In all fairness, Maputo turned out to be large, and more beautiful than we expected: lots of trees shading every street, cleaner than any other African city we visited, several tall buildings, and a couple of nice colonial remnants, like the train station on the picture. It is located on a bay by the water, so there are plenty of restaurants with outdoor seating by the sea. Ideal, when combined with the blue skies, sunny days, and perfect weather we had. We saw many foreigners and heard lots of English. In a way it felt the most European-like city so far. It is also evident that the streets were renamed when the communists took power. Important avenues are called: Mao Tse Tung, Ho Chi Min, Vladimir Lenine, Karl Marx, etc. There's even a Salvador Allende, but we haven't found Fidel's yet.
Our hotel, Mozaika guesthouse, was the perfect place after so much constant travelling in recent days. So we decided to change our plans a little. We are not going to go up the southern coast of Mozambique, we are going to stay a little longer in Maputo, breathe, recover, and then start the constant travelling again. On Thursday we'll take a bus to Johannesburg, from where we'll fly to Victoria Falls for a couple of days, and lastly fly to Cape Town on Sunday night. We plan to see the falls from both the Zambian and Zimbabwean sides, visas permitting.
So this is our 'adeus' to Mozambique, a country with few touts and the friendliest people, the most mosquitos, lots of ruins from the past, and the best grilled calamari and prawns. I had more fish and seafood in the last couple of weeks than over the last 10 years. Delicious.
Mercedes
PS: today is the beginning of the second half of our trip. What!? We reached the middle point already!?? Mixed emotions. It feels like we've been travelling forever, but it also feels like we still have so many places to visit that half a year will not be enough.
No comments:
Post a Comment