At the beach

We’ve spent the last few days at a couple of ‘resorts’ on the coast a couple of hundred kms from Maputo, the capital of Mozambiqe. The first one, Montego Resort at Xai Xai, was … okay and a very welcome break after the long dusty drive down from Pafuri border. The campsites were all deep sand up a steep hill, with power but no water. Washing up sinks and taps were located a fair way up the hill, and there was one tap the gardener used down the hill. The shared ablutions were fine, the beach across the track was okay at low tide and we had a nice meal at the restaurant.

We paid $40 per night which seemed on the expensive side, but then, on our last trip we paid USD$100/night for a site at Third Bridge campground in Botswana. A week or so ago, we paid AUD$70 to camp at Kubu Island in Bots. Our free wild camps help to dollar-cost average it all.

Now we’re just a bit further up the coast at the Sunset Beach Resort at Chidenguele and it’s lovely. I do laugh at the choice of name, though. The sun will never, ever set on this beach! Our campsite is grassy sand and each site is powered, has its own shelter that has a washing up sink with hot and cold water, and a bathroom with a really good shower (plus toilet and handbasin). There’s a lovely pool, the beach is good and the restaurant is excellent. We ate there last night – Greg had ‘line caught fish’, I had grilled crayfish. The fish was less than $10, the crayfish was $17 and our site is $20/night. We’ve already extended our stay here by an extra night. Might be hard to leave! 

We’re planning on going to Inhambane, which is about 200kms further north along the coast, and that’s as far north as we’ll go on this trip. Then we’ll head south to the border at Komatipoort and re-enter South Africa. We have to be back in Joburg in a couple of weeks.

Judy’s crayfish dinner at Sunset Beach resort
afterwards – not much left!
Abandoned homes along the coast near Xai Xai. Probably beach houses that date from Portuguese times
Locals out fishing on the rock reef at low tide
Locals bringing their catch back in as tide comes in
Our campsite at Sunet Beach Resort
The “horizon pool” at Sunset Beach Resort
Doing more repairs/maintenance to Clancy
The journey from Botswana through Mozambique so far

 

4 thoughts on “At the beach”

  1. Thanks to you both for the update.
    I hope it is not a chore to share your travels as we are better for your experience, even if just to inspire.

    🙂

    1. Thanks Grant – the main reason we blog is so that we remember what we’ve done! And to keep in touch with friends and family. I was looking back at a couple of posts from our first trip here and I mentioned that I’d had an allergic reaction to DEET. Wish I’d remembered that when I used it again in Angola and had another allergic reaction!

  2. Hi Judy,
    Once again wonderful reads about your travels. I am so impressed with your bravery and ingenuity. Brings back my time on African continent which I love, even though I don,t quite have the same experiences you two do. Keep enjoying. Do you ever make your blogs into books? Cheers Wendy

    1. Thanks Wendy, I’m glad you’re enjoying our travels. So are we!
      I think Greg deserves nearly all the kudos for ingenuity – he designed and built this wonderful camper for us, and now continues to improve and fix it as we go along. It’s working well for us.
      As for being brave …. we tend to give large urban centres a miss, and while that means we also miss out on interesting things like Gustav Eiffel’s steel house in Maputo, we’re not sorry about missing the crowds and crazy traffic. I remember Shakespeare’s ‘Discretion is the better part of valor’ at times.
      We have made a few photo-books of some of our previous blogs. I’m just waiting for a publisher to come along and offer us a publishing deal!
      Much love to you and Len xxx

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