Moçambique Meandering
Created | Updated Feb 8, 2006
Mocambique, or Mozambique or if you go further back – Portugeuse East Africa – is a humid, almost tropical coastline of East Africa stretching almost 1000 Miles from the borders of Swaziland and South Africa in the South to Tanzania in the North. After almost 3 months in Africa from the West coast of Namibia, through Botswana, Zambia and Zimbabwe with a brief sojourn in ‘Zuid Afrika’ I had become accustomed to the almost total ‘khaki’ coating of dust that covered most of Africa – even with the exceptions of Vic Falls and the Okavango Delta I was not prepared for the riot of rich verdant greens and the panoply of bright colours worn by the natives of this hot, tropical African country.
Bus through Kruger & Neilspruit to the borders of Mocambique … travelling with an Irish nurse.
It is easy to forget that Maputo – or Laurenço Marques as it was then know – was on a par with Rio De Janeiro, Capetown or even Los Angeles as a haven of playboys and rich-living in the sub-tropics with it’s beaches and avenues of palm trees. About 30 years of Civil War will leave it’s mark on most things and unlike Rio & Capetown, Maputo is struggling to find it’s feet again. Many buildings still bear the marks of AK-47 rounds, shrapnel from mines and damage from tanks. Luckily the Chemin de Fer de Moçambique building - a fabulous fin-de-siecle train station designed by Gustav Eiffel - escaped serious harm and here at night one can almost imagine the opulence of former days as it is bathed in a greenish light.
Bus through Kruger & Neilspruit to the borders of Mocambique … travelling with an Irish nurse.
It is easy to forget that Maputo – or Laurenço Marques as it was then know – was on a par with Rio De Janeiro, Capetown or even Los Angeles as a haven of playboys and rich-living in the sub-tropics with it’s beaches and avenues of palm trees. About 30 years of Civil War will leave it’s mark on most things and unlike Rio & Capetown, Maputo is struggling to find it’s feet again. Many buildings still bear the marks of AK-47 rounds, shrapnel from mines and damage from tanks. Luckily the Chemin de Fer de Moçambique building - a fabulous fin-de-siecle train station designed by Gustav Eiffel - escaped serious harm and here at night one can almost imagine the opulence of former days as it is bathed in a greenish light.
