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Mozambique
My flight to Johannesburg arrived in the morning, but I had no plans made after
that. At the airport, I searched for a flight that would take me the 1 hour
flight to Maputo, the capital of Mozambique, but the flights were prohibitively expensive. I
called several of the bus companies, and found that the buses to Mozambique all left in the early morning and were already gone.
I found one bus company which had an overnight bus, so I booked this ticket. My
next issue was what to do during the day before boarding the bus at 11 pm? I
asked a few people, and they suggested I do not go into downtown Johannesburg with my luggage and walk around - I would be robbed.
I decided to spend the day in the airport, and in the evening, I got a taxi to
the downtown bus station.
So when I was filing through the ticket counter at the bus station that
evening, the lady took my ticket and looked at my passport. She asked
for my
visa and when I said I didn't have one yet, but would get it at the
border, she
erupted. "We're not going to take you - You will delay the entire
bus"! Later she calmed down and said that I could ride the bus, but if
there was ANY DELAY at the border for my visa issue, the bus would
continue and
I would be on my own at the border to find my own way from the
border to Maputo. The driver put my suitcase in a special compartment
which would be easy to get to and
As it was, we arrived at the Mozambique border before it opened in the morning and I was the
first customer. My papers were in order and it went very fast. I was in Maputo in no time.
MAPUTO, MOZAMBIQUE (map)
Maputo
is Africa's only latin capital, as the local language is Portugese. I
found that this city had the fewest english speakers in the countries I
had visited so far. I still got by OK.
I got a hotel in the the central city but it was a long 20 minute walk from the central business district.
My hotel was on Mao Tse Tung Street, and I noticed many of the streets were named
after famous communist leaders. Strange vibe around this place...maybe related to the AK-47 on their national flag......
The downtown business district was right on the Indian ocean and it wasn't very scenic. About the only
building that I found worth photographing was the central train station, which
had a steel dome designed by the famous Gustov Eiffel, of Paris's Eiffel Tower fame. There didn't seem to be any trains using the station, though.
I did enjoy a long walk along the
boardwalk leading north on the Indian Ocean, and the beaches kept getting
better and better the further out of town I went.
The weather was cloudy and there was a strong blustery wind. I only stayed
around for 4 days. I bought a plane ticket at the local South African Airways, for a round trip flight from Johannesburg to Cape Town.
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