Four Days on the Veld

August 7

We cut our stay in Mozambique short by a week to take the opportunity to go to South Africa and visit Kruger National Park, or “The Kruger,” as most people there call it. It was the second time in my life I’d been within a few hours of this world-renowned nature preserve the size of Belgium, so I figured it would be wise to seize the opportunity. Plus, Michael had bought a great SLR camera right before the trip, and we were both eager to try some serious wildlife photography after our short visit to Gorongosa earlier in the summer.

We bought a bus ticket with a South African company that runs daily buses between Maputo and Johannesburg, stopping along the way in Nelspruit, our base for Kruger. When the bus pulled up, we were awe-struck. It was a modern, two story bus in great condition. What?!?!? We got on, and seriously spent the first 20 minutes laughing and exclaiming over and over about the leg room, cushy sheets, smooth ride, and overall personal space.

Arriving in Nelspruit about 4 hours later was like arriving in a completely different area of the world. The whole place was just so developed, so efficient, so clean! And, apparently, so dangerous… We asked the bus porter where we could find a reliable taxi, and the next thing we knew, a rough-looking Afrikkaner man (of Dutch decent) was insisting, rather aggressively, that we take a ride from him as soon as he saw his wife and kids safely on to the bus to Johannesburg. To trust or not to trust? Honestly, we were a bit sketched out by this man, but had heard more than enough warnings about “bad taxis” in South Africa that rob you of everything and leave you stranded on the side of the road (and worse).

There were no taxis around, good or bad, and the Afrikkaner’s family looked like nice people (as far as you can judge such a thing at a bus stop from 100 feet away), so we decided to take our chances with him. The bus porter stood close by.

“It’s ok,” we told him. “You can leave – we’ll just wait for that man.”

“No, I wait,” he insisted. “This here, very bad area. Very dangerous.”

In about 5 minutes, the Afrikkaner man returned. “Ok, let’s go,” he said. “Sorry to make you wait, but I want to see my family safely on the bus before I leave. I can’t even leave them on the sidewalk next to the bus or maybe they’ll be attacked. But they’re safe with me. All the criminals know me and they won’t bother them if I’m around. You’re safe with me”

Uhh…

We got into the man’s truck. I thanked him for the ride, and he immediately dismissed my thanks with a 15-minute rant that stopped only when we pulled into the (heavily gated) driveway of the backpacker’s place, Funky Monkey.

“Frankly, I have no idea why you’ve come to this country,” he began. “The whole country, it’s so dangerous. People are murdered every day, just here, right in this area. I’m safe because the criminals all know me, but they’ll attack you in broad daylight, throw you to the ground and hold you down and take everything, and if you resist they’ll stab you. That’s how it is here.”

He continued with more and more gruesome details, including (and I quote…), “I mean, if you want to kill someone, that’s fine, but at least don’t cut their bloody head off!” He kept repeating that the criminals all know him, and I was quite curious to know, umm, why exactly that was, but couldn’t get a word in. He explained it anyway. “The criminals all know me, they know I’m quick with my gun and they know I’ll use it. I carry it with me, everywhere I go, in my house, in my bedroom at night.” He then told us the story of a night when three of “them” (black men) broke into his house wielding knives (“and I know knifes, and these were meant to kill us, that’s what knives like that are for, and they wanted to kill my wife, my kids, me…”). The story ended with the intruders running away, him running after them into the night, and catching and beating up 3 of the 5 men before turning them into the police and eventually getting fined for assault.

When we arrived at the backpackers, he gave us his name (Neil) and phone number, insisted that we call him if we needed anything, and recommended that we leave the country as soon as possible.

This was our welcome to South Africa. OhMyGod can we please go back home now?

* * * * *

More on Neil in a post to come, but for now, we’ll move on to “The Kruger.”

We had really debated while in Mozambique if we wanted to rent a car and try a “do it yourself” safari, or go with an organized company. We met many people who’d done both, and everyone insisted that their way was “much better.” There were obvious drawback and benefits to both, but we decided to go with a organized company so that we could be in a high vehicle (to see farther and above the grass) with a trained and knowledgeable guide who could find rare animals and tell us all about them, despite the fact that this put us on a more rigid schedule and allowed less flexibility.

We decided to go with “Funky Safari’s” (yes, there is an apostrophe), run by Henry van der something, an utterly psychotic but very friendly and enthusiastic South African who seemed to be on speed, but in fact smoked at least 3 joints of weed each afternoon we were there. We’d heard good things about them, and, for a budget option, were very pleased with the company. His wife, Lorna, a very friendly, motherly English woman the polar opposite of Henry, ran the associated backpackers, Funky Monkey.

We spent 3 full days and one 4th morning in the park. We were told that most people would see lions, rhinos, elephants, giraffes, buffalo, hippos and lots of antelope species in that time. If we were very, very lucky, we might see a leopard.

We woke up at 5:30 every morning, and were driving around the park by 6:00. It was totally freezing in the mornings, especially for Michael and me because we’d only brought warm-weather clothes. Due to poor planning, I ended up looking like a crazy woman in an attempt to stay warm. I wore my only skirt, which was very purple, over my capris for an extra layer. On top, I wore a short sleeve shirt, a long sleeve shirt, and my only sweater, which was also entirely purple. The only shoes I had were my chacos, but I had a pair of brightly colored, striped wool socks which I wore anyway. My skirt stopped mid-calf, so these were entirely visible and shining brightly. To top it off, I had a neon green fleece blanket printed with koalas eating strawberries, which I wrapped around me to stay warm as well. I think it took me a little longer than normal to make friends here…

Like I said, we started our morning drives by 6:00. The veld was covered in mist and absolutely beautiful this time of day. As we drove along on our first morning, we saw a rhino (my first ever in the wild!), some elephants, and some beautiful male kudu (antelope with big, spiraling horns). The rest of the day, we barely saw anything, but still enjoyed the scenery and the few giraffes we found.

What a change the next day! We saw buffalo, rhino and elephants first thing, found a pride of lions basking in the sun on some rocks early in the day, and then sped off when our guides heard reports of a leopard. Sure enough, we found a leopard maybe 150 feet from the road, lounging in a tree in the heat of the day. We were pretty ecstatic. All the “Big 5” in one day, including an elusive leopard! But that wasn’t all. As we were chilling by a water hole later that afternoon watching a herd of elephants drink, a family drove up and told us a leopard had just brought down an antelope on a road nearby. Our guide was hesitant to go, as it was out of the way and we were supposed to be back to the camp soon. As we (in our vehicle were Mike, me, and two girls from Rice University) tried and tried to convince him, another car pulled up and informed us that in fact, the animal that had just brought down an antelope was a cheetah! We completely flipped out, and I think it became clear that we were willing to hijack the vehicle if our guide didn’t take us, so he agreed to go on the condition that we promised not to tell a single person (he was really worried about getting in trouble for coming back late!).

I don’t know if I can adequately explain how excited I was. Ever since second grade, there have been two animals that I have wanted to see but was sure I never would because they are so rare that they are basically extinct: cheetahs and blue whales. As we sped along the road toward the supposed cheetah, I was going crazy with anticipation!

Soon we saw a mass of maybe 40 vehicles, crowded together and parked on the road. We slowly pulled up alongside them, parked, and saw a beautiful cheetah walking straight toward us before plopping down under the shade of a tree about 25 feet from the road. It was incredible! She was such a beautiful animal, and so close that I could see every spot, her chest expanding and contracting as she panted, even the blood on her mouth. About 50 feet beyond her lay the antelope she had just killed, and even the gory rips across its side and the bloody, exposed muscle on its flank was beautiful in this scene. It was AMAZING!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

And, we gave our guide a very nice tip for taking us against his will. ☺

So, Day II was obviously incredible. Michael and I had signed up for two days with the option of extending into 3 (plus an extra morning). We realized that we had just had possibly the luckiest day in the history of Kruger Park (even guides who drive the park every day only see cheetahs a few times a year, and virtually never what we saw!), and that the next day would feel a little lame in comparison. Nonetheless, we decided to stay and enjoy it as best we could, though we kept repeating “let’s not be disappointed when tomorrow’s not nearly as good.”

We awoke a number of times in the middle of the night to an eerie but oddly beautiful sound we couldn’t recognize. In the morning, the guides told us that it was the male lions, returned from a few weeks “patrolling” the territory and calling to the pride of females, trying to find them. We took off at 6:00 and headed straight for the place the guides thought they might be. We rounded a corner, and suddenly slammed on the brakes. Strolling down the road straight toward us were two enormous male lions. Trailing them was a line of about 15 cars, though only those in the first few cars had any chance of seeing them well. Our guide quickly pulled to the side of the road and told us to remain quiet and not make any sudden movements. The lions approached, closer and closer. They were soooooo beautiful, incredibly healthy and young, but with full manes. As they walked toward us, I looked into the huge, yellow eyes of the first male, and as he passed, he turned its head to keep his eyes on us the entire time. I can’t describe this without sounding terribly cheesy, but it was one the most amazing experiences I’ve ever had. I’ve never felt so in awe of an animal, or, honestly, so face to face with my own mortality. I know it sounds really cheesy, but it was amazing knowing there was nothing but 5 feet of air between me and this enormous lion. Michael had his zoom lens on and was taking pictures. When the second lion walked right by us, he tried to take a picture, but the camera couldn’t focus, because the lion was too close. I asked him what the minimum focusing distance of his lens was. The answer: 4.9 feet.

So the lions passed us, and then the trail of other cars and safari vehicles. We turned around and followed the trail, but the lions passed into the high grasses near a road junction, and people were starting to get frustrated and were honking and revving their engines and zooming around trying to get a good view. Our driver just put the car in park and stayed there.

“Why aren’t you going forward?” we demanded. “The lions went up there!”

“No, no, there’s too many people. No good,” he replied.

“We don’t care if there’s too many people; we’ve come all the way from the US to see this!” the girls from Rice cried out.

“No, no, let’s just wait.”

All of us were pretty annoyed, and sat grumbling in the safari vehicle for about a minute and a half, craning our necks to see if somewhere up in the honking traffic were the lions. Our guide ignored us.

“Ah…” he said, suddenly, and we looked where he was looking.

The younger male was emerging silently from the grass not 15 feet away from us. He paused on a small knoll, looked around, then let out the same beautiful, haunting call we’d heard during the night.

“He’s calling for his brother,” our guide whispered.

The lion gave us a good look, then walked down to the road we were on. He strolled past us, looking around for his brother, and we sat in the peaceful quiet, just us and the lion, as he made his way down the road away from the honking cars ahead of us.

* * * * *

The rest of the day was a bit dull, but we were still amazed by the morning. We went to bed feeling thoroughly satisfied, and ready to go home after our 4th and last morning drive.

We set off again at 6:00, and saw a herd of buffalo, some elephants and a rhino. Then, off in the grass about 60 feet away, we spotted a herd of the very rare sable antelope, which we had really wanted to see but hadn’t. They were really, really beautiful and we loved photographing them.

We then drove back to the spot where we’d seen the lions the day before. Tons of cars were driving away from the area, and one of them pulled over and the driver told us that the whole pride had been near the road, but finally disappeared down into an area where there wasn’t any road access. I wondered if the huge crowd of honking and anxious people had anything to do with that.

“Sorry, friends, but it was a good try,” our guide said. “But once they’ve gone there, the lions won’t return until the end of the day.”

Darn.

Ah well. We drove along a few minutes, and our guide stopped at a pile of rhino poop to explain the territory marking of white rhinos. As we were staring at the poop, one of the Rice girls suddenly gasped, “Lions!” About 60 feet up the road, a female lion was crossing the road. Our guide quickly turned on the engine and drove near to where they were. He turned the engine back off and we sat there, the only car around, as one by one, the entire pride crossed the road. It was so magical. Four or five females, then the two males, slowly made their way across. The last male plopped down in the middle of the road for a minute or two, resting, before standing up, stopping for a HUGE yawn that in our super ridiculously amazing pictures looks like a giant roar, and disappeared into the grass.

Ahhhhh. So utterly and entirely satisfied, we returned to Mozambique that afternoon, did some crazy souvenir shopping the next day, and flew away from this wonderful place.

Up next… (I promise I’ll try to post it soon!)
“Ten Days in the ‘Worst City in England’”
And… “First Week in India” (I’ll try to think of a cleverer title before then)

Beautiful Places and Bunny Chow

(written July 30)

With only a few exceptions, things have been going great since my last post. We made it to Chimoio, a small and rather pleasant city near Zimbabwe, and checked into the Pink Papaya, a backpackers place that is painted entirely in Pepto Bismol pink. Even the toilet seat! The owner, a German woman named Anya, was without a doubt the most unbelievably friendly person I've met in a long time. We spent an afternoon hiking in the surrounding hillsides and walking through the bairro, or slum area, with a local man.

The next day, we decided to go to Parque Nationale da Gorongosa. Apparently, Gorongosa was once one of Africa's premier wildlife parks, but its animal population was decimated by hunters and poachers during the civil war. It's recently been "adopted" by an American foundation and is trying hard to make a comeback, including through traditional ceremonies asking the ancestors to bring back tourists. Cool.

Anyway, Mike and I decided it would be worth a visit even though there aren't many animals. I called the first number I was able to dig up, which turned out the be the personal cell phone of the Park Superintendent, who was on vacation at the time and didn't seem too excited to help me with a reservation... Oops. The next number was luckily correct, but I was told that there was no camping currently available, and that the rooms were all booked for the next few nights. I know in the US that would mean, as you might guess, that there was no camping and no rooms. But this is Mozambique. So I asked the same question 3 or 4 more times ("No camping? No rooms? Two people?") and then suddenly there was an "Oh! Two people for a room? Yes, we have space." Thanks, dude.

Here's how we got there: We took a minibus (horribly crowded, of course) from Chimoio to the junction at Incope, called the Park to tell them we were at Inchope and on our way, and hopped on another minibus. We rode for about an hour, when suddenly the bus screeched to a stop, the conductor dumped our bags on the ground and all but shoved us off before the bus took off into the distance.

Ok. We looked around, feeling very much in the middle of nowhere. The African bush extended in all directions, broken only by the silent, empty tarmac road, and a small, dirt track that presumably led to the park. We picked up our bags, moved under the shade of a tree, and waited, listening to the wind in the bush. And waited more. Hmm. When we called from Inchope, the person I'd talked to said he'd send a truck to pick us up at the junction. Was this the right junction?

Luckily, it was, and after an hour, a truck came to take us to the park. The complex itself was pretty funny. They were definitely moving in the direction of luxury, but had quite a way to go. They had a lovely pool, half surrounded by a nice wooden fence and half with chain link. The pretty path lights leading the way to the rondavels (the "rooms" were actually really nice self-contained rondavels) were covered by plastic water bottles cut in half. Ha ha.

We went on a few game drives, and saw lots and lots of antelope and warthogs. Not much else. But the park itself was extraordinarily beautiful. At parts, it seemed exactly like Jurassic Park. Other parks were what you picture as the quintessential African savannah. It was definitely worth the trip.

We continued from there to Vilankulo. Unbelievable. It's a beachside town with the most turquoise waters I've ever seen. At low tide, sand bars appear out across the ocean and it's possible to walk far, far out into the water (we almost got stranded coming back late, though!). We stayed at an amazing backpackers' called Zombie Cucumber, which was run by an extremely British lady who cooked us amazing homemade dinners every evening.

While at Vilankulo, we went on a 2-day overnight dhow (sailboat) safari to the Bazaruto Archipelago, a set of 5 or 6 utterly idyllic islands about 5km off the coast. We snorkled with an amazing array of tropical fish, and explored the vast, entirely empty white sand beaches and dunes of the islands. The water and sky were both unbelievably blue. At night, we looked up at the most incredibly starry sky I've ever seen.

We spent one more day on the mainland at Vilankulo, and then continued farther south to Tofo, the most famous beach in Mozambique. I'd been a little hesitant going to Tofo, since I knew it would be very touristy and have found that most places with lots of Westerners on vacation have bad relationships with local people. But it was actually a very great, relaxed and friendly place. The backpackers' we stayed at had Mozambican music and dance nights, and about half the crowd was locals. It was really, really fun!

We spent the days at Tofo (by the way, it's pronounced Tofu!) just lying on the beach, buying shell bracelets from a few kids and turning away dozens more. Occassionally, a man would come by with a young coconut, and for 50 cents he would cut off the top, let you drink the juice, then slice it up to munch on. Yum! Tofo was also a fun place to be since we'd started to make a number of friends in Chimoio and Vilankulo who also traveled to Tofo when we did, so we started making closer friendships with them. One British couple we ended up being with in 5 places! But meeting these other travelers has been a really fun part of the trip! We've met tons of British, German and Dutch people, as well as American, Spanish, Israeli, Japanese, and on and on. Basically all are between 18 and 30 and are pretty neat people!

Oh, Bunny Chow! I promised I'd mention bunny chow in my blog. If you're ever in Tofo, go to the Bread Shack near Fatima's Nest and buy bunny chow. It's really yummy and cheap! (The owner was very excited to have over 300 google hits for "Tofo Bunny Chow" since they've only been open 2 months, so I promised I'd mention it, too!)

More soon to come...

Heads and Tails

(Written July 15 - I haven't had enough internet to post anything until now!)

Traveling here is a lot like flipping a coin. If heads are good luck and tails are bad luck (or at least obstacles you don't want to face), you know they're bound to be approximately even, and the great times you have when luck is good makes the inevitable difficult times worth handling.

But despite the probability that heads/tails, good/bad, enjoyable/difficult will even out, sometimes you get a long string of one or the other. The first week and a half of this trip were certainly bad luck, bad luck, bad luck. But I'll share here the last few days, in which things have been a much more appropriate balance of fun and difficulty:

Michael and I got up at 3:00 on Friday morning, packed up our campsite at the beautiful Wimbi Beach, and got a cab (arranged the night before) to the bus lot. We established our place in line and stood sleepily in the pre-dawn darkness. Around 4:45, our bus, which was probably retired from use in a developed country in the early 1990s, started making some very pitiful sounds as the driver tried and tried to start it up. Finally, after about 5 minutes of trying and a solid 8-second turnover on the last try, the engine started, and we filed onto the bus. The seats were small, grimy, plastic-covered with cusions too thin to offer much protection from the hard metal underneath. But we did get some decent seats.

At 5:00 sharp, the bus pulled out. With every gear shift, the entire bus lurched, and I really, really hoped we'd make the journey without breaking down. We began to drive out of town, stopping at least once a minute to pick up passengers waiting by the side of the road. After about half an hour, the sky began to lighten slightly. As the sun began to rise, I looked out the window at the villages and countryside covered in early morning mist. The far north of Mozambique is incredibly beautiful, spattered with boababs (my favorite tree!), rolling hills, and a large number of inselbergs - huge towers of basalt rock that were once the lava tubes of volcanos, and are the only part that haven't yet eroded.

As time went on, th0ugh, the journey got less enjoyable, as can always be expected. Mozambicans - and Africans in general - seem to have a much higher heat tolerance than I do, and as the day warmed up, I started sweating in the hot bus while most of the Mozambicans were still wearing sweatshirts. (Remember, it's the dead of winter here in the Southern Hemisphere.) I was dying for some fresh air. As the hours passed, everyone started getting hot, and sweaty too, and even with the windows open, the bus really started to stink. Deodorant is definitely a luxury item in rural areas like this, and while most people stay very clean and fresh (much moreso than me!) by washing multiple times a day, that simply doesn't happen on a 9-hour busride.

By 10:00, I started getting a headache from dehydration. That's another big problem with these bus rides. Buses stop only once even on a ride this long, and no matter how many buses I ride, I can NEVER guess when that stop will be (NOT the middle, I can tell you). It's a big gamble because I can either drink a litre and a half of water and then have to hold it for four miserable hours, or I can keep putting off drinking closer and closer to my predicted stop time, only to have the bus stop - my only chance to pee - before I've had a single sip of water. Ah well...

With the right mindset, bus rides can still be fun, though. At every stop (these are stops for letting people on, NOT bathroom breaks), crowds of people swarm around the buses, holding their goods over their heads at the height of the bus windows, hoping to sell. It's like Sky-Mall. From the (dis)comfort of your own seat, you can buy berries, cashews, rolls, grilled corn, boiled eggs, tomatos, cooked chickens, live chickens, cassava (cooked, raw, fried), cookies, Rhino gin in cheap plastic bottles, sodas, baskets, straw mats, and assorted other goods. Yay!

Moving on (this is getting long!), we finally arrived in the port town of Nacala, and waited on the side of the road, sweating and getting sunburned, until a man named Arthur showed up to take us to the place he and his wife run. Arthur is a 40-something South African mercenary (yes, mercenary), whose favorite hobby is underwater spear hunting. My mom and I met him on our last trip, and though we have somewhat divergent interests (!), he's a really nice guy, and Mike and I thought a day or two and his place might be relaxing after all the difficulties we'd had so far.

And it was. (Success!) We pitched our tent on a point overlooking the enormous Nacala Bay and spent the afternoon and next day lounging about on the beautiful stretches of beach next to their property. One very unexpected highlight of our time there was getting to see Captain Morgan's boat! I still don't understand the full story, but apparently Captain Morgan's is sponsoring these adventurers to sail all the way around Africa in this old pirate boat that belonged to the pirate whose face now adorns the Captain Morgan's bottle. I'd totally thought Captain Morgan was just made up, but... Anyway, we got permission from the very drunk people next to it to climb up the pirate ship and take pictures. Yippee.

Finally feeling revitalized after 10 days of setbacks, Mike and I decided to move on to our next destination: Ilha de Mocambique. Of course, this presented its own challenges. While legitimate buses, or machibambas, are available for long distances and minibuses (about the size of American 10-seater vans) can be found for mid-range distances, short trips can only be made on chapas, which may be loosely defined as something that moves. With at least 50% reliability. Maybe.

The trip to Ilha was not a short distance, but unfortunately required 2 short trips on chapas, as a direct minibus isn't available along the route.

We arrived at the chapa station around 8:45 in the morning and immediately found a ride in a 3-axle truck bed. It was about average for what you see here. By the time we had "enough" people to make the trip worthwhile, I counted 28 adults, 7 children, 2 chickens, 5 50-pound bags of cassava and about 10 pieces of luggage crammed on. Yay. We hopped off about 1.5 hours later, at the Monapo junction, and only had to wait a few minutes before another truck came along, bound for Ilha. We climbed on, unaware that we'd just hit another stroke of bad luck...

You see, it's the drivers who choose what a "reasonable" number of people and goods on their trucks is. Most (well, all) of the time, this is a very unreasonable number by American standards. But sometimes it's unreasonable by everyone's standards. This was one of those times.

This second truck was much smaller than the first - only a little larger than an American pick-up truck. It started out with maybe 20 people in the back. Then 23. Then 25. At each stop, we thought, "no. way." There just wasn't any more room. People started climbing on and just getting part of their body in the truck - one leg in, one leg dangling out.

We pulled up at perhaps the eighth village, and found a man sitting by the side of the road with 10 50-pound bags of cassava. I'm talking a full truck load in and of itself. I thought we just HAD to keep going and leave the man to try his luck with the next truck.

Nope. On come the bags. People are pushed off the truck as bag after bag is loaded on, almost up to the front of the bed, near the cab, where I'm crouched. When the bags are finally loaded, on come the people. All 25. I'm wedged between two people whose faces I can't even see. An anonymous foot is standing on my right toes. We start moving. After five minutes, we stop at another village. More people on. Passengers started taking off their shoes (myself included), because bare feet can more easily be wedged in the tiny spaces between bags and legs and bodies. Eventually, I find myself smushed against the back of the cab in the tiniest ball I've ever been in, legs hugged against my chest, someone sitting on my bare feet. The cab and bed aren't nicely connected like in American trucks, so all the engine heat blasts against me as we barrel down the road. At the next stop, I decide it's too much to bear and stand up, nearly knocking someone off the truck. Michael joins me, and for the next 15 minutes, we ride the truck like a chariot, holding onto the luggage rack above the cab as the wind blasts our faces. Much more pleasant. There are now 35 people on the truck (seriously - I'm counting at each stop) and as numbers 36 and 37 get on with sacks of 2nd hand clothing about 5 feet in diameter, a bag (or person?) shifts agains one of my legs, trying to bend it in a way it can't go. I pull, pull, pull, and finally free it from the deep within the pile of bags and people and chickens. Oops. I can't find another place for my left foot. Really. The next 45 minutes - yes, 45 minutes - I ride along standing only on my ride foot. Ahh.

And then we get there! Ocean! Island! We check into a beautiful little B&B with a lovely, quiet courtyard, then move out into the town. Ilha is an island 3 km long and 500 meters wide, in the Indian Ocean just offshore from Mozambique. (So close that it's connected by a bridge.) It's an amazing place. Originally a Swahili trading post, visited in the early part of the millenium by Arab traders, it attracted Portuguese explorers (Vasco de Gama himself) in 1498 and soon became the Portuguese capital of Mozambique, and a major slave trading hub of the continent. Its old chapel is actually the oldest European building in the Southern Hemisphere, and it has a massive fort built in the 1500s. It's a fascinating place to visit, with half the buildings utterly dilapidated and crumbling, half beautifully restored and painted brightly. The ocean is visible from every street, and its breeze keeps the temperatures pleasant.

As we walked to lunch, where we were to have the BEST local matapa (cassava leaves in cashew/coconut sauce) I've ever had, we quickly attracted a following of 5 or 6 teenage boys eager to show us around. Three of them - Mohammed, John and Anrahne, ended up spending much of the next 2 days with us and were in fact very knowledgable and helpful, and we were happy to tip them well at the end.

After spending the days walking all over the island, Michael and I climbed up to a rooftop balcony at our B&B and enjoyed the view of the island from above at sunset. Across the street, the main mosque broadcasted its evening prayers over a pretty terrible speaker system that could nonetheless be heard across the entire island. I think it would have been pretty if the speakers weren't crackling the entire time. At any rate, I can tell you I enjoyed the evening prayers a lot more than the morning call to prayer, which started at 4:15! Ech! I think they time it to be just long enough that you can't fall back asleep afterwards. And it sure was loud and energetic! The first morning, I thought that Ilha was 30% Muslim, the national percentage, and was really annoyed that the mosque would awaken the entire island for the sake of 1/3 its population. But I was much less upset after learning that 98% of the island's population is Muslim, most of whom do indeed pray five times a day. I think the fact that I remembered to leave earplugs by my bed the 2nd morning also made me less upset...

After a really lovely time on the island, we decided it was time to keep working our way back south. The owner of our B&B called a "good" minibus driver he knew and asked him to pick us up as he started his route to Nampula. What an amazing surprise! It was still more crowded than such a bus would be in the US, but was without a doubt the most comfortable and reasonably stuffed minibus I've ever ridden in in Africa. The "three" hour drive was only 30 minutes longer than we were told - amazing! - and we got to Nampula well before dark.

Yes, things were looking up.

(Read on, my friends! I've only gotten luckier and luckier - unbelievably so - as the trip's gone on...)