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Published: April 8th 2014
A taste is all we have time for now, with barely a week left before we would fly out of southern Africa.
The trip from Nelspruit to Maputo was uncomfortable, a five hour haul with our knees wedged into the back of the seat in front of us, a stranger’s shoulder pressed firmly against my own, our packs across our laps, and the smell of 16 sweaty people crammed into a minivan. Nonetheless, this travel served such an interesting lesson on how certain parts of the world work, that I wouldn’t have changed a thing. During the five hour trip, we were pulled over at five or six different police checkpoints. Though maybe these checkpoints do have some larger macro function for law enforcement, at the micro scale, they are an opportunity for the police officers on the ground to collect some bribes and pad their pockets. It’s so blatant that it’s comical, as the police would always target our minibus and the driver would immediately put a note in his hand, roll down his window and pass off the money to the police officer, several times without even bringing the minivan to complete stop, and then get immediately back
onto the highway. The first time we got pulled over, the driver did not immediately present a bribe and so the cop was forced to find something wrong with the car to invoke it. He started screaming and yelling at the driver that his registration sticker was on the wrong side of the windshield and he proceeded to rip it off the window and throw it on the road, serving its intended purpose as our driver then took out some money for him. The corruption was even present at the border crossing between South Africa and Mozambique, where ironically, the passport control office is decorated with anti-corruption posters. As soon as we had gone through the border crossing and loaded into the van (we hadn’t even driven away from the border crossing station yet), a Mozambiquan police officer stopped our van and asked to see everybody’s passports. Two in our vehicle had no passports and had just walked right past the passport control stations without question and when this guy asked for the passports, they shrugged, he wagged his finger, and they gave him a little money. In this way, the journey was interesting, to see the corruption, see it
so prevalent and accepted, and to not have to deal with it myself in those moments. Lastly, before I share some stories about our time in Mozambique, the corruption issue was a topic of conversation among everybody we met, locals and travelers alike, with references to it at every level of government and any power position there may be.
So with a taste of corruption under our belt, we arrived in the early afternoon to Maputo, Mozambique’s capital. What a contrast from all the other places we’ve been on this trip. The city smells bad, trash all over the streets, all the buildings are dilapidated, the roads are falling apart… It’s one of the poorest countries in the region and at the same time, it’s by far the most expensive place on our trip as prices have recently been driven up by coal discoveries in the country and resulting Chinese investment presumably straight into the pocket of those at the top. The vibe is weird here and though I’m not giving it a fair chance since I’ve only spent a few days here, my initial reaction to the city is in line with Gustav and Daniel’s, who have spent
the better part of two months here, as well as every other traveler we’ve met since we arrived in Moz.
Despite our collective lack of affinity for Maputo, we were forced into an extra night here when we arrived. Our intention had been to catch a night bus north to a beach town called Vilanculos on the same day we arrived from Nelspruit, but when all the buses for that night were already sold out, we postponed our departure 24 hours. The next night we embarked at 8:30 PM on a nine-hour bus journey unlike any I’ve had before in all my travels. Instead of seats, there were three rows of bunk beds through the cabin of the bus. Though narrow and barely big enough for even me to stretch out in, it was more comfortable than we had anticipated and we all managed a half decent night’s sleep through the trip. We got off the bus shortly after 5 the next morning and immediately hopped into a chapa to cover the last 20 km from the highway to the coastal town.
We had hoped that Vilanculos would serve as the following for our last week in Southern
Africa: a quiet, sleepy, yet social, beach town with a comfortable place to stay where we could make a dent in our thesis which had been on hold now for the past several weeks. In actuality, it was all of the above except the latter, as we once again successfully rationalized not working. Our unproductive tendencies aside, this week in Vilanculos was awesome. The town has one paved road that runs parallel to the ocean a kilometer or so inland, and from there to the beach is a grid of sand roads. There are no big stores here, only small market stalls. The big draw to Vilanculos is the Bazaruto Archipelago that sits offshore and is a designated national park. The islands offer spectacular sand beaches with tall dunes providing views to the open Indian Ocean at east and mainland Moz at west.
With Bazaruto as the main draw and other ambitions all involving a hammock, we alternated days of lounging around the beachfront hostel and village with excursions to the islands. Moz in general is renowned for its diving and Bazaruto is one of the “places to dive” in the country, so this was on my agenda for
the week and in the end we all partook in this activity for our first outing to the islands. We walked down the beach in the morning to our dive shop and the day's itinerary would have us out on the sea for the whole day. First, a forty five minute trip to Benguerra Island for a dive briefing on the beach, followed by a trip out to the first dive site, a barrier reef along Bazaruto and Benguerra Islands named Two Mile Reef. After our first dive, we set up a camp on Bazaruto’s southern tip where we had lunch in the sand and spent the following hour climbing the dune and soaking up the 360 degree breathtaking view. Then it would be back out for another dive on Two Mile, another swim break on Benguerra, and then homeward. I hadn’t been diving in a few years and greatly enjoyed the dives, but with all the Mozambique dive hype, the dives were ever so slightly disappointing due to strong currents and poor visibility, but hey, you win some, you lose some (and after all, I’m technically in school in Gothenburg while I’m scuba diving in Mozambique, so I certainly
can’t complain). Despite the tough conditions, we did get to see some cool stuff along the healthy and vibrant reef. Aside from hoards of fish, we saw the silhouettes of a school of devil rays pass right above us, came nose to nose with massive, curious loggerhead sea turtles, gazed upon the probing basketball size head of a honeycomb morey eel jutting out from under a reef ledge and floated alongside an Eric-sized grouper. What made the day quite special though was the magical setting.
What I haven’t yet mentioned is the day’s dramatic transformation of the Vilanculos/Bazaruto landscape. Between the mainland and the archipelago, which is quite a significant distance, the depths are very shallow and the tides are quite significant. During high tide, the Vilanculos beach is just a couple meters wide, but as the ocean recedes, sand banks start to poke out of the sea and the darker color of the water starts to turn turquoise and white as the depths get shallower and shallower. At the lower side of the tides, the entire gap between the mainland and the islands is a swirling mix of turquoise water and white sand and suddenly the beach is
almost a kilometer wide at some points. It’s a dramatic, unique and beautiful landscape to behold and within a few hours it’s gone, leaving you baffled at such a significant change to the setting occurring so rapidly. This view is intriguing standing anywhere and looking upon it, but was especially remarkable on Bazaruto where, atop the dunes, the island itself provided a beautiful foreground to the hypnotizing seascape.
Before the dive, we anticipated that this would be our only island outing, but afterwards we had all opened up to the possibility of a return to the islands due to their high awesome-factor. So on our last day in Vilanculos, we headed back out to the islands, this time via a dhow safari. The dhows are traditional wooden sail boats of the region that the locals still use for their fishing. The dhow safaris entail transport via dhow from the mainland to the island of your choosing, whereupon a beach camp is set up for those on board and you can explore the island, swim, snorkel and so on while the boat crew caters a fresh seafood lunch served at the beach. This is precisely how our day went on
the nearest island, Magaruque, where we had yet been. This whole day was good fun, but I must say, the food was the highlight for me as a tomato-potato-calamari concoction and grilled fresh-caught king fish were spectacular. On the way back from Magaruque to Vilanculos we caught up with a fishing dhow and the crew of our boat negotiated the purchase of some king fish, snapper and calamari for many of us onboard and we had a stellar seafood BBQ to round off our time in Mozambique and Southern Africa as a whole.
The following day we bussed back to Maputo and then the next morning we parted ways with Gustav who’s by now back in Sweden. Completely content with all we’ve seen and done in the region, we sat around for the next 24 hours awaiting our flight which would take the three of us remaining to Ethiopia for a week hosted by Daniel’s parents in the cooler airs of Addis Ababa.
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Terry Woods
non-member comment
Thank you Eric for your beautifully written blogs that will serve to memorialize a trip of a lifetime. It\'s almost as if one were there with you. We look forward to hearing more when we see Phillip in Rome!