Nampula, Mozambique

We got up at 5.30 in Mocuba hoping to catch an early bus in the cool of the morning. After making our breakfast and folding our laundry we were out the door by 6.30. The student receptionist told us to hurry because there was a bus a few metres up the road ready loading to go to Nampula. We dashed up the road and managed to get a seat. The seats were very narrow and on one side of the bus were three narrow padded seats and there were two on the other side. Surprisingly there were quite a few empty seats on the bus that would have taken at least 70 people sitting down.

Most of the road to Nampula was under construction and there were the odd patches of seal but it was mostly pretty bad.

There were lots of small villages along the way with mud huts with thin grass thatch. At each stop the locals came to sell boiled eggs, mangoes, soft drinks and samosas. The road sides were busy with women carrying 20 litre buckets of water on their heads. They are so strong. One lady had a 50 kg bag of maize on her head as well as a baby on her back and bags of shopping in each hand. They are able to balance the weight of the goods on their heads and still look around for traffic or swivel the baby from their backs to suckle. Pretty skillful.

We were pretty well left alone once we arrived at the bus station, no hordes of touts fighting over us or grabbing at our bags. Bliss. We even beat the bus that left at 5 AM so we were very lucky not to have taken longer than the 5 and a half hours it had already taken us.

With our guide book we were able to find our way to a hotel in the middle of town. It had been fully renovated since the Lonely Planet wrote about it and we were able to get an air conditioned room with a balcony and TV. The restaurant had reasonably priced meals and the rate even included a buffet breakfast.

The Hotel Lurio.

The real bonus was free internet so we could chat online to our daughter who was dealing with a neighbour who had dropped a tree through two of our tenants cars at our place. They also wrecked our clothesline and fence.

When it was cooler in the afternoon we walked about the town centre looking at the only tourist attraction, a huge cathedral.



We watched a couple of teams play soccer in a hard dusty playground and sat with the locals in a cafe with a cold local ale. If there was more to see and do it would have been quite nice to stay longer in the town even though we were warned by hotel staff to put our valuables in our room safe and take care of bag snatchers. We were also looking forward to resting up by the sea at Mozambique Island.

It was really restful being left alone by the locals for a change.