Preview of Ronamoon's blog at TravelPod. Read the full blog here: http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/ronamoon/1/1269086269/tpod.html This blog preview was made by TravelPod using the TripAdvisor™ TripWow slideshow creator. Entry from: Isle de Mocambique, Mozambique Entry Title: "Mad about Mozambique" Entry: "Our third trip into Mozambique. We had a bit oif fun at the border but were 'rescued' by a Portuguese speaking Aussie missionary.We ended up staying at his place in Mandimba, which is a worn out dusty, once Portuguese outpost the most imposing building being a UN warehouse used at the moment to store tobacco, which is one of the favoured 'cash crops' they grow around here. Two big cat dozers on the outskirts of town had been parked in the one place for so long a bloody great tree had grown up between the blade and the engine bay! How lucky was that! The mainland village of Ilha De Mocambique crowds along the coast, centred around the long causeway that leads to the famous Island. Along the edge of the road a line of stalls selling all the requirements of a village can be found. We found the Casuarina camping area and after some negotiation to find out the cost we moved in amongst the low palm trees and just as low buildings and set up camp right on the beach and 100 metres north of the causeway. This place is rustic to say the least! Viv and I went for a short walk up to the village market, which was still a busy place at 4pm. We bought some bananas and after an initial mix-up with the piece we got about a dozen for 20Mt (about A$1). We created quite a stir as we wandered around but people were pretty good and didn't hassle us at all -- in fact they were trying to be helpful most of the time as we tried to come to grips with the language and the money. There was a furniture place, a tyre repair, a fuel outlet like nothing you'd see back home (fuel, both diesel and petrol, in bottles and cans), a number of clothes shops; and a range of stalls selling a wide variety of food, but I couldn't find a store selling grog -- is that because it is a Muslim area? In one area of the market, down in a bit of a depression just off the main road there was the 'fish market' with piles of sun-dried fish, a few fresh fish, as well as some trays of seafood -- small mollusks mainly and in the afternoon sun they had attracted their fair share of flies! It's a long way across the causeway to Ilha de Mocambique, which has the occasional passing bay. Its history dates back to the late 1400's when Vasco de Gama 'discovered' the place for Portugual - only to find an island already with a strong Arab influence and a good ship building culture in place. The small church on the very northern end of the island and just outside the perimeter of the fort is reportedly the oldest building in the southern hemisphere -- it is certainly the oldest in southern Africa! Not far from here along the eastern edge of the fort was the execution yard. A wall with 6 gun slots had an entrance to the yard which had in the centre was a pedestal where the condemn man stood, some 20 or 30 metres from the wall. A similar distance behind him another wall was deeply potmarked with the bullets fired during the executions. At the sea side of the far wall a hole in the side wall allowed the body of the recently deceased to be washed out to sea -- or so the story goes! The villages along the road for the 60km or so to Pemba were crowded with piles of bamboo, piles and bags of charcoal (the biggest charcoal producers and most we have ever seen in such a short run), stacks of firewood as well as piles of rock and gravel. Earlier in the day we had seen a half dozen women carrying rocks on their heads -- heading back to their village to make it into gravel we presumed, but here along the edge of the road the piles of rocks and subsequent gravel were bigger and more numerous. Some houses/families obviously were specialists in making gravel - at one spot they were quarrying the rock, breaking it up into blocks about 3-4 foot in size. From there they would break it down into 1-foot blocks from where they were piled up and then made into ..." Read and see more at: http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/ronamoon/1/1269086269/tpod.html Photos from this trip: 1. "Camp @ Isle de Mocambique" 2. "Fort & church @ Isle de Mocambique" 3. "Old coins" 4. "Gravel maker" 5. "Boat maker" 6. "The skill of the boat maker" 7. "Camp" 8. "Builder" 9. "Western Mozambique" 10. "Sistern @ Isle de Mocambique" 11. "Painted women" 12. "Fishing village" 13. "On the way north to Border" 14. "Crossing swamps to border" 15. "Ferry across Ruvuma River" See this TripWow and more at http://tripwow.tripadvisor.com/tripwow/ta-00c8-fb60-3e6d?ytv4=1

• published: 12 Feb 2011
• views: 281