Mozambique – a land of, uhm….

Every one knows the cliché sound, the gorgeous girl walks into a shot, but trips, or two people are about to kiss and then are rudely interrupted by their dog/child/idiot friend, or someone says something that doesn’t make any sense. “I was feeling a bit blue yesterday so I ate a dog.” That record scratch sound is ringing in your head right now, no?

If my life had a permanent soundtrack, with random sounds playing from empty space, this would have been the sound that played as Flip and I reached the Kosi Bay border of South Africa and Mozambique. We, and the GPS, thought that we would be smooth sailing on tar roads to the little town of Ponta de Ouro (ahem, side eye this town for thinking it’s a town. Some serious identity crisis going on there).

I present to you the wonderful metropolis of Ponta de Ouro. Or more lovingly known as Ponta. Or fucking Ponta, depending on the amount of alcohol you consume, and on a hot day, this would pretty much be non-stop.

At the border, Flip was worried about being barefoot and behind a steering wheel, because “what if they complain?” But we soon found that this country was pretty much lawless, like 14th century China. Besides swimming, eating, trying to sleep in the heat, scuba diving, fishing and drinking, there is pretty much nothing else to do.

I can’t dive, it makes me claustrophobic and we didn’t eat/sleep much because it was just too hot. So we were pretty much stuck with drinking. And even though my writing comes across as overtly bitter, this was one of the best vacations I have ever had.

Meanwhile, on arrival in this dustbowl, already a bit irked by the heat and the road (or utter lack thereof), we could not find our lodge. To top matters, our internet would not work for nothing, even though we both had roaming on. So we were lost and hot, and might I add tired, as we left our house at 3 am. Eventually, while waiting for directions from my family back in South Africa, we drove off to Ponta Malongane, which is only 6 kms from Ponta de Ouro. Six kilometres that felt more like six thousand. And we got stuck in the sand! About four times!

{The nice thing about the area is that everyone (mostly) drives 4x4s and are willing to drag you out if you get stuck in the sand. If there is no car around, the locals will dig and push you out of your sandy trap, but at a price.}

Some people might recognise this bar, and I think it is utterly tacky and entirely against my principles {GO SHARKS!} to go in there, but being so desperate for something to drink, we took a break from being irked and treated ourselves to the local beer {pronounced Doshem}. For those in the know, I prefer Laurentina. We also found that Dobby is alive and well. He is now a dog, living in Mozambique.