was great too - hot water! More great seafood and a big friendly dog too!

Mozambique - Day Three

The beaches of Mozambique are alot like what the beaches along the Yucatan coast were like in the 1970's. Mostly clean, white sands, warm water, and NOBODY there! of course, its the off season right now - come December the coast will be 3 deep in white South Africans in 4x4's! 

The drive from Vilanculo got interesting fast. We picked up a couple from the UK that were spending a year traveling around the world - Good Luck, guys!! The roads went immediately to crap and the rain started!

This is what the main road (the ONLY road!) from North to South Mozambique looked like as we left Vilanculo.

And this is what it looked like after about 1 hour's drive! It was like this the rest of the way to Inhambane - our destination for today. This was wild - there could be a half-meter drop off on either side of the pavement, and the oncoming traffic just flat did NOT move over an inch!! There wasn't much traffic - mostly giant trucks!!

Stopped for lunch at the local ferry stop (great roadside vendors like the one above) and had a fantastic lunch of giant prawns and portuguese chicken! 

Mozambiquan furniture store!

 
Mozambiquan Home Depot!

So, on a recommendation, we stayed at a campsite at the base of the Barra Light House in Inhambane. Inhambane is an old Portuguese town that has become a tourist base for some great diving with whale sharks and there's a ray cleaning station where the manta rays get cleaned by those clingy fish - i can't remember the name. Its become a little rough - too many tourists means too many touts who want to find any possible way to get money out of you. Stopped in a very nice market though, and picked up the sweetest pineapple we've ever tasted. Then on to the Lighthouse! That's me, and the other couple, in the market. The only white folks in town today!

What a great spot! Big, clean, empty beach. Every morning, the bread lady delivers fresh Portuguese bread, the fisherman delivers giant prawns the size of your forearm, and the camp cook cleans and marinates them for dinner while you go for a morning swim. 

The view from our tent. Life is tough, eh?

 The local kids use the sand dunes as a giant slide - they're sliding down on palm leaves!

In fact, this place being so nice, and it being election day tomorrow, we decided to stay a second night and spend an entire day lounging, swimming and eating prawns. Met a lovely South African couple - he's in the off-shore oil business and travels back and forth to Norway, she's a horse trainer and riding instructor - and had a great party evening with them. Definitely recommend this place!!

 

Mozambique - Day Two

Get me the heck out of Chimoio!! YUCK! Mozambique is so much more poor than Zambia and it shows. Classic Africa - coconut groves, roadside stands selling used clothing (your salvation army donations end up here in Africa, effectively putting an end to the local fabric and clothing industry and resulting in some hilarious images of kids in University of Illinois T-shirts etc), thatch houses, kids in crappy clothes.

Mozambique is a little more colorful than some other places though! We drove through miles of coconut groves, mango trees and cashew farms - yum! 2kg bags of roasted cashews for $2! ok, there might be a few bugs and fingerprints but as long as there's no condom wrappers we're ok!!

No pre-election violence visable in the streets - its Monday and its pretty much business as usual. We drove as far as the oceanfront today and  had a lovely lunch at Casa Luna in a tiny town called Inharoso. Kinda wish we had stayed there the night - but it was pretty high end accomodations and not nearly far enough along our route to stay there.  We ended up staying in a place called Vilankulo - a fishing village and backpackers stop. According to the staff of the Zombie Cucumber, its a good place to go diving - but we're on a schedule and no time to stay for diving! 

The Zombie Cucumber was much cleaner than the Pink Papaya - little chalets with shared "ablutions house" as they call the shower and toilet here. Monkeys in the parking lot, ocean sounds nearby. 

Watching the village fish was cool - they cast a net offshore and it takes a team of guys to hold the net for several hours while it fills with fish (although it isn't wide enough to hang all the way to the ocean floor, so alot of fish get away!)

When they decide that its time to pull the net in, it takes quite a few helpers and then all the fish mongers crowd around and negotiate loudly about price and take. They brought in a large variety of fish - from things that were flat and flounder-like to large pink and yellow parrot-type fish - a couple of small barracuda, and lots of crabs. 

 
Sad to say - there was quite a bit of litter on this beach (as is typical in Africa) but at least there were no "love fish" (used condoms) or "brown trout" (poops) on this one! The beaches of Ghana were absolutely foul with these items! The sign below is only useful if you can read!! Still - it wasn't the worst we've ever seen. Its a good reminder to use as few packaged items as possible, as discarded plastic bottles end up floating in the ocean as garbage slicks that wash up all over the world.

 

Editorial Comment

You may recognize that all of the following posts were posted on the same day. Yes, we've had a little trouble with technology, and we are actually on Day 7 of our trip and are already in Swaziland. Kinda spoils the suspense doesn't it? Just pretend that the dates at the top of each post don't exist and read on!

Mozambique - Day One

I, for one, did not realize that Mozambique was due for a major national election. In Africa, election day is rarely a calm, quiet, peaceful event. African elections oftenare wild, raucous affairs with police enforcing how you vote, beating the opposition, stealing ballot boxes and burning tires in the streets. Mozambique's government is largely a military dictatorship that was formed after both a bloody independence battle with the Portuguese and then an even bloodier civil war. Large sections of Mozambique are still liberally land mind. Turns out election day is Wednesday. Today is Sunday and we plan on being in Mozambique until Thursday. Oh Joy! 

Campaigning is apparent everywhere, but only for the incumbent party, the Frilimo. Our first clue that there was an imminent election was these campaign posters hung all over every roadside fence.  (After the election they rapidly dissapear - i think people use them as toilet paper!)

The next thing we know, we're in the middle of a parade of trucks all carrying Frilimo celebrants - waving flags, tossing out trinkets and honking horns down the road, complete with police escort (Jeff - "are you NUTS!? put the camera down before you get us shot!") Nonsense - they were having a ball, and waved happily for the camera! See? Don't they look happy?

Our goal is to reach the beach and swim in the ocean. We spent our first night in Mozambique in a little, run-down working town called Chimoio. Not the most beautiful little town in the world, is it?  The roundabout at the entrance to the town has a warm and welcoming mural along the wall that depicts Mozambiques proud history - shooting Portuguese!!

 We stayed in a backpacker's Inn called the Pink Papaya. Nice friendly dog, pushy little goat that begged for treats. 

We had a nice double bed, towels and a mosquito net and felt right at home - until we actually climbed into bed and found an empty condom wrapper between the sheets!!! AAAGGGHHH! Didn't look further at the conditions of the sheets - spent the night on top of the covers! Lucky it was warm out!!But there was a REALLY nice dog! (we miss our dogs!)

Zimbabwe

Zimbabwe has really struggled through the last 15 years. Mugabe's "land reformations" (in which he first sold land to white Zimbabwean farmers and then stole it from them to give to political croneys who don't farm) and rampant corruption have bankrupted the country. Zimbabwe has one of the most sinister governments on earth - fully half of it's population have fled starvation and cholera epidemics, so driving through Zimbabwe we sort of expect it to look like post-war Kosovo - bombed out building, wandering starving refugees, etc. Nope - it's beautiful! The land itself is lovely high country - rolling hills, lovely green trees and fantastic farm land. Over the years farm lane after farm lane was planted with purple-blossomed jacaranda trees and lovingly cultivated. Now, although the farmers are gone and the farmhouses are vacant, the trees naively continue to bloom - unaware that their owners are gone and the fields are fallow. The lack of cultivation and the scarcity of humans is pretty much the only indicator that something is amiss, though. The once modern, first-world city is devoid of people and cars. You can see that Harare was a very modern city, but with 10,000% inflation and all legitimate businesses fleeing from the corruption, there's not much left going on. They now longer have their own currency - they now use the American dollar (even though they were a British colony). One thing i thought was hilarious is that items in the store are priced at $0.85 but there's no coins - only dollar bills - so you get your change in gumballs or 15cent store credits! We carefully added our items to total exact dollar intervals. So, we spent one night in Harare and then drove on through to Mozambique.

One cool thing we saw driving across Zimbabwe was a type of thatch seller that we haven't seen in Zambia. Large piles of thatch all bundled up ready for use, and stacked carefully by the road. Zambia has thatch sellers, but they never have this large of a pile ready for the buyer! 


Having diplomatic plates has already served us well - the immigration officers at the Zambia-Zim border virtually ran to our service. I've also decided to hand out hard candy to every government official in advance of requesting service. It's amazing how the classic stern-faced african (who can REALLY wipe their faces clean of all traces of human emotion) become happy kids when you hand out candy!! 

Departure

From now on we DEFINATELY pack the truck the night before - it works GREAT!! instead of yelling at each other about what we've forgotten - making 4 or 5 trips back into the house for crucial items and ending up on the road an hour later than we planned, we were on the road, happy, holding coffee cups and the GPS and practically singing songs! First stop - Zimbabwe!!