Maputo (Mah-poo-too)

So please excuse the out of order posts -- we wanted you to know about Mozambique, but we also needed to get out the Ivory Coast/Brazil details. So here follows the scoop on Maputo, Mozambique.

Due to a twice-weekly flight schedule from Dar es Salaam to Maputo and the pre-booked tour to Kruger, our trip to Mozambique didn't last much longer than it took to stamp our passports. We flew LAM (Mozambican airline), which was a [typically African] experience. Tiny plane took off from Dar and made TWO stops before landing in Maputo. We were like, oh, did we take a public bus instead of an airplane? TWO stops! The first was in Pemba, Mozambique, which we didn't even realize had an international airport. Everyone had to get off the plane, walk across the tarmac to the teeny airport and go through immigration and customs. We called the Mozambican embassy before leaving the States to confirm that we'd be able to get a visa on arrival, and the woman I spoke with was like oh, no problem. And when I asked how much for a short-term single entry visa, she was like "$20, or $70, or something. It depends." We got to Pemba and it's $25, so that's one pro for Mozambique.

On the plane we made friends with three American aid workers based in Maputo who had been vacationing on Zanzibar. I had met with a co-worker's friend before the trip to get tips on things to see and do in Maputo, so when they asked us what we were planning to do during our ONE DAY in Maputo I pulled out the pages I'd ripped from my guide book with notations scribbled in the margins. They approved of our activities, and helped us add a few more and put the destinations in the best order for walking around. We exchanged numbers and arranged to meet them the next evening at this swanky hotel with a beautiful view for sunset drinks and soccer.

I successfully haggled for a taxi in Portuguese outside the airport in Maputo (only to be ripped off because we had no idea what the exchange rate was and the taxi driver refused our old American money -- new notes only, please!), and we showed up at Fatima's Place backpackers hostel late that night. Interesting crowd there: a middle-aged couple bicycling the planet -- somehow they got from Seattle to all of South America to Africa. We stayed in a dorm with two Peace Corps girls. [Side note: nearly every American female we've met on this trip has been in the Peace Corps -- Southeastern Africa is swarming with them! I guess my previous travels to Western Europe haven't given me a lot of opportunities to bump into Peace Corps folks. ]

Maputo, as we discovered the next morning, is a really interesting, vibrant city. It feels a lot like Europe to me (Portugal, unsurprisingly), and Sofi says a little like Havana. There's a lot of foot traffic, and cafes with sidewalk seating. We started the day with pastries and espresso and people watching. After Tanzania we were used to be harassed by vendors and touts, so we were pleasantly surprised to find that you can say "no thank you" to people once in Maputo and they go on their way.

We took a longish walk through town, past the chicken market, to the central open-air market that sells food, clothes, spices, souvenirs, and anything else you could want. We bought bottleof water for like 20 cents, and our packets of spices came with free Tsonga lessons. We took a cab to a very popular chicken restaurant, where I gave up vegetarianism for an afternoon.

After a little more shopping and wandering, we hopped in the African version of a pedicab -- essentially a motorcycle with a little covered seat behind. They make for bumpy rides, but are cheaper than taxis, and not really geared for tourists. It was funny to pull up to one of the nicest hotels in Maputo in one.

We got dinner with the American aid workers at their second-favorite Thai place (the first favorite was closed). Their favorite dish at this place is a green papaya salad, but when the waiters said there was no more green papaya, they were like, but what about that papaya up there in that tree? So the staff got out a ladder, climbed the tree and pulled down a not-yet-ripe papaya to make our appetizer course. Sofi especially wasn't cool with that -- it seemed a lot to ask of the staff, and rather stereotypically American.

The next morning we took Intercape, a fancy bus company, from Maputo to Joburg. Intercape, as the guide book failed to tell us, is owned by evangelical Christians who seize the opportunity to bombard you with Jesus propaganda while you're stuck on the bus for 10 hours. So most of the programming was re-enactments of bible stories, or little pieces on behaving morally, and why stem cell research is bad, and a special movie they'd commissioned about a girl who prays her way out of death by cancer and converts all her teenage friends along the way. Oh boy.

We're in Observatory, Cape Town, now. We'll try harder to catch up on our posts!