Christoph's Travelblog

The past 10 days I have been travelling northwards in Mocambique together with my parents. It has been an amazing time! We started off driving a very long stretch all the way from Maputo to Vilanculos, which went pretty smoothly, as there was absolutely no traffic what so ever on the roads. As I wrote in an earlier post, the public transportation of Mocambique, called chappas (minibusses) decided to strike as the petrol/prices have become to high. We were lucky to get out of Maputo just 30 minutes before they closed all the roads to and from the city and the airport cancelled international flights. Aparantly in several of the bigger cities there had been some turmoil because people were frustrated that there only meens of transportation did not go. We did not notice anything, and the only reason why we know about this is that the collegues of my dad were very concerned of our safety and called us every once in a while to make sure we were fine and gave us updates about the situation in the different cities and also about how things were going at our house in MAputo. We really appreciated this! It is very wonderful to know that my dad has such great collegues!! Vilanculos was amazing! Unfortunately we did not see any Dugongs but we went diving twice and it was an absolutely mindblowing experience. Eventhough the visability was not the best, the coral reef was stunning and we even got to see a loggerhead turtle, a green turtle and a devil ray :) After two days in Vilanculos we continued to Catapu at a camp which is very involved in sustainable forresting. It was incredible to see the people of this camp working solely for the wellbeing of the forrest and the environment! They teach the local community how to work together with the resources instead of exploiting nature! We even bought trees that will be planted very soon. My brothers and I are now proud owners of the mystical african tree baobab: by far my favourite african tree! My cousins, parents and grandparents also each own a tree but I cannot remember which species.. The time in Catapu was far to short, I would have loved to spent more time at the community project, but as we were on a tight schedule, we had to continue to Ihla de Mocambique. Ihla de Mocambique is the old capital of the country and is from where the portugese colonialisation of the country began. The island has had a long history (starting long before the portugese arrived in 1522). What I found most interesting was the fort, which was built by the portugese and had never been conquered by anyone, even though it had been attacked 5 times (by the dutch and later the french). The buildings on the island were mostly not very well maintained, which however contributed to the special atmosphere of history present on the island. Everywhere there were children playing in the streets and the people were 90% islamic. It was as if we had entered a different country as soon as we drove over the one laned bridge leading from the mainland to the island. We stayed at Ruby backpackers which is owned by a young German guy called Uwe. He had decided to restore one of the old houses of Ihla and I must say did a pretty amazing job! The last two days we spent at Pemba, which is far up north in Mocambique. Today we went diving again and this time we had 25 metres visability: the best I've ever tried! After and amazing dive we even got to swim with dolphins, just to complete a wonderful day on the ocean :) Tomorrow I'm taking the bus to Nampula, spending the night and then the day after tomorrow I'm taking the train (at 04:00!!) from Nampula to Cuamba. From here I'll take the chappas (which are, as far as I know driving again) to Malawi. It will take some getting used to travelling alone (especially because the time with my parents has been absolutely wonderful!!!!!) but I'm looking very much forward to this next part of my trip :) I hope there are not to many mistakes in this update.. I don't have the time to reread it. :)