From a hotel room

I have spent an inordinate amount of bed hours at the Southern Sun in Maputo. That’s because general manager Bruce Chapman - surely one of the continent’s finest hoteliers - was kind enough to host me once upon a time while I researched and wrote a guide book to Maputo and beyond. 

Low tide walker 

It led me to witness extraordinary spectacles across that delicious city, but also some extraordinary spectacles just from my window. An urban beach, a palm tree, a window frame -  what a fabulous composition aid for the framing of the clam pickers, the lone wanderers, the capoeira dancers, the lovers and very late at night, the traditional healers who bring their clients to the seafront to cleanse them or heal them or put them in touch with their ancestors. Which involves a great deal of loud prayer, sometimes weeping and wailing, unnerving at 3am for those who are not familiar with Africa’s religious customs. You hear it better, or worse, from the right hand wing of the Southern Sun. Often this was the time myself and my fearless street guide Phil Baker would be arriving back at the hotel after many satisfactory evenings of er, research. 

Sunrise

In the old days, before the $30 million dollar refurbishment, sigh, Bruce used to routinely book me into the Presidential Suite. It was his idea of a joke and I loved it and found it most funny, especially when one of the waiters started calling me Mrs President. Oh those were the days. Since then, Maputo has had an Economic Miracle - although it’s increasingly shaky and dubious - and I have been bumped from my perch by more important people such as those building bridges, importing cars, setting up banks and exploring coal and gas deposits.

Dear Bruce made sure it was been a very gentle transition down to the Superior Executive Princess Suite Extraordinaire on the floor below, although I do miss the big lounge of the old Presidential Suite, its two flat screens TVs and two bathrooms, vast lounge with leather couches. There was more space to shoot pictures while lying on the floor too, although my new suite has a stricter frame for composing pictures and perhaps it has made my eye more disciplined. 

The new refurbishment of course has made the Southern Sun even bigger and better and Bruce is still ever generous with his champagne and hospitality and friendship and I now have this fabulous collection of photos from the window of my hotel room. 

*  Check out www.tsogosunhotels.com/hotels/maputo

Reserved for the Ministry of Fabulousness 

Escape to Mother Fuckers Bar!

You'll find Mother Fuckers bar in Catembe

My journey from Phuket in Thailand to Maputo in Mozambique is hell. There is no business class blingy-blingy, sweetie dahling this time, just two days of non-stop awfulness travel - on minibuses, planes, trains and taxis and trains, planes and minibuses and somehow at the end of it all I eventually wake up on the other side of the world at dusk, listening to the sighing of the same Indian Ocean I just left in Thailand. I have travelled some 8000km and lost five hours and large parts of my sanity.

Now I am in Maputo on business, alongside Sawubona - official magazine of our national carrier SAA - to find out about the building of the biggest suspension bridge in Africa that will link Maputo mainland with Catembe spit, and link Ponta d'Oura with Kozi Bay in northern KZN. It’s big news, big bucks, the figure of US$ 700 million is bandied about. The Chinese, the Germans, the South Africans, former Mozambican president Gubuezza - everyone is involved and the circus is in town.

Maputo skyline from Catembe

The bridge building has already begun with the dropping of 90m concrete shafts into the bay and Catembe is already pimping its ride. even though the country's economic miracle is somewhat less miraculous than last year due to coal price drops, political violence and a complete bottom out in the leisure tourism market.

Nonetheless the talk on the cocktail circuit is tough, the whiskeys are big, the wine is flowing. Construction okes, financiers, the banks, the developers, the key players, they're all there talking MICE market and global finance and positive outcomes. The Chinese-funded Golden Peacock is being built up the road with rooms for hundreds, the Radisson is building twin towers for offices and top end rentals (the most expensive in Africa) next door to the Southern Sun where I am staying (always do, always will) and the deals are going down, the alcohol levels are going up, there are even rumours hat King Mswati of Swaziland also wants a deep sea harbour....  

Thank heavens for Mother Fuckers Bar.

We spill off the passenger ferry from Maputo to Catembe 

Phil and I escape – he’s my Man in Maputo –jump on the passenger ferry and head out of Maputo across the bay to Catembe, whose entire landscape is soon to be rearranged due to The Bridge, which in some ways is a pity really, since it's quiet and charmingly dilapidated. We spill off the ferry and head to the eastern end of Catembe and up a lone sand dune at the top of a sparse village, where it’s almost impossible to reach even in the butchest 4x4 (naturally Phil pulls it off). And here we are at Mother Fucker’s Bar where no one can find me and the beers are ice cold and the views are fine. I can hear the sounds of chicken and children, and Muddafak himself is there, giant bodybuilder that he is, holding a baby of all things. It’s all so blissfully surreal and far away from airports and air-conditioning and the rich world’s portly and pompous. Phew. Bring me a Laurentina por favore. Make it a quart.

Maddafak and his bebe 

Mudda grew up on the streets on Maputo and now has a wife, two children, a chapas (minibus) and his bar. I danced with him once in one of the Rua Bagamoya clubs. All you could see was blonde fluff, my hair,sticking out of his arms. Through Phil, I have known Mudda for years, and he proved to be an invaluable connection when I was researching my guidebook on Maputo. Everyone on the streets knows Mudda. Mention his name in the right places and people treat you with much reverence, especially in the less salubrious places our research took us. He lost the mobility of his knee in a scooter accident  years ago but continues to pump iron and just recently appeared on local television talking about the importance of gym. But he’s happiest up here at Mother Fuckers Bar and we chat about his confidence in the future because of The Bridge and the prospects of expansion although God alone knows how anyone will actually get here.

Right now that’s why I love it so… 

Maddafak and his fabulous bar 

A snort at the fort

View from a chapel

We looked out through an alcove window in the old capela (chapel) onto a cross-shaped patch of sky. Outside, the eternal crash of Indian Ocean waves, inside, sacred gloom. We’d taken off our shoes and walked into vaulted heart of the Chapel of Nossa Senhora de Baluarte - a stoic little chapel built by the Portuguese in 1522 on the promontory of Ilha de Moҫambique, a tiny island off Africa’s east coast. Underfoot, through the cool marble, we felt the presence of ancient souls, and in the salty walls and faded inscriptions, heard their whisperings.

“Let’s have a drink!” I whispered to Darling perhaps a little too quickly. And I don’t know why I was whispering either. Our guide was outside talking loudly on his mobile phone. This little chapel had stirred me - I was imagining a desperate shipwrecked Portuguese sailor, for some reason, upon bended knee, or a sea leg perhaps, praying hard to God, with nothing left but his faith and the stars above him and well, all the Arabs, the Goans and the Swahili sultans who were here before him. Like #missinglisbonalot.

Inside the fort 

I had intended to bring a bottle of beautiful red to the Chapel of Nossa Senhora de Baluarte.  What else would you take to a Catholic church? I’d imagined a wistful cab sauv - perhaps we’d even remember to chill it to capela temperature – to go with the spirit of this tiny church and its island - only three kilometres long –all strung out by occupations, missionaries, slavery, colonialism and civil war.   

But I was giddy with travel and love and I had forgotten the wine never mind my own name, so here we were, Darling and I, slugging on a couple of ice cold Laurentina Pretas that we’d bought from a beachfront barracas near the fortaleza, It’s a lovely rich dark beer and I immediately felt better about the poor sailor and all the other lost and hopeful souls in the Chapel of Nossa Senhora de Baluarte.

And since we were in a Catholic church I confess we’d also had a beer before this one, we’d had one up on the ramparts of the fortaleza, overlooking the ocean and its mysteries. Fort São Sebastião was built after the church, from around 1560. Famed sailor for the Portuguese crown, Vasco da Gama first landed here in1498, in search of the sea route to India, and it was not long after that the Portuguese built this vast and powerful space. The light was falling in glorious ways as we’d browsed the fortaleza and its empty rooms, its corridors and cavers, its prison and chambersr. Here and there an outburst of graffiti.  We stopped talking and left as the sun was going down, silent in the presence of history.