Mozambique — Where Sky And Water Meet

Enjoy 2,500 kilometres of little-visited Indian Ocean beaches.

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I’m sure you know of a few destinations in the Indian Ocean — the Maldives and the Seychelles, probably.

What about Mozambique?

Mozambique has 2,500 kilometres of unblemished, almost entirely undeveloped Indian Ocean coastline. And that’s on top of all the little islands that are spread all the way down the coast. Mozambique is the dream image many people hold in their minds — palm trees, white sand, the turquoise Indian Ocean.

So why isn’t it popular?

That can be told just by looking at the flag. Mozambique’s brutal history reveals itself as soon as you get to the border. This is a country that has a machine gun emblazoned on its flag — a machine gun signifying the civil war that tore the country apart through most of the 80s and into the 90s.

That civil war was funded by the Cold War — two sides fighting each other funded by the US and by the Soviets, many people dying, many people leaving, most of the country’s infrastructure disappearing. Yet seeing this flag is paradoxical because when you enter Mozambique, you realize this is not a violent country.

Mozambique is a country of peace, that encourages you to feel tranquil, at home.

Along that coast, you can smell the sand as it blows in and invades the towns, rushing from the Indian Ocean and from the beaches, piling up against whitewashed walls. In most of the country, the roads are just sand. And following the sand, we can dawdle on to the beach and admire a traditional wooden dhow sailing past. But where is the horizon? The contrast between ocean and sky blurs.

This is a country where the coast just keeps going on and on.

If you want more coast, you can take a boat to one of the private islands. And I don’t mean private islands in the way that the Maldives has private islands and you may be one of 80 guests. I mean private islands where you probably will be the only guest.

All along, especially in the Bazaruto Archipelago — a World Heritage Site, by the way — there are sandbanks that appear and disappear with the tides. You can take a boat out, have a picnic on your very own islet, then leave. And that place you were at, that islet, disappears as the tide comes in.

There is a Portuguese influence in Mozambique that lives on — in the language, in the Latin cafes, in the laid-back atmosphere.

There’s a nice town I visited called Inhambane, where a lot of the old architecture survived. Think faded wood, haphazard ceilings, sporadically broken windows to create this idea of evocative and faded charm. A 200 year-old Catholic cathedral aging benevolently. Bakeries that perfume the boulevards.

If you go there, you have to have a few bottles of Laurentina Preta. It’s a really good beer. Or maybe it was just that the beaches were so pleasant and I was so relaxed — but every single bottle tasted great, certainly compared to drinking beer in neighboring Malawi.

There’s something though — it’s so quiet around Mozambique.

There’s a lack of town bustle. This may be a bit disconcerting, especially if you’re travelled to some busier African destinations. Instead, in Mozambique the experience is created from ripe avocado, stacks of wooden baskets, lush green landscapes.

In the far south of the country, that’s where tourism has developed the most.

It’s just over the border from South Africa, and for a long time, it’s been a destination for wealthy South Africans —it’s seven or eight hours by road, or a short flight from Johannesburg. So, the very south of Mozambique did become quite a popular destination. It still is, really. I’d recommend going a bit further north, because that is where you’ll find those 2,500 kilometres of untouched coastline.

A place I found really special in that region was a town called Vilankulos.

It’s a pleasant town on the beach, and it’s also the jumping-off point to the Bazaruto Archipelago — which is the Indian Ocean’s largest marine reserve. Within that reserve there are islands and islets — there’s even one island owned by Bob Dylan — and many reefs where you can see whitetip reef sharks, crabs, whales, a lot of spectacular underwater life.

And it’s not just the type of underwater experiences you find elsewhere.

You can go diving with humpback whales and reef sharks. You can go spotting dugongs. (I didn’t even know what dugongs were until I went to Mozambique!) You can snorkel with manta rays and with whale sharks. You can go swimming with horses along the coast.

There are beautiful islands to visit.

There is Bazaruto Island itself. There’s also Benguerra Island. From there you can go on fishing charters, or cruising on a dhow. You can go for a picnic on one of the private islets. Perhaps you want to fly over it in a helicopter. There’s a huge range of things to do, but the emphasis is always on privacy and being pretty much the only person around — even if you are harvesting fresh oysters and crayfish with the locals.

That’s because people just do not visit Mozambique.

Everyone flocks to the other Indian Ocean islands and Mozambique stays silent, and seems quite happy without tourism. It’s not a country that has gone over the top trying to attract visitors either. It has the infrastructure. It has a series of outstanding high-end lodges, high-end resorts, but everything’s small scale and everything is well spaced out. Because there’s 2,500 kilometres of coastline — you don’t need to crowd the resorts next to each other.

It’s really insane to walk on those beaches — they just go on and on and on.

The main reason Mozambique hasn’t really taken off, in my opinion, is that there’s a lack of infrastructure in terms of how you get there. You can’t travel directly from Europe. The way to travel is to go via O. R. Tambo International Airport, which is in Johannesburg in South Africa. Then, there were quite a few different connecting flights — including light aircraft that do the journey for some of the resorts — to take you from O. R. Tambo to different areas of Mozambique.

It does take some time to get there.

It’s a destination that says you have to spend more time there. You’re not just going to fly there and arrive at your resort immediately. It’s not going to be a simple three-hour journey. It’s going to take a long time to get to Mozambique. That is why I think it’s not really on the tourist radar.

So when you’re there, make sure you relax into the local way of life. And that means going slow, taking your time, appreciating the privacy, and the wild nature, taking off your shoes, forgetting about time.

And finding yourself at an Indian Ocean paradise that the rest of the world does not yet know about.

By Stephen Bailey. Edited by Beatriz Becker.

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