Just outside the fence is a whole community catering to the needs of travellers, with plastic-covered “stores” fronted by 40 gallon half drums filled with coals. It is here the travellers can buy tea and food, although I certainly didn’t stop to look (taxis would have pushed in, for sure) A few scrawny chickens peck through the litter and the area would only be improved by the addition of some large refuse bins. As it is the rubbish is merely thrown into a small gulley at the end.
On the South African side we were required to show our vehicle registration and a letter from the bank giving us permission to take the car out of the country. We received a small slip of paper from the guard (“Don’t lose that, Walter”) and told to park near the customs post.
Aside: Customs officials are universally self-important in my experience whether you are passing through JF Kennedy airport or Chirundu. Lebombo is no exception – with instructions being barked at us and very little signage to guide the tourist through the process. I find it best not to judge the nature of a country’s people by the very people who welcome you first into the country; they regard all comers as dangerous criminals and search out any incriminating customs stamps they can find in your passport (Why are they stopping on the India page and taking so long to look at that visa?)
And obviously you don’t take pictures there. Ever.
We headed through no-man’s land to the other side.
We assumed the young man wearing the neatly pressed red shirt was an official; he shooed away the money-changers and told us where to park, then which forms we needed and took us through the Mozambique side. He asked Walter for R10 to get a form, disappeared while we waited for our passports to be stamped, and then helped us fill it in. After a while we were through and then red-shirt mentioned he would need “something” to ensure our car wasn’t searched. We had no contraband on us and I thought he meant a form of some sort so I asked him what it was he needed? “Two fifty” It dawned on me that he was asking to be paid for having taken us through customs and immigration. We paid up to avoid whatever our non-compliance would cost and he told us to stick to the speed limit, show any traffic police who stopped us “this form” as well as “that form” and not exceed 40km/hr until we passed the road block 4kms up the road. I’m not altogether sure how I feel about this, but guests we spoke to later at the lodge mentioned they had to pay over R1,000 in import duties for the brandy and beer they brought with them. Mozambique is part of the SADC customs union, so there is no duty-free allowance across borders. I’m not sure our one bottle of red wine would have attracted much of a fine, but the value of the meat was over R500 and would certainly have been confiscated. This poses a conundrum, with the websites suggesting you take enough with you to be self-sufficient if you are staying in a self-catering resort. On the other hand, you aren’t allowed to take more than R300 worth of groceries with you.
The road from the border to Maputo was good with little traffic and clear speed limit signage. We kept to the speed limit as advised – what a pleasure not to have arrogant drivers on our tail forcing us over when they felt 120km/h was too slow. We had bought some Metacais on the South African side so had enough local currency to go through the 2 tolls although it seems both would have taken Rands or even US Dollars.
Moamba toll plaza on the way to Maputo. Picture courtesy of MyBroadband
The EN1, the main highway from Maputo to the north, reminded me of the highway from Sydney to Newcastle in Australia. Single-laned and winding through industrial areas, with traffic lights and stop streets to boot, very different from the highways circling major South African cities. The pedestrian traffic in Maputo is terrifying, with people darting out between cars as the fancy takes them. We drove very slowly, and after an hour so it started to flow a little more easily.
The road between Maputo and Xai-Xai is good but uninteresting. Small, unnamed villages (each with at least 5 “shops” painted in Vodacom’s new colours, alongside the duller paint of the “Coke” shops) where speed reduces to 80km/h then 60km/h with pedestrians walking in the road and taxis pulling out when you least expect it. Xai-Xai is roughly 380kms from the border; it took us around 5 hours (an estimate Walter scoffed at when the B&B owner suggested it the night before). We came across an accident half way to Xai-Xai – it was unclear what had happened but there were many cars there and we were unable to help so continued on our way.
The entrance to Xai-Xai is over a beautiful old bridge crossing the Limpopo at the end of a causeway over the wetlands of the Limpopo flood plains.
The Limpopo floodplains
Xai-Xai was remarkably clean with no litter to be seen anywhere, but very old buildings in need of a lick of paint.
Picture courtesy of WinchesterMarketing.com
The wide main road is bordered by trees, whitewashed trunks to protect against white ants and neatly trimmed tops to avoid branches disrupting the telephone lines above. It had been raining quite fiercely and deep pools of water lay on either side of the road throughout the newer part of the town, closing some shops built too low and flooding one of the garages. There is an airport at Xai-Xai (although we didn’t see any signage showing us where) and the road north is clearly much newer. Fresh paint on the road, signs indicating a speed limit of 100km/h (previously there were no maximum speed limit signs, just the 60km/h crossed out as you exited the village) To our dismay we later heard that the road was built by the Chinese, not to encourage tourism, but for ease of exporting the beautiful timber from the north of the country.
Around 40km past Xai-Xai is a little single-track dirt road leading to the resort; we turned off the highway and bumped down this track for another 10kms
It’s a good thing there aren’t any elephants around here, pretty much nowhere to go should you meet one coming around the corner.
Our little Casita
Our casita: bedroom, kitchen and bathroom downstairs with a “loft” with a second bed upstairs. 4 people would be pushing it in this little house, although I should think if you had small children they would cope with the loft. There is a single, 8-sleeper unit and they also offer 2-sleeper barracas, essentially a tent on a platform with a shared kitchen and ablutions (not a chance)
We rushed down to the beach (we are SUCH Vaalies) for a walk in the force-10 gale and promptly got soaked to the skin by an afternoon deluge. “We shall get up at sunrise and walk all the way to the end and back each morning” I told Walter.
Note the beanie with a pom-pom on top.
We treated ourselves, on the first night, to the prawns piri-piri in the restaurant, where we were the only guests. They were quite dismal, I’m afraid, although obviously fresh. The rock pools have been stripped bare of mussels to be sold to the resorts, and although I’m all for local entrepreneurship one of the pulls of Mozambique as an attraction is the fresh seafood. I would recommend some sort of resource management although that will obviously push the prices higher. When I lived on Lake Tanganyika I remember my mother bargaining with the local fishermen whenever the fresh meat order had been stolen off the plane in Kitwe – feeding guests far from civilisation is a challenge wherever you are.
We were ready for bed by 8 o’clock when we couldn’t keep our eyes open any longer, the crashing sounds of the sea the only noise we could hear.
No comments:
Post a Comment