Photo Link:
https://photos.app.goo.gl/z8FJ5rZBxUbPvqxbA
Decided to spend a few weeks in Moz until the end of January. To be honest I didn’t really have too much interest in visiting at first, but my Brazilian friend from Cape Town, Igor, who I road tripped with, grew up in Maputo and was a great salesman for visiting his adopted home country. I spent a few days in Maputo and hung out with Igor’s childhood friends…one night, I went with this one girl who worked in the UN and all of her UN friends to this super nice outdoor bar/restaurant called Dhow, and then I spent a couple of days hanging out with another one of his friends. We actually took a day trip to this estate that Igor’s friend’s friend’s family had out in the countryside, so it was cool to see a bit of the “real” Moz. This estate was growing tropical fruits galore, so we had a nice free lunch feasting on that.
Maputo itself was a really cool city…I was surprised at how much I liked it. It reminded me a ton of certain Indian cities (Chennai and Bangalore in particular), and even a bit of places like Singapore and Kuala Lumpur, or even the French Concession in Shanghai. Just the mix of classical colonial architecture with tree lined streets in a humid and tropical setting, so if anything I think I enjoyed it just for that similar feeling. And to boot, there are also auto rickshaws (or tuk tuks as they are called in SE Asia) everywhere in Mozambique as well. I also discovered an Indian restaurant in Maputo called Galaxy that actually served south Indian food, so was able to have dosas for the first time since I was back at my parents’ before leaving for Turkey. My white American friend from the hostel liked it so much that he insisted on going with me two more times as well. He was this ex-army dude who served in the Afghan border near Pakistan (Balochistan area) for a couple of years, and who was in his final year at Arizona State (24 years old because of military service). He’s honestly one of the smartest guys I’ve met…he figured that, due to the GI Bill where he got a free scholarship + a living stipend, it was literally cheaper to travel around the world on his stipend and attend Zoom classes than it was to rent an apartment on campus and attend offline classes that way. I know being an ex-army guy and 24 helps here, but I’m honestly shocked that more college kids aren’t doing what he is doing.
After a few days of hanging out in Maputo, I took a fun 13 hour bus ride (which departed at 5am, and I had to leave my hostel at 4am) to the beachside town of Vilankulos. The main reason I wanted to visit Moz was actually to dive in Tofo beach (which is about 500km north of Maputo, or 200km south of Vilankulos), but beaches were shut down due to COVID literally the day after I landed, so diving was a no-go. Diving there is supposed to be awesome though, with tons of megafauna sightings – whale sharks, rays (like the giant ones I saw in Bali!), sea turtles, and various other sharks in general. I audibiled to a brief visit to Vilankulos, as there is this really nice untouched archipelago just outside this town called the Bazaruto Archipelago. These beaches were open since technically, the Bazaruto Archipelago is a national park and not a beach, so it wasn’t under shutdown. And due to the park status, beach access in Vilankulos was granted for the boat launch to get to the archipelago. I did a one day boat ride here (the only way to stay in the archipelago is to pay over 1k USD a night to stay in some swanky eco resort), and to be honest it’s probably up there with some of the Andaman Islands in India (which I saw summer of 2011 so my memory isn’t *completely* perfect here) as the most pristine/untouched islands I’ve seen. It certainly blows Nusa Penida, which I thought was super untouched, out of the water in terms of remoteness.
However, this wasn’t a stereotypical tropical island with palm trees and all of that, as it was rather just a giant lump of sand in the water. Was definitely a cool experience but I don’t necessarily know if it was worth the cumulative ~25 hours of bus rides that I took there and back to see it. Also got to go snorkeling here and while that was decent, snorkeling is to scuba diving as Costco bagels are to Manhasset bagels or Chicago pizza is to New York pizza…when you have the superior option available why even bother with the homeless man’s version of it? In this case I couldn’t actually dive and the snorkeling was included in my 60 USD boat rental for the day so I figured why not. We saw dugong (I only recently learned it’s not just a Pokemon!) and dolphins from the boat, but while snorkeling I just saw some pretty picturesque reefs and a handful of large, pulsating jellyfish which was pretty cool.
Vilankulos itself was sort of a generic sleepy coastal tropical town. In a way it was probably what Goa was like 30+ years ago…you can see the beginnings of the mass tourism development here but it hasn’t quite taken off. The two best things about this town were the excellent spicy seafood that all these random shacks offered, and all the fresh fruits (especially mangoes and pineapples) that you could buy from various streetside stalls. I’m pretty sure I was the only foreign tourist in the entire town during my 3-4 days here, though there were a ton of local Mozambican tourists.
Mozambican food is also probably the spiciest food I’ve had since I left Asia last year. The peri peri sauce – peri peri actually originated in Mozambique but I feel is now more famous due to Nando’s – was infinitely spicier than even the hottest Nando’s sauce so it was great to drown my grilled chicken dishes in that. One other random cool thing about Moz is that their flag literally has an AK-47 on it, due to the prominence the gun played during their war of independence against the Portuguese back in the 70s.
Overall, while I definitely enjoyed my time in Moz, I would say it’s probably my “least favorite” place I’ve been to during my retirement. As in, my least favorite place that I actually liked – so it’s obviously miles better than somewhere like Varanasi. Definitely glad that I visited, but I learned that even the alleged most beautiful beaches in the world (like Bazaruto) aren’t enough to sway me beyond a “oh that’s sort of nice”, so I guess beaches really aren’t my thing. I’m sure if I was able to dive I would have enjoyed this trip a lot lot lot more since Moz is supposed to be one of the best dive spots in the world for mega fauna, but honestly I’m still glad I made it just to see a part of Africa that is definitely more off the beaten track. The one bright side of not diving I guess was saving like 600-700 USD, and the fact that this is probably the cheapest country I’ve been in (if I extrapolate my costs, my total monthly bill here, including visas/taxis/buses/boat trip would have been just under 1k USD).
I spent a few more days in Maputo before flying out. While there, I met these Brazilian guys in my hostel who were ex-engineers. They quit their jobs and impromptu traveled to Moz a few years ago to get involved in some volunteering stuff, and now they run their own NGO that provides free surfing and diving lessons to local at-risk kids at a beach in the southern border with South Africa. Seemed like a super cool thing, though unfortunately now their program is on hold due to the beach closure nationwide.
After this, I’m flying to Uganda for a gorilla trek and safari. So I know that a gorilla trek + volcano trek in Virunga in the DRC was my ultimate bucket list goal, but 400 USD for a gorilla permit (COVID special!) was honestly way too good of a deal to pass up, so heading to Uganda for that – typically Uganda charges 700 USD while Rwanda and the DRC are over 1k USD…and you normally have to book at least 6 months in advance whereas now there’s almost no demand. And I can always see the lava lake in a separate trip. I also wanted to do a Chimpanzee trek and the easiest way to add that to the gorilla trek (due to them being in different forests) was to add in a traditional safari that’s near the Chimp forest so doing like a 1+ week package with all of that. And my dive “savings” pretty much directly cover all of my non gorilla permit expenses for this full excursion so that worked out well. If this safari is as good as Etosha in Namibia I’ll be thrilled since obviously I don’t expect it to be as amazing as my Kenya safari.
Honestly, after Uganda, I feel like I would have seen pretty much 90% of what I would love to see in sub-Saharan Africa. The only additional things that I would really really want to see are the lava lake in Virunga, a few weeks in Madagascar, and climbing Killi in Tanzania. And my sister and I are tentatively planning on climbing Killi this June post her graduation and before her job (which would ideally start before the 4th of July). I’m sure there’s more cool stuff to see in sub-Saharan Africa if I do further research (and I’m sure I will), plus other things that aren’t quite as high on my bucket list like Ethiopia and a river safari in Botswana (though we are tentatively doing a half day river safari in Uganda),but those are really the standout specific things “left” for me to see I feel. Though of course I would never say no to another traditional safari or some good diving off the coast, but these aren’t specific activities per se. And since sub-Saharan Africa is probably the most expensive region I’ll be travelling in, this bodes well for my finances for the next 2.5 years.