Mozambique - Pemba

Experiences are starting to pile up in Mozambique and places are starting to blur together. Nicky and I have trouble remembering sometimes where we were two days ago (he can at least blame this on old age and fading memory.)

We are currently in Pemba in North Mozambique, we had planned to be here, but we had planned to move on quickly to cross the North border to Tanzania and make our way to Dar Es Salaam. Turns out though that the car ferry across the Rio Rovumba sunk about two months ago. Apparently the only option ot get across is to find some guy who will lash two dhows together and take your car over on them. We heard of some people that did it and managed to negotiate him down to US$100, but unfortunately we can't risk the car. There are no completed bridges cross the river yet, and no other ferries. We are thinking that instead we will head south and then across Mozambique and towards the bottom of lake Malawi.

Apartt from that setback the fist week has been good. Qe made our way into Gorongosa national park where, unlike the Kruger, there were no people, but also not many animals. This is not only because the park is hard to get to, but also because during the civil war there was an army camp nearby and they ate all the animals. The poplation is growing again, but we did not see much on our drives through, warthogs, impala and some other large deer with a target cicle on its behind.

After Gorongosa we drove a long day to Nampula, filled with stretches of awful road with huge potholes, followed by some great road, followed by no road at all. We ended up driving in the dark (not reccomended) to a spectacular camp site 13km West of Nampula, run by a Portugese guy who has been in Africa for 47 years. He was suffering from malaria while we were there, but he seemed mostly ok. I'm not surprised, the guy was as tough as nails. He had spent the entire civil war period in Mozambique and told us stories of how soldiers had blown up his water pump, not for any real reason, but because they wanted to show him who was in charge. After those stories I'm not sure that we felt safer that night when we saw men with rifles patrolling the camp site.

Surviving that night we drove a short trip to Ilhe De Mocambique. An island reachable by a long very narrow bridge from the mainland. The bridge has a weight limit of 1.5 tons, which our car is definitely over, but there were over overloaded vehicles making there way across and they didn't give us any hassle. The island is a run down old Portugese colonial town with a forth from the 16th century at the north of the island. It is a great place to walk around and it feels very much as if you were caught in a time warp. Also if you walk around long enough you might find a local league football match. We found one going on beteween the island and Nampula, which was a blast to watch and I think much of the island was there supporting their team (they won 1-0). We also did another dhow trip, sailing out to the ilhe de goa, a few km away with a lighthouse on it. Another small tropical paradise with agreat snorkeling. btw If you ever feel the need to escape to your own tropical island for a few years we also met two guys who were working construction jobs on tiny islands for a few years.

Every so often we will stop for a break on the long car rides and hen we do we are always an object of extreme interest. Thge last time we stopped near a village we were quickly surrounded, not because they wanted to sell us anything, but to try and chat to us in our terrible Portugese and their minimal English. With a lot of pointing and gesturing and some help from maps and our guide book we managed to get quite a lot acrsoss. Or at least I think we did, they had a good laugh at us anyway. They were hugely amused to see themselves on camera after we asked if we could take their photo and we have some great group shots of all of them posing for the camera.

FYI, and apologizing for all the mistakes, I am writing this in Pemba in an internet cafe where the power cuts out every 5 minutes. Luckily they have the computer on a UPS, so it does not loose power. However the monitor is not on the UPS. So I have typed most of this without being able to see what I am typing. We spent much of yesterday trying to get our rear indicator light fixed on the car after we couldn't troubleshoot it. Of course it broke on the only day that we were pulled over by the police, the extremely slow moving cop wanted 500 meticals (about US$20) for the fine, but after Nicky asked for a receipt it magically became 200.

Nicky headed back to Ireland yesterday and I have a week here to try and do some island hopping. There will be less updates unfortunately. Internet access has become much harder because my phone has been cut off from the data network here, no idea why, but it means finding slow internet cafes, which are few and far between