Our Mozambique trips have been the best holidays of my life and I totally fell in love with this country: probably because it is a mixture of African and Portuguese culture. Their mentality has something in common with the Spanish and Italians, and I immediately I felt connected to the people there.
We have been 3 times in Mozambique, each time for 1 week during New Year’s Eve period in the following years: 1999/2000, 2000/01 & 2002/03.
My story here is about the adventures and highlights I have experienced during these 3 trips, and what made them so memorable.
The Road & Drive
I will never forget these drives to Mozambique, as they were unique on it’s own: adventurous & dangerous. Most times we departed from Mkuze or Pongola (in South Africa), which is a 700km trip to Zavora, our camp site, if you don’t get lost on your way. You would think this isn’t such a long trip, but not on African roads. Even simple refueling gets adventurous in the smaller villages in Mozambique, where they only use a manual pump to refuel your car. So refilling 3 cars can get a bit time consuming! Once it took us 15 hours from the border of Swaziland, due to bad roads causing many flat tires or the cars to break down. On one return trip from Mozambique all the way to Pietermaritzburg in South Africa, a 1,100 km drive, it took us even 24hours because we had 7 flat tires on one car alone.
I think the most common sentence used on these trips was: “We’ve got a flat tire”!
The first ones we had I just simply thought: “Wow that’s Africa! What would be a trip here without a flat tire?”. Then all of a sudden this excitement fades and these incidents rather get annoying as you get the feeling you will never reach your destination. On our third trip to Mozambique I learnt to be insensible to them and the tone changed to “Oh another flat tire? Ok.”.
I am not able to count anymore how many flat tires we had in one day, but one day in particular I will never forget. Have you ever had 2 flat tires at the same time, and only have 1 spare tire? Well, this is exactly what my dad managed to make happen. He was driving behind our friend’s car (who was towing a boat) too close and didn’t see this huge pothole in the road. A pothole with a dimension of approximately 70 x 50 cm and 10 cm deep. We simply heard a “pang” followed immediately by another “pang”, and that was it: a flat front and back tire on the left side of the car. We had to stop on the roadside and our friends in front of us didn’t notice at first what happened and continued driving. Only 1 hour later they drove back when they noticed we were not behind them anymore. At this point I also need to mention that in those days the mobile reception wasn’t great in Mozambique, and of course we were stuck in a dead spot. To cut a long story short once our friends found us on the side of the road, they headed to the next town to buy a second tire and after loosing 2,5 hours we were able to continue our drive.
One year we travelled with two cars: a bakkie (South African slang word for a 4×4 car) that was towing a boat, and a Volkswagen Combi Van towing a trailer with food for one week. We were reaching our destination relatively late that evening, as we faced some issues at the border before, and then got stuck with the car. For the last 17km there was only a dirt road that takes you to our camp site, and we didn’t realize that there have been quite heavy floods in the previous weeks. Hence the road was partially covered from swamps that we had to cross with our cars. Two times we were lucky to get through with our VW Combi, but on the third one we got stuck. The moment we opened the side door all the water came in and the car got flooded. The trailer was stuck in swamp water too resulting in lots of food getting spoilt and no longer eatable. Whilst handling the car situation, mosquitos attacked us all – I thought I was going to be eaten alive! Eventually, we were towed from the swamp to the camp site by our friend’s 4×4, as the engine had got water in it and got damaged. At least now we had a whole week ahead and time to get the car fixed. And since this isn’t enough bad luck for the day: we arrived dead tired at our final destination and realized that one of our bungalows booked was under water due to the floods from the previous weeks! Don’t worry… the solution was by far a much better option!!!
Besides these trips being adventurous, we also got into some dangerous situations. Who has travelled to less developed countries knows how fully packed trucks and buses can be. One day we were driving behind one of those fully packed buses with anything on the rooftop: from suitcases, tires, chicken cages and even goats. All of a sudden a tire flew right towards us and just in time we managed not to get hit on the windscreen.
At another occasion (and this is based on my mum’s story) a huge truck streaked our boat that was being towed by the bakkie in which I was traveling in, and almost caused an accident. Us sitting in the bakkie didn’t even notice that had happened, but my parents behind us got a fright of their lives.
Between legality and illegality
Oh well, we have done some dodgy things on these trips, but it was fun and we laugh about them today.
One year we were a total of 13 people on this trip to Mozambique, and when we reached the border between Swaziland and Mozambique three of us in the group realized they had forgotten to arrange a visa. So we had to maximize our creativity on how to get the three people into the country. Until today I don’t really know how they did it, and how we didn’t get caught, and to be honest I don’t want to even know. Once we got through we were all relieved, but also knew that a week later we would also to get them out of the country again.
I guess what we did next was a moment of euphoric relief, and gave us permission to open up some cold beer. However, the cool box with all drinks was in one car only, and obviously after loosing so much time with flat tires, issues at the border etc. stopping again was not an option. Hence, the solution was driving next to each other and passing over the cans of beers and other drinks over between one driver and one passenger. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find any proof video, as we all were involved and following instructions: checking the traffic ahead and behind, as well as keeping an eye on the side distance between the two cars.
On a different trip, also on Mozambican ground, we got an issue with the police for speeding. As usual we were behind on our schedule due to cars breaking down and flat tires, and hence we tried to catch up a bit by not following speed limits. Then all of a sudden the police, who wanted to fine us, stopped us. Our South African friend came up with another extremely creative story: my Dad is a German doctor of the President of Mozambique and has been assigned for a mission in Mozambique. After inspecting my dad’s medical ID very detailed, he was convinced by our story and even gave us a military salute on our departure.
Another problem was the currency in Mozambique, which was pretty unstable those days and had undergone severe inflation. Those days the currency had a value of about 24,500 meticais per USD. So we arranged a money exchange on the black market at a small gas station. We got a bag filled with metical cash in exchange to our South African Rand or USD, and we were well equipped for the upcoming days. Mozambique redenominated the metical at a rate of 1000:1 in 2006 and I believe things have changed since then.
Today I smile when I think of our crazy and unreasonable behavior, but I got to admit that all of that was fun and we always had great stories to tell after our trips.
Our Accommodation at Zavora Lodge
All 3 years we had chosen to stay at the same place in Mozambique: a place called Zavora at Inharrime, close to the larger town Inhambane. We always rented one or two bungalows (made of bamboos) at the campsite, right behind the big sand dune. On top of the sand dune was a restaurant and bar, which was part of Zavora Lodge, from which you had an amazing view over the Indian Ocean and kilometers of beautiful golden sand beach. The beauty was that there were not many people and besides the ones staying at the lodge or camping it was empty.
As I mention earlier, once we reached the campsite in the night when our car got stuck in the swamps and we were shocked to find one of the booked bungalows flooded. For those of you who know my Dad, you can imagine how he flipped out and wanted to depart the following day again. Instead my parents, my grandmother (who was 76 years old!) and my brother were put into the only bungalow available, and the rest of the group was taken to an abandoned house on top of the sand dune. It was one of those houses built during the Portuguese colony, and had the best view out of all places. In fact, it was a ruin without any doors or windows, but we had a nice breeze all day and night making the heat bearable compared to the bungalows behind the dune. I guess initially we all shook our heads about what we would call “home” for a week, but honestly this turned to be the best holiday of my life.
In fact we loved those few houses (or better ruins) on top of the sand dunes, and my parents were interested in buying one and restore it as a holiday house. They even went to the municipality in charge to find out prices of the various houses. Unfortunately, those days you were only able to lease a piece of land (and not buy), as Mozambique was still following communism. Perhaps the laws have changed today, but my parents didn’t want to invest into a leased land.
Village where we got our bread
During our first year at Zavora we had a local guy called Dion working sort of as a “butler” and we totally adored him. The following year, he was still there and again looked after us. But in the third year, we got there… and there was no Dion. We were told he no longer works there, and returned back to his local village. So instead of enjoying the first day on the beach, a few of us started searching for Dion. After a while we found out where he was and he happily joined us for that week. He also showed us a local village nearby, where we bought freshly baked bread every morning or evening. This bread was the most delicious one I have ever tasted – especially when eating it when it was still warm.
A worth telling story is the encounter with snakes and scorpions. In most tourist guidebooks you read that it is quite uncommon for a tourist to see a snake during a holiday, but not on such trips. Whilst in Europe you may have a cat crossing your road, we had a nice Mozambique Spitting Cobra crossing our road just in front of our bungalow. Normally snakes do not come to busy areas, but this one seemed not to be so scared of humans.
One day, the day before our departure from Zavora back to South Africa, I was in my room packing my suitcase in the afternoon whilst everyone else was having a siesta. At some point I was holding the wardrobe, which was made out of straw, and all of a sudden I was holding a brown snake in my hand. I woke everyone up in the bungalow with my scream and probably the entire campsite too! Holding a snake (of which you don’t know if it is poisonous or not) is still different than seeing one from distance. Also in the showers you may have a scorpion visiting you once in a while and you constantly keep in eye on it very tensed.
What to do one week in Mozambique? Well, we ended up to enjoy the beach, and went out on the boat fishing. The objective and dream was to catch a Blue Marlin, but my Dad ended up catching a Zambezi Shark of 111kg instead. In addition we caught many barracudas during that week and even 15 in one day! Hence almost every day we ate freshly caught barracuda and again it was grilled in my favorite way like we did in the Transkei or fried with chips.
When the sea was rough and the men weren’t able to go fishing, we usually headed to explore the surrounding area or towns. Once we wanted to look at an old lighthouse and we broke in to enjoy the view from the top. Not sure if our parents were acting more like kids than their own kids.
I think the best way to give you a brief insight on how these trips looked like, the uniqueness of the accommodation, the beauty of the beach and sea, and our adventures on the road has to be shown in the following video! So what you will get to see is a Mozambique from 13-17 years ago… and surely things have totally changed today!