Holiday in Inhambane, July 2-5, 2010

We planned a trip to one of the well-known Mozambican beach resort areas about 500 km north of Maputo for the long 4th of July weekend. The weekend began on the afternoon of July 2, when we were all expected to attend a reception at the American Ambassador's residence, so we got a late start driving to our mid-way destination, Xai Xai (pronounced Shy Shy). We were fortunate that David, the Chief of the CDC drivers was willing to take us in his personal Mitsubishi 4x4 so we just had to split the cost of gas and pay for one night of David's stay. You can see him here with his arm around Jasmin, who held him at bay all weekend becaus

e she is engaged to someone else in the US. Terry and Rhondette teased her all weekend about becoming a Mozambican woman and carrying firewood on her head etc. etc. She was an exceedingly good sport about it. The 5 of us traveled via road and another 3 flew directly to Inhambane. The other 2 pictures shown here are of my lodge cabin (the one in the center) and a Sunday sunrise shot. The place is stunningly beautiful.

The drive up was eventful, to say the least. On Friday evening we had to drive for 2.5 hours past sunset (not recommended) with the last hour over unpaved single lane road through the bush. There are few signs, so we made about 6 telephone calls to our Xai Xai lodge for navigational assistance. We finally found it around 8 PM and hadn't had anything to eat since the Ambassador's finger food reception. We were directed to the one restaurant that might still be open, and found it after 45 minutes of driving around essentially lost again. They fed us despite the hour as you can see from the picture above.

The next morning it rained. This was not a good development since we had about 20 km of unpaved highway to pass through on the way to Inhambane. If you have seen that American 4x4 advertisment with the guy who is proud to have his vehicle totally covered with mud you can picture what every car coming down from the north looked like. Soon, David's car looked like that too. This service station shot doesn't really do it justice, but it gives you a little bit of an idea.

We finally got through the mud, and arrived in Inhambane around 2 PM. We relaxed for the rest of the day and made plans for Domingo (Sunday). The plan was to book an Ocean Safari in the hope of seeing whales, whale sharks and other sea monsters.

On Sunday morning it was sunny, but quite windy. The South African woman in charge of the Ocean Safari said they were going because some people were adamant about it, but she didn't really think it would be much fun. I convinced most of the others to do something else for the morning. The 3 who flew into Inhambane opted to go with the boat. One of them is reported to have thrown up 3 times, while a second was feeling pretty green. they just drove around in the rough seas and saw one sea turtle.

The rest of us opted for a 4-wheeler tour which I never would have chosen on my own, but we did have a great deal of fun and got to see some real Mozambican thatched hut villages and some really pretty seaside scenes. Even Jasmin stopped whining about missing her opportunity to swim with whale sharks and started smiling again. It is noteworthy that she is a non-swimmer who was wearing pressure bracelets on both wrists to prevent motion sickness, so I don't think she would have enjoyed the sea voyage. See picture of me and Rhondette on our trusty steeds. That's the Indian Ocean in the background.

The weather was beautiful for the drive back on Monday, and I have numerous pictures of the "real Mozambique" from that journey, so I'll select a few representative shots. This first one is a truckload of laborers. This is a very common street scene in Mozambique. We wouldn't permit anything this risky, but they have a different sense of acceptable risk here.

Here's another guy cathing a few winks after a hard day at work. Can you see his seat belt? The next shot shows you the section of highway that was under construction for 20 km. There is a Chinese company that has been hire to handle the reconstruction efforts. I asked our Mozambican driver, David, what was in it for the Chinese and he said that they wanted timber. Mozambique went through a post-revolutionary period of communist influence that is largely over. There is still some evidence of it, however. In Maputo, the major streets are named after communist leaders such as Karl Marx, Vladmir

Lenin, Salvador Allende and others. In Mozambique, the government owns all the land, and if you want to use it for anything you need to apply to lease it. Anyway, if you look carefully you can see that the left-hand lane is obstructed with tree branches to protect it from traffic while the right hand lane supports all the flow of traffic. When a semi is coming in the other direction in the rain, someone needs to pull into the mud to the right. We did this frequently on the way up to Inhambane.

This last picture isn't great, but from the car window it shows you a typical section of roadway through a populated area. There are may people selling anything you could possibly need on the roadside. There are staples like tangerines, bananas, fresh-roasted cashews, as well as firewood, hand-made leather sofas, fine wood doors for your hut and used tires for your car. You name it, If you might need it, you can buy it on the roadside.