August 2011 - Tanzania - Kilwa Masoko Dar es Salam

Salaam! Habari za leo?
It’s been already a week in Tanzania, time is flying! Our Swahili has not made great improvements because most people here speak automatically English to us; although this makes things easier for us it’s a bit of a shame because it takes the challenge of having to learn Swahili away.
Our first stop was Kilwa Masoko from where we crossed over to the little island of Kilwa Kisiwani on which there is an amazing archaeological site from the 11th century all build in pure coral! This is another island under the UNESCO World Heritage status. As you can see we are continuing our historic route of Africa and this has been its highlight so far. We will let the pictures speak.

The greatest difference so far compared to Mozambique is that the majority of the coastal population is Muslim. Walking over this little island for 5 hours in the boiling sun without a sip of water and no food since 6 am (it is Ramadan at the moment so finding food during the day in certain places is not possible) while being covered with a scarf for Luisa and trousers for Fred makes you pray to Allah that you make it through the day. Respecting the local culture as good as we could paid off as we were greeted with the local ‘Salaam Maleikum’ instead of the more touristic ‘Mamboo’ and we were asked by many smiling and extremely welcoming faces whether we were Umzungu (white) Muslims because of scarf and beard.
On the campsite we stayed we had our first encounter with a true Masai! Seeing him walk passed made you think immediately that there must be a Halloween party close by but just a second later you realise where you are and that those are actually his normal clothes. He was our private guard. This means that he was leaning to a tree the whole night next to Cruisi with his stick in his hands and a cape to cover him at night... This equals to zero privacy but extreme security, they are the favourite choice for guards here in Tanzania as they are born hunters and apparently very trustable.
Since two days we are in Dar Es Salam. It is a crazy city of 4 million people, as big as Athens, of which 70% live without electricity and running water! It is a friendly city with a weird mixture of extreme poverty and emerging technology reflected in the decent number of skyscrapers. Walking through the streets is an adventure; there are cars everywhere, people, bicycles, tuk tuks and buses in-between, all in some sort of frantic harmony. Masai men with their car-tyre sandals walk next to business men in fancy suits, women in black burkas share the same potholed pavements as Indian women in the most colourful sarees and catholic nuns.
We met a very nice older man Chaky who helped us find a hotel after asking for directions while he was sitting next to a place selling Gyros-Pita in the Mosque street, it turned out he speaks fluent Greek, who would have thought! After having spent plenty years abroad he returned home ‘to be closer to Allah’ as he said. He went out of his way to help us find accommodation and came with us to 3 medical centres to find an appropriate doctor for Fred (his ear had been sore for days not getting better, the doctor prescribed antibiotics). We had dinner with him and he gave us a little tour through the city, so we managed to go to areas where would not have dared going on our own especially at night. This is not a single case, people do all they can to make you feel safe and comfortable, a great thanks to Muslim hospitality! (In non-tourist-affected areas!)

Today our ferry was leaving for Zanzibar (the treat of the trip) but without us on it as have the first (and hopefully last) case of illness. The man is sick. Even after 3 days on antibiotics Fred’s ear was more and more swollen until it reached a stage at which it completely closed and on top of that it was leaking, depending on the day, a white, yellow and sometimes green liquid. Not good at all especially because the pain killers were not fulfilling their duties anymore, so we decided this morning to head to the hospital. A blood examination showed that the inflammation is pretty severe but not too severe to need intravenous antibiotics, this afternoon we saw a specialist and the canal of a hair (!!) in the ear (!!!) got infected by a bacteria. He has got a Hair Follicle infection; of course it couldn’t get more random! Now he is on some heavy duty painkillers and some more antibiotics.
Luisa is playing the nurse and celebrating an early end of Ramadan by enjoying half a kilogram of Middle Eastern heavenly sweets that are on sale everywhere. All this is, in a rather basic YMCA Youth Hostel room (back to student times!) with the loudest generator on this planet just next to our window.

Greeting from Fatima and Abdul!

August 2011 - Border Crossing Mozambique Tanzania - Unity bridge

Leaving the paradise-like Pangane and with that Mozambique was indeed a tough one but the excitement of getting into Tanzania was motivating us to move on.
The most convenient border crossing for the route we had chosen was from the North of Mozambique into the South of Tanzania. The bridge that was connecting those two parts of the countries we knew had been finalised a year ago. Another infrastructural project sponsored by the Chinese.
The condition of the roads however, connecting the bridge to the main road-network of both countries was supposed to be the most difficult stretch of our whole 5 months. This because the bridge was more or less build in the middle of nowhere in honour of 5 independence fighters who swam over the Rovuma River (the natural border between Mozambique and Tanzania) at exactly that point. 300 km down the river both sides of the border have asphalted roads connecting to the river...

One of THE main reasons for buying a GPS was this stretch of road however, about 200 km before the bridge the GPS was not recognising any roads anymore and was indicating that we were travelling in the middle of nowhere. Not too tragic as there is only one road and people always point you into the right direction.
The asphalt or better to say the batches of asphalt that are covering the gravel here and there are dotted with the most enormous potholes making driving a constant stop and go and a relief when the asphalt fully stops. Our going was slow as we try to preserve Cruisi as best as we can and feel sorry for her and the millions of old screws that can get loose on the constant vibrations of the gravel. Apart from that we did not face any difficulty whatsoever. The scenery was beautiful and the villages don’t seem to have seen too many foreigners passing by only since a year and the opening of the bridge the frequency must have increased.

Travelling these roads during the wet season must be a different situation altogether and a it seems that a private jet might be more recommended.
After 6 hours we reached the bridge. Mozambican customs officials despite scarily drunk wished us a good trip and let us go. They wanted to have a look into Cruisi, but after 6 hours on gravel roads we and the car were so dirty that they did not dare come any closer.

Entering Tanzania was extremely welcoming with the officials speaking fluent English and us having prepared everything like out of a textbook had everything they could ask for.
Another stretch of gravel waited for us after the bridge and we reached the first Tanzanian town, Masasi at night and with that our first taste of Tanzania beers Kilimanjaro, Serengeti and Butlers, verrry niiiiice!

August 2011 - North Mozambique - Pemba Ibo Pangane

Greetings from the North of Mozambique (posted from the South of Tanzania). The part of the country that we were mainly aiming for and which truly met all of our expectations.
We spend a couple of days in Pemba, the capital of the North, to stock up on supplies. This included filling up our gas cooker, buying Rizla and posting cards. While we were on those missions we even managed to find a lonely Nutella jar in one of the shops 
Doing your shopping in an African city teaches you a lot of patience and that personal relationships are required to make things happen. Rizla were nowhere to be found until Fred made friends with some street vendors who apparently knew the one, only and confidential place where one could get some. They said they need 20 minutes to go and get them. It took them about 2 hours. In the meantime, we headed off to refill the gas cooker. We managed to find the place after asking numerable people who pointed us into all sorts of directions with the help of Russell a British expat. The person responsible for the refills was not there and was expected back in about 3 hours. A good opportunity to walk to the main post office (in its other branch we were told that they had ran out of stamps and were only getting new ones hopefully in a week’s time). The person responsible for the stamps in the maian office was also not there and back in 2 hours. With 3 ongoing missions we decided to have a coffee break.
After 6 hours we had 5 packages of Rizla, a full cooker and the post cards will be send from Tanzania as the North of Mozambique has ran out of stamps... Although this ‘delayed’ our stay in Pemba by one more day it was a great experience. Anything can be done or arranged even if it seems highly unlikely; one simply needs a great deal of time and patience. .

We stayed in the Pemba Magic Lodge Camp, owned by Russel. It has a beautiful beach just in front with some amazing coral reefs so we spend a decent amount of time in the water being fascinated by all this diversity and colours. In the evening we treated ourselves with some more than usually Mozambican beers (excellent!) at the bar.


From Pemba we headed off to the Quirimbas Archipelago, a marine nature park, including some two dozen islands along a 400 km stretch of coast. All of them have the whitest sands and are surrounded by the most turquoise waters, on them grow either coconut palms of dense forests of mangroves. We chose to take the more local option to reach the islands compared to the in US-Dollars quoted motor-boat alternative from Pemba
This included driving 3 hours along a dirt road to the little ‘port’ of Tandanhangue (one baobab tree, a cabin and a couple of fishing boats). From there we wanted to take the dhow to Ibo, the main islands of the Pelagos and a trading port from the 15th century. The dhows (fishing boats) can only go to Ibo during high tide which was at around 8am and the time for which we arrived. Being the only non-locals it was easy to make our presence noticeable.

We thought that we had made our intention clear of wanting to go to Ibo (there is really no other reason why people come to this tiny place) as the captain of the one and only boat leaving seemed to understand perfectly. We parked Cruisi under a big tree where a guard would take care of it for the next days and in the meantime (10 min) the dhow had left, without us... We quickly accepted the situation and sat under the huge Baobab tree to wait for the next high tide.
Sitting around is a national and most probably continental occupation. You sit, and sit and sit some more and do nothing else. You don’t even have to necessarily be waiting for anything specific it seems. Great meditation opportunity, but tell that to a hyper-active Frenchman! It took Fred about 2 hours before he stopped asking (in Portuguese....) at what time the next dhow would depart.
The answers varied from 1to 4 hours although nobody has a watch to actually measure the time. The tide is the clock. So we sat there (Fred in intervals of 5 to max 10 minutes before jumping up again) and chewed on some sort of root that all the locals eat here, quite tasty and filling and entertaining for the locals to see the Umzungus (white men) eating them.

Strangely, just when so much time has passed that you start thinking that what you have been waiting for is not going to happen anymore, everything happens super quickly. Within minutes, after 3 hours of waiting, we were on the boat along with some other 10 people, huge piles of ‘the root’, luggage and a goat.
Again, after an hour on sea and many time-related questions from Fred all of a sudden we hit the sand bank and after walking for a kilometre we arrived on the island. Ibo is beautiful! Here in a cuter and more remote way than on Isla de Mozambique, the colonial architecture is slowly giving in to time and vegetation and it feels like walking through the past. One could say that time has stopped but it rather feels like it never existed here. We visited the Quirimbas island next to Ibo with our guide Mandoo, 15 years old (looking like 8 and behaving like 38). He guided us though a thick, muddy labyrinth of mangroves to a sandbank where a dhow was waiting for the last stretch. The island was picturesque like everything here and gave us the feeling of walking through a Microsoft wallpaper. For the way back the tide was low and we could walk in-between the islands, maybe we were not fast enough as Mandoo and Luisa, the shortest of the crew needed to swim for some stretches.


After Ibo we reached the highlight of Mozambique so far; Pangane, a little fishing village quite a distance from the main road along a gravel and sand track. Here we stopped for 3 days in Hashims camp site and recharged our batteries (don’t think that this is an easy life!!) .
while living on the beach like on a remote tropical island. We indulged in Hashims sea food dishes and treated ourselfes with lobster A huge lobster fresh from the beach in front with the traditional coconut rice costs about 5 euros! This was truly paradise, extraordinarily beautiful, extremely remote and very welcoming!

Life is good! Next stop Tanzania!

August 2011 - Central Mozambique & Isla de Mozambique

We have reached the North of Mozambique after two full days of driving from 5am to 6pm through the central parts of the country.

We have been able to practice pot-hole driving but the roads are still in a very good shape, in some areas better than the ones in the more accessible South due to heavy Chinese investment in a fancy new road network this, at the same time is granting theirs access to Mozambique’s natural resources. Chinese people are the only non-Africans we saw from more than 1800km.
For the first time we needed to stay in a hotel room as there was not campsite around. This made us realise that traveling in Africa on a budget and not-camping is not an option as the accommodation facilities are extremely basic and overpriced, making you miss the well-developed backpacker scene of South Africa.
Two days of solid driving and about 3 full tanks a day blew up our budget; Cruisi has an enormous consumption of petrol which we can only afford by saving on accommodation and staying in one place without moving for at least 2 days after each day of driving. Mozambique’s petrol price on top of that makes things even worse. We knew that Mozambique would be one of the most expensive countries we would be passing through but we had not expected it as pricy as it is.
Driving through central Mozambique was a pleasure, it is very green and people are friendly. We try to stop as often as possible and buy fresh snacks and fruit from the road stalls, this also gives us the opportunity to interact with people because driving in your own vehicle can be fairly isolating.
Our Portuguese is getting better and communication eases day by day.
We reached Isla de Mozambique and have been staying here for 3 days in a lovely camp site just on the beach. We treated ourselves with a small bungalow on the white sand below the palm-trees as it was only 5 Euro more expensive than camping. It could be a proper honeymoon destination if the toilet would be functional and it had a shower nevertheless, it feels like one to us.


It’s been two weeks now without a warm shower (and chocolate! Stocking up on Nutella is essential before heading into Africa).



Isla de Mozambique is a small island only 3.5 km long and 500 meters wide. It was the capital of Mozambique and of East Portuguese Africa; today it is a UNESCO world heritage site due to its colonial architecture from the 1550s and its mixture of cultures.
The Portuguese had strong trading relations with the Middle East and India and this little island blends the three cultures uniquely.
It might be one of the few places where one can find a Muslim-Catholic-Hindu cemetery.

Each corner of the island makes for award-winning pictures, making our principle of trying not to stick out as hard-core tourists running around with a camera very hard.


People are more used to tourists here and have learned to take advantage of their pockets making it from time to time quite tiring to be considered as a moving wallet and expected to hand out whatever is asked for. When a little boy asked us for a pen so that he can go to school we were all too quick to give him the pen we had with us.
Throughout the day we found out that ‘pen’ is the only English word they know and it equals money, because when the soft-hearted tourist does not have a pen for the African child to go to school he will easily give some money.

We learn a lot each day especially about the very fine line between paying a price that is higher than what the locals will pay (call it tourist tax and one feels better about it) and being completely ripped off just because you are white, which is attempted on a regular basis.

For 3 days now we have been recharging our batteries for the next stretch of road which will take us to the Quirimbas Archipelago here in Mozambique and hopefully the opportunity to snorkel with some turtles and then to the border crossing with Tanzania.

August 2011 - Central \m

August 2011 - South Mozambique - Tofo and Vilankulos

Holá bon dia! Sorry everybody for the messy post but the internet is giving up, it has taken already 1.5 hours to get the below and above online so the formatting will not happen this time.

A week later and we have arrived in Vilankulos and the Bazaruto Archipelago with its white beaches, turquoise waters and palm trees. We are still healthy and have had no big tragedies. Luisa’s glasses broke but are glued back together with super glue and Cruisi had a minor mechanical issue which caused a rather major heart attack. This was resolved with help of a very competent mechanic who fixed the seal of the carburettor which was the cause of the engine not starting, it costed us about 200 Rand (20 euro) while in a regular garage this might have resulted in changing the whole carburettor.

The south of Mozambique is the most densely populated area of the country. Along the way one drives through millions and millions of coconut palms, they reach as far as the eye can see.

Only slowly they seem to subside and give way to the robust Baobab. In-between the palms wherever one looks there are huts nicely built with three or four of them forming a tidy little compound. Each compound is connected via little paths amongst the palms to each other. The only sign of a different civilisation evident are the many deserted cement blocks which seem to have served as little cabins or shops at some earlier stage.

Now, they are slowly eaten up by nature and the forest and fall apart. Interestingly the people here set up their barrackas (little stalls) made out of straw, wood and coconut leaves next to those rotting cement blocks, it is easy to think why they would not use the more robust cement construction as their living or working space but that would be ‘our’ way of thinking. They do not seem to relate to those constructions apart from the fact that they do not have the tools and materials to maintain them and so, do as they have been doing since centuries by using what the forest is offering and leaving the westernised huts to rot and decompose.

Police blocks are very frequent, sometimes one each 10 kms. We got a fine for over-speeding, 65 instead of 60, the officers had a highly elaborated speed-measuring and picture-taking tool, which was proving the situation.

The police blocks after that also tried to get their daily income from us by insisting that we had over-speeded, touched (!) the white line or some other excuse. By asking for a picture as a proof, being quite vigorous about not having done anything wrong and throwing all Portuguese words we know into the conversation we did not have to pay another fine/bribe.

Mozambique’s working population seems to be consisting mainly of children and women. There are so many children everywhere. One will see children as little as 10 years old carrying even smaller ones on their backs on the way to who knows where. Mozambique has about 500 000 orphans as a consequence of HIV/AIDS, whether this is a reason for so seeing so many of them we are not fully sure. Women work extremely hard and carry loads on their heads which we would not be able to carry with our hands and they do so with the most unimaginable ease.

The diet here is amazing and consists of fish and rice what a pleasant change from the meat-lovers in South Africa, we eat as the locals and visit the beach in the afternoon to buy fish from the boats coming in.

On the way here we had a stop in the famous Tofo and the local yoga and surf camp. This was a bit of a disappointment as nobody was doing Yoga (which was actually good as Luisa had the big temple all for herself), Fred had a surf but coming from Cape Town it was nice but not too impressive, at least he managed to surf without a wetsuit!

Tofo by itself is overpriced and overloaded with tourists especially South Africans. To our disappointment South African tourists here are a bit like the English in Greece or the Germans on Mallorca, loud, drunk and a bit arrogant. In contrast, Vilankulos is much quieter and prettier. We visited the Archipelago with a dhow, the local fishing boat and spend the day on an island consisting only of white sand and palm trees, snorkelling in the water with all sorts of colourful fish. The water is still a bit chilly but maybe it does not get as warm as in Greece

anywhere...
We will let the pictures speak for themselves about Vilankulos and its surrounding.
Tomorrow we are heading further North and hope to reach Ihla de Mozambique within the next two to three days.