Home » Mozambique » South African Adventure 1999, Part 10: Mozambique -- symbolising the best and worst of Africa

After a game drive in the park, we crossed the border to Mozambique and drove to the capital Maputo. The country immediately seemed very different from Swaziland with the climate being much more tropical and the living conditions apparently much worse. This resulted in people being very aggressive in their efforts to sell us things and despite us being very careful, there was an incident where a group of people tried to steal from us. However, Mozambique was also a place where we experienced extreme generosity, and in retrospect I think our short visit was the most interesting experience on the whole trip.

South African Adventure 1999, Part 10: Mozambique -- symbolising the best and worst of Africa

Jan Arild Teland
2006-05-08 20:33:32

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energy to get up slowly, walk five metres away from the road and lie down to relax again. After watching the cheetahs for a while we decided to return to the camp and check out.

Time was around 1000 when we got underway towards the Mozambique border. It was not a long drive but the scenery changed quite dramatically in a very short time. On coming out of the bush, at first it was flat with sugar plantations around us, but shortly after that we were going up and down hills with quite a bit of vegetation.

Almost at the border we had to stop at a petrol station. The station belonged to a swazi friend of Gunnar, and according to Gunnar this friend would be very upset if we didn't stop there. One time the guy had spotted Gunnar driving past without stopping, and had not been very happy. Today he was very pleased, though! He smiled all the time and had to shake everybody's hand before he could fill up the car with petrol!

The border was now only a few minutes away, as was clear from all the guys at the petrol station who were exchanging money into Meticais, the Mozambique currency. As we approached the border post, Gunnar warned us against taking advice or showing our documents to anyone there. He would take care of the formalities and we should only stay close to him. Apparently there were lots of guys at the border who pretended to work there, but in reality were just conmen. Typically they would ask for your passport and some money to sort out the formalities, and then they would just leave with your stuff.

We could understand his concern as we entered the Lomahasha border post. Without Gunnar we would have been quite lost here as it was not like any of the other border posts we'd seen so far. The area was extremely crowded with people and there were no signs telling you where to go. It all seemed very chaotic. There were several different houses, but we had no idea what to do where. One place was to obtain ...