May 29 – Maputo, Mozambique

Weather – 29º

Steps – over 10,000. It was suggested that we not wear jewellery, so I took off my Apple watch. To us, it’s easy to not wear jewellery in places like this, so we don’t.

Humidity – 65%

Country #93!

The morning started with a breakfast organized by the ship so we could meet the other 3 couples going on the safari with us on Saturday. This is a nice small group. There was one couple from Vancouver and 2 from the US. One of the couples has been on 5 safaris so they were a good source of information.

Mozambique

sun rise

We decided to spend the next bit of the morning on the deck, the weather was perfect at about 25 degrees, with shade and a bit of a breeze as we sailed into Mozambique. I had planned on only staying out for a bit and then making it to the gym, but Saravanan teamed up with Chris and after significant convincing (very little actually) I succumbed to a glass of wine! That Saravanan…always looking for a way to spoil us! My willpower eventually prevailed, and I made it to the gym.

The sail-in was lovely as sail-ins always are. As we approached Maputo it became apparent to us that this would be more big city compared to our last few ports.

Maputo street life

Maputo is the capital and largest city of Mozambique, pop: 1.1 million, metropolitan area: 2.7 mil. This is the first time we’re setting foot on AFRICA, mainland AFRICA. Really, we’ve been to mainland Africa before having visited Egypt and Morrocco, but this part of Africa is…different. Maputo is on a large natural bay in the Indian Ocean, in the southern most part of the country next to South Africa. As a former Portuguese colony, half of the people speak Portuguese. Maputo has a similar population to Calgary but is 5-10x denser.

One thing about travelling to new places is learning about the places we visit.

Louis describing Portuguese colonization

Like where exactly is Mozambique? I’ve basically learned everything I know about geography from travelling. Are there big cities here? What is it like to live here? And of course, what’s the local beer?

Today we are docked thankfully. Another (among the many, many) things to be thankful for today is that the tour is on foot, directly from the pier!

When we met up with Luis our guide and Diana our handler, there were only 2 other people with us! 4 on a walking tour…heaven! We heard some of the other groups had 14 which is still small, but we were very lucky.

Chris and Louis at the Fort

Louis first gave us a bit of an overview inside the terminal before we set out into the Maputo’s grittiness. The streets are narrow, so we mostly walked single file. The streets are lined with half decent, normal cars – Louis told us mostly they are used from Japan. We also noticed they were all clean and some were being handwashed by bucket, we figured that the ones doing the washing were not the owners and maybe it was a watch and wash situation as there were others who looked like

beers in Maputo

they may be just watching the individual cars.

We trailed behind Louis, with Diana in the rear, as he walked us first to the train station, designed by Gustave Eiffel. Outside the train station was a hive of activity – cars, busses, trucks, tuk-tuks, and hawkers. Just like anywhere else in the world, our approach to hawkers is to politely ignore and make zero eye contact. Rarely, we’ll say ‘no thanks’ but mostly just ignore – that has served us well. One of the other people with us made the mistake of asking one guy how much his hats were…good grief. This guy popped up at every spot we visited! He was not really a bother, just tailed us the entire afternoon and only talk to the one who was interested in the first place. When Louis asked him to can it when he was talking to us, he complied.

I think this guy really did want a hat and eventually bought 2 ball caps for

hello from maputo

10USD.

Although outside the train station was mayhem, inside was calm and almost peaceful. It is still a working station, but you wouldn’t know it for the lack of activity. We wandered around (listening to Adele and Bruno Mars on PA system funnily enough) as Louis described where cargo came and went from, gave us the history of the station and a bit more about Mozambique’s history.

random mural

Our next stop was at Maputo’s 18th-century fortress fort. The walk to the fort was short, but through more narrow, crowded, car lined streets. The tour description said we would be strolling the “wide boulevards of Mozambique’s capital” – false advertising…there were definitely NO wide streets.

Our visit to the fort gave Louis an opportunity to talk to us about Mozambique’s

Louis' gift

colonization by Portugal – Portuguese is one of the official languages, actually I think it is the only official language. It’s interesting to note that the other countries surrounding Mozambique speak English, but here it’s Portuguese.

Next, we were back into the bustling streets for another short walk to a café where we had a drink and a pastel de nata – the Portuguese custard tart.

Our last stop was at the Maputo Central Market. This was a typical market, with food and souvenirs. We didn’t stay long at the market. Chris asked

ship with Chinese built 5Km bridge

Louis if there would be a place for a local beer at the market. There was across from the market. Diana stayed with the other 2 who wanted to see the market and we went with Louis to a row of streetside stalls. Each stall had simple, small, low tables and either a wooden bench or those typical plastic stools we’ve seen in travel/food shows. The 3 of us joined the 2 guys who were already there. I’m not sure if anyone else spoke English, if they did, they didn’t show it. They weren’t speaking Portuguese either I figured that much out.

Louis got 2, 2M beers, the name is 2M. They weren’t too keen to take our USD,

port bustling with activity

but that’s all we had. We could have gone into the market to exchange, but in the end when they were satisfied that the bills were not fake (apparently that’s a big deal in Africa – they want brand new crisp bills) and then did the conversion on their phones, they were happy. It was a great experience.

So, we sat with Louis drinking our beer,

while he drank his water (being on duty and all) and chatted a bit. At one point he asked one of the Mozambican

tankers leaving port

guys at our table for some coins. This guy started pulling coins out of the biggest red leather satchel you’ve ever seen. I thought Louis was getting him to trade our USD for the coins to pay for the beer…no. Louis found one of each of the Mozambican coins for both Chris and me as a reminder of Mozambique. I tried to refuse, but Louis insisted.  I was very touched. In the end we paid $1USD for each of our beers.

One thing we noticed while walking around Maputo was that there were no kids (except for the 3 in school uniforms we saw at the end of the tour.) Hopefully this means that they are all in school – education is free in Mozambique, but as we learned in Mayotte, that doesn’t mean they go. This was a sharp contrast to the last 2 ports teaming with kids. We also saw an equal number of men and women working and walking around Maputo. Also, FYI…Mozambique is 50% Christian and 17% Muslim.

sunset over Maputo

Mozambique is one of the poorest countries in the world, but you wouldn’t know if from today’s visit. We saw their mostly commercial downtown rather than where people lived. It was hardly shiny and clean, but the poverty wasn’t as apparent as it was in the last 2 ports.

When the cruise started it was suggested that we might need a $500 visa to visit

another bridge shot

Mozambique. We had decided we would do it as we would likely never be back
to see the place. In the end, Canadians (and most other passengers) didn’t need one. There’s a large contingent onboard from Costa Rica – they needed visas. If you needed and didn’t get one, you could just stay on board.