After a fantastic breakfast on Monday morning, we met Iriam who took us on our canoe safari. Iriam poled the canoe out into the Shire River through the reeds and we saw open billed storks, great white egret, African jacana, Burchell's coucal, little egret, black crake, squacco heron, pied kingfisher, azure kingfisher, reed comorant, white-fronted cormorant, spur winged geese, Egyptian geese, glossy ibis, yellow-billed stork, hippos, waterbuck, impala and vervet monkeys. The river was really wide which gave you the impression that you were on a lake. The scenery was really beautiful with palm trees, baobabs and reeds lining the river bank and Chinguni Hill in the background.
Back at the lodge we walked through the hole in the fence into the national park and spent an hour wandering around. We heard something large crash through the undergrowth but we couldn't see what it was.
We had organised to do a walking safari in the afternoon but things were in a state of chaos and we ended up doing an evening game drive with five people from the overland tour group that had arrived today. In the park we saw vervet monkeys, impala, hoopoe, waterbuck, tree squirrels, white-breasted sparrow weaver, yellow baboon, guinea fowl, warthogs and sable antelope. Then we drove around for quite some time without seeing anything. In desperation our guide stopped the vehicle and we went for a walk towards the river. To his relief we saw elephants in the Shire River. Back in the vehicle again our guide set up the spotlight and we saw Mozambican elephant shrew, kudu, hippo and scrub hares before we headed back to the lodge.
On Tuesday morning we had planned to get a lift to Liwonde so that we could catch a matola to Zomba to take some money out at an ATM that accepted our Mastercard. But it was chaos this morning. There was no sign of Peter (the manager) or Darren (the owner) and no one could tell us when or if the shopping vehicle was leaving. We had another delicious breakfast and made sure that we were ready to catch a lift on any vehicle that was heading to Liwonde town. We waited around for an hour or so for a shopping vehicle to go into town. In the meantime, Peter arrived and Darren staggered out of the other dorm looking rather the worse for wear after sharing a bottle of scotch the night before.
Darren made a phone call to a contact that he had in the Mozambican Embassy and he was told that we should go to Lilongwe or Blantyre to get a visa as we would not be able to get a visa at the border. We had a quick change of plan – we decided to stay overnight in Blantyre to get our visa and return to Liwonde to stay on Wednesday night so that we could catch a train to Mozambique on Thursday morning.
We packed up our stuff and got a lift to the Liwonde minibus depot in the shopping vehicle at 10.00 am. We were able to get straight on to a minibus that was just leaving and thankfully this time it wasn't too overloaded or smelly with only sixteen adults and two second hand 4WD tires. At one stage a lady got off the minibus and the driver (who was married) asked her for her cell phone number. After she gave it to him he asked her what the best time to call her was. Much to everyone's amusement, her reply was "Don't call me at night, because that is when I am with my husband!" We arrived in Limbe around two hours later after passing through the attractive previous capital of Zomba. After walking around Limbe market, we caught another minibus for the 6 km drive to Blantyre. When we arrived at Blantyre we went straight to the Mozambican embassy only to find that they closed at 12pm for visa applications for the day. However, we found out that we could get a visa on the spot tomorrow morning on payment of an extra fee. On the way out of the embassy we bumped into Gwyn from the UK who was driving his Toyota Land Cruiser around Africa and was going to Mozambique. He was happy to give us a lift and we agreed to catch up later at Doogles Backpacker Hostel. We walked through town and checked into a double room at Doogles and then walked back into town to buy some supplies. Back at Doogles, we had a chat with Gwyn and looked at some maps.
After breakfast on Wednesday morning, we dumped our bags in Gwyn's car and then walked into town to the Mozambican Embassy to lodge our visa applications. We deposited money into their bank account to pay for our visa and when we saw that their USD rates were favourable we tried to buy some only to find that they had "run out"! We collected our passports and walked back to Doogles to meet Gwyn. We jumped in the car and went to Shoprite, where we bought water, biltong and rusks. We filled up the car with diesel and then drove to the border through the small town of Mulanje sitting in the shadow of picturesque Mount Mulanje and surrounded by beautiful green tea plantations. At the border we saw people bringing large bunches of green bananas into Malawi.
We crossed into Mozambique at the border town of Milange. It felt very different to the other African countries that we had been to. There was a long straight and wide avenue with a flower filled island leading up the hill to a white government building which reminded us very much of the Avenidas in Central America. We found somewhere to eat and ordered lunch and sat down to wait. We waited almost two hours before we were served with an enormous platter of rice, shredded raw cabbage and a small grilled chicken which we ate with the spicy salty peri peri sauce they supplied. After lunch we headed towards Mutuali along a dirt track past little villages, banana plantations, vegetable plots, smiling Mozambicans and brick kilns. At one point we came to a muddy bridge with two trucks on the other side. We stopped the car and got out to see if we could drive around it. Eventually the trucks and another 4WD crossed the bridge, so once they had got through we negotiated it without any trouble. We pulled off to the side of the road and set up camp. This involved removing the solar panels from the top of the car and then flipping open the rooftop tents. After a light dinner and chat we climbed into our rooftop tents and went to bed.
We woke up at 6.00 am on Thursday morning and after breakfast, we packed up the tents and re-strapped the solar panels to the top of the car. We drove through Mozambique villages with a constant flow of cyclists and pedestrians in between. We drove past fields of sunflowers and cassava and occasional mango trees, banana plants and papaya trees. Most of the larger places had a white monument surmounted by a red star dedicated to the Mozambican heroes. We saw many Kingdom Halls with Portuguese signs about Jehovah. The markets and road side sellers had bananas, tomatoes, onions, capsicum, dried fish and garlic. Some of the roadside stalls were also selling cooked rats (including fur) on a skewer. We had heard about this in Malawi where it was called "Malawi sausage"! There were some vestiges of Portuguese architecture but they were uniformly faded and in poor condition. We passed many amazing mountains which looked like massive granite stones pushed up from within the earth. We went through Lioma which had many buildings and food warehouses and another village with a vibrant market selling all sorts of Chinese made goods and a lot of bicycle accessories. The trees, shrubs and tin huts by the side of the road were all stained red by the red dust. We kept driving and some of the scenery was beautiful, before we pulled over behind a ruined house and drove up onto a flat piece of granite with wonderful views over the countryside. This trip is really showing us what you can do with a 4WD. As we were putting up the rooftop tents the locals arrived to check us out and Gwyn went to talk with them and ask permission to sleep overnight. It was a really quiet night whereas the night before we had heard a lot of noise from people and the road.
On Friday morning, we were woken up at around 6.00 am by some curious Mozambicans. Chingador, who spoke surprisingly good English was curious to know what we were doing there and wanted to know why Gwyn didn't have a "wifey". We got up after that, packed up and made tea and porridge for breakfast. While Suzie was packing up one of the rooftop tents, the ladder broke! We set off at around 8.00 am. Today the roads were much better, it seemed to be smoother and there were hardly any potholes so we made good time. We reached Nampula at around 11.30 am. We parked the car near the museum and went to the Nampula Sporting Club for lunch. After lunch we got back in the car and headed off towards Mozambique Island. This time when we passed the roadside sellers they were selling cassava and cashews and we stopped to buy some cashews. We also lots of firewood and charcoal for sale. The red dust disappeared and was replaced by white sand and we could smell the salt in the air. We drove across the 3.5 km bridge to Mozambique Island at a little after 3.00 pm. We settled on a room at Patio dos Quintlinhos opposite the green mosque. It had high ceilings, an ensuite bathroom and an extra bed for Gwyn on a kind of mezzanine floor. It was wonderful to have a shower after three days! The owner Gabriele was really helpful and suggested a few dining options so after our showers we went for a walk around town. At Bar Watalofu, we had some Laurentina Beers (stout) and decided to stay for dinner. We ordered a bottle of wine to have with dinner. They didn't have a bottle opener so the waitress bought the bottle to the table with a long stick with which she proposed to push the cork through. We talked them out of it and a waiter got on his motorbike and went to get a corkscrew. We wandered through the streets past an impressive building with huge white columns which turned out to be an old hospital. We went to bed at 10pm and slept deeply.
We were woken by the call to prayer at 4.30 am on Saturday morning from the mosque but we went back to sleep walking up again at 6.30 am. We had breakfast of tea, fresh doughy bread rolls, butter, papaya jam, butter and bananas on the sunny terrace overlooking the mosque. We spent a little time loading photos and checking our emails after breakfast before heading out for a walk around the island. We walked slowly down to the southern end, passing crumbling mansions with rusted wrought iron gates, and weed-filled plazas paved with black and white cobblestones. There was a tree with roots hanging like hair opposite the bridge and a dilapidated old church with small cemetery. Off the southern tip was a coral rock platform with a stone jail built on top. We walked through the cemetery's old gravestones and workers renovating the church before wandering up the east esplanade with coral rubble and rubbish everywhere. This was a poor part of Makuti town but as we walked it gradually improved. We met up with Jorge at the Luis Camoes statue and he showed us the ruined sporting club with excellent blue tiles of animals, boats, plants etc, the beachside pool ruined by a cyclone in 1994 up to the northern tip where you run into the impressive Fort Sao Sebastiao with huge rock walls built up to the sea. The guard told us it was Mtc 200 to get in but we thought it was dodgy so we had a rest on the beach wall overlooking a clean beach and mangrove patch until we saw a couple leaving the fort. They were Andrew from the UK and Julie from South Africa who chatted to us for a while – they told us the tickets were Mtc 100 from the museum and showed us the old Portuguese coins they had bought. They ended up driving us to a restaurant where we had a coffee and talked until lunch when we left to visit the adjacent renovated and derelict buildings including a statue of Vasco Da Gama. Then we went to a small restaurant where we had to wait for ages for excellent lula (squid) and peixe (fish) with chips and salad and very hot green peri peri. After lunch we walked to O Paladar to order our dinner from Senhora Kiu Kiu. We continued on south to the original slave market where slaves were auctioned on top of pillars before being shipped off to various colonies. We walked through the fishermen's boats where fish were being sold (some very small) including garfish, and then Makuti town again where kids were playing soccer in the streets. We walked back through the middle avenue and saw the women doing a traditional tofu dancing with lots of African drumming rhythm, colour and movement. Then we were back at the hospital building and another white church before heading back to the Casa do Gabriele to have a rest before dinner. The sun went down and the call to prayer issued from next door and a large bat appeared on the ceiling of the lounge area where we were sitting.
Sunday morning's call to prayer was a hectoring repetitive which seemed to be endless and it took a while for us to go back to sleep again. After breakfast on the terrace which was not so sunny this morning, we headed to the museum leaving Gwyn at the hostel. We walked to the museum where the ticket allowed us to visit three museums. We were shown around the Museum of Sacred Arts by the caretaker who only spoke Portuguese. He showed us religious icons, paintings, carvings and some crucifixes. There were some beautiful wood and ivory carvings and some items had been shipped from Goa and Portugal. We went back to the Museum of Decorative Arts which was housed in the Palace and Chapel of Sao Paolo originally built as a Jesuit college and subsequently used as a governor's residence. Abdul showed us around several bedrooms, dining rooms, living and receptions rooms containing French furniture, intricately carved Indian furniture, Portuguese and Chinese (Macau) ornaments, and carpets. In particular one wall hanging showed a Portuguese wreck with an exhausted sailor on a beach of an island full of beautiful women. Another showed a battle commemorating a victory over the Moors in Portugal. There was also a great painting showing the Portuguese (all with moustaches) forming an agreement with a powerful Mozambican chief by becoming blood brothers in 1862. The chapel contained a seventeenth century pulpit made by Chinese artists in Goa. Abdul took us to the Maritime Museum on the ground floor where we saw models of Portuguese galleons and caravels, and the finds from a shipwreck dated 1552 that was recovered in 2001. The most notable items were coins and Ming porcelain in surprisingly good condition. As we exited the museum we saw a guy carrying a lobster which we bought for Mtc 120. We took it back to the hostel and boiled it up – absolutely delicious. We headed out to the Hindu temple where we found a Gujarati priest looking after the temple. He was the only Hindu on the island but others from the surrounding regions apparently attended the temple. The usual small orange painted deities of Nandi, Ganesha, and Hanuman were accompanied by the phallic shiva linga. We went to the fort and climbed up the walls to walk around the top. It was very large with a fully enclosed area housing many different buildings. The walls were very thick and built from blocks of coral rubble with some kind of mortar in between. There were cannon at emplacements around the whole perimeter, some mounted on wheeled carriers. Two enormous ramps gave access from the ground level. There was a gate to the front to give access to a chapel facing the sea which is the oldest European building in the southern hemisphere. The fort was the oldest complete fort in sub Saharan Africa. The cistern was a huge underground structure collecting all the run-off from a large area of roof. Inside you walked down some steps to the water level but another set of steps was visible under the water level giving the fort a substantial water supply. We also saw a structure of wall niches which may have been for pigeons. We left and walked back to a shop selling interesting books about Mocambique and the island but we couldn't buy anything. There were also kids selling old coins apparently found by locals and fishermen dating back to the 1600s. We walked back to the hostel where there was a fishing boat landing. There was a crowd on the beach bidding for the numerous beautiful blue striped sardinhas and we saw a large barracuda and small bonita, as well as other smaller fish. We rested and showered at the hostel before heading out to dinner.
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