Hello everybody! I am writing to you from Cape Town, South Africa. I would like to tell you about a trip I did to a place called Pomene in Mozambique.
There are two basic ways to get from South Africa to Pomene. You can go by road all the way from South Africa, and this is something that I did with some friends as a young student many years ago.
• From Pretoria, it took us all day to get to Maputo, the capital of Mozambique, by bus.
• From Maputo it was another full day by bus to get to Tofo, where we enjoyed some days on the beach there.
• From Tofo, we took a minibus taxi crammed with 27 people (they should not take more than 15!) to the lagoon side of the Inhambane Peninsula, where we then took a Dhow boat to a town called Maxixe, where a friend’s parents were able to pick us up in a 4x4 vehicle and take us for a day trip to the Pomene lagoon.
• I will never forget that day with the flamingos on the lagoon and picking pansy shells. I never thought I would get to go back – I mean, who has three days to spend on road-tripping on roads so bad that an ordinary vehicle has no chance of making it?
But there was another way to get to Pomene for me, and it happened roughly ten years later…
My wife Julia studied with a friend from Zimbabwe whose family happened to own a hut at a little resort on the Northern side of the Pomene lagoon. They invited us to come join them one April. All we would have to do was fly to the big town of Vilankulos, and they would meet us there!
Well, flying from Cape Town to Vilankulos turned out to be as expensive as flying all the way to Europe, but my wife and I were able to get two tickets, and there was even room for me to bring a guitar and a surfboard (music and surfing are two of my main hobbies)!
Vilankulos is not too shabby itself – here’s the sun rising over a Dhow boat.
Julia’s friend Clea and her husband Andrew arrived to pick us up in a Toyota Landcruiser 4x4, which is the type of vehicle we were going to need to be able to get to our destination. Clea’s father arrived in another Landcruiser, towing a large boat! We weren’t ready to leave yet, first we had to drive the gravel and pot-holed roads of Vilankulos, to get supplies from the street markets. We also had to visit a petrol (gas) station, not just to fill up the vehicles, but also to fill up many jerry cans that we then tied to the top of the vehicles… why?
• Petrol Stations were few and far between where we were going, and so we might need to put extra fuel in one of the vehicles.
• The boat needed fuel, and unbeknownst to us, Clea’s dad would be inviting us on several deep-sea fishing expeditions!
• Most importantly, there was no electricity where we were going – the hut we were going to be staying in ran off a generator! For a city boy like me, this was sounding like a real adventure!
Our home for the holiday in Pomene – it was actually very nice inside!
There came a point on our drive from Vilankulos to Pomene where we had to let the air out of the tyres in order to drive on the sandy roads. Not to worry, our hosts also had a compressor to pump them back up again – truly, these guys were prepared for anything and everything!
The Northern Part of Pomene Lagoon.
Apparently, the yacht belonged to an eccentric elderly lady who had sailed it all the way from Cape Town.
A typical day would involve getting into the boat in the lagoon, and then having to navigate the waves breaking in the river mouth to get out to sea. From there, one of two things would happen for me:
• Clea’s father would drive the boat to the point south of the lagoon mouth where I could jump into the water and start surfing long point waves, absolutely alone, without even having to do the exercise of paddling out from the beach!
• If the waves weren’t looking that good, I could choose to go out deep sea fishing with the others. We would search for promising signs like flocks of sea birds diving into the ocean for small fish, meaning that hopefully bigger fish were also hunting from below! We used large pink lures and had a rod each…
Posing with my best catch, an 11kg yellowfin tuna, which was delicious! My wife Julia was also successful, catching a king mackerel that was even more delicious! Take that boys!
The abandoned hotel ruins on the point, as taken from the boat…
On one of the days that I chose to surf the point rather than fish with the others, I decided to take a bit of a break and head onto the shore to explore the point. There is an abandoned hotel there which must have been such an amazing place to stay in its day! According to this article (https://www.news24.com/News24/the-allure-of-a-hotel-in-ruins-on-the-coast-of-mozambique-20190212), the hotel only operated for a few years before it was abandoned during the war for independence in 1974. Unfortunately, Mozambique was then ravaged by civil war for many more years, and the hotel could never get up and running again and is now in ruins.
Unfortunately, I didn’t have a camera with me as I explored the hotel. There are also some amazing blow holes on the point. Luckily, one of South Africa’s more famous musicians, Jeremy Loops, made a beautiful music video for his song “Waves” at Pomene Point, where you can see the surf, the abandoned hotel and the blow holes on the point to give you a perfect feeling for what I experienced! Please watch the video here:
We did find a surfable wave on the beach closer to the hut, where Clea was able to take some action snaps of me.
Eventually, it was time to go back to Vilankulos for our flight back to Cape Town. We gave ourselves a day in Vilankulos because it is a famous snorkelling destination. We were able to go to 2-Mile Reef where we saw all sorts of tropical fish, giant clams and even a moray eel!
Who knows if and when we will ever get back to Mozambique? These Southern parts should still be quite safe, although the Northern parts of Mozambique have been suffering from terrorist attacks that most of the rest of the world are not really aware of, with all the other bad news in the world!
The End