On Sunday morning September 19, 2009, we went with a couple of colleagues to Macaneta, a little town and nature reserve about one hour from Maputo by car.
It was a beautiful, sunny day and the trip to town was fun. We had to take a ferry to cross a river to get to the restaurant for lunch. There was space for six cars, but only the first car of our group could board the ferry. It took a while before the ferry was back.
Meanwhile we already received some phone calls from our colleagues on “the other side”: they said there was a huge mud pool over there and all the cars were stuck in the mud, luckily they already made it. When we arrived at the other side, we saw the damage: three big cars were stuck in the mud and a couple of men, completely covered in mud, tried to pull the cars. Fortunately, there were two tractors nearby, willing to earn some money by slowly pulling the cars out of their unfortunate situation.
A lot of mud! 
Boys carrying their boat after fishing
And we still had to cross the mud… After about half an hour, one of the cars from our group returned home, because they did not want to get stuck in the mud. But we were willing to take the risk. At that time the muddy road was empty and the tractors were still around. So we took a running leap and crossed the mud. Half way through the mud two boys were guiding us in front of our car, now we saw how deep it was; at some places the mud came until their waist!
Finally, two hours late, we arrived at the beach where we were rewarded with a show from some whales swimming by. The lunch (fresh fish, prawns, calamari and chicken) was already ordered. One hour later we enjoyed a delicious lunch at Praia de Macaneta. After lunch we played soccer with some local boys. We had to drive back before sunset, as we had to cross the mud pool again on our way back and work our way through it (and it is not safe to drive in Mozambique after sunset). In short, it was a lovely adventure!
Colourful scene along the road
NOTE: I wrote this blog in 2009 and I haven’t been back in Mozambique since, so I’m not sure how Macaneta is nowadays. Google shows that there is a lot of improvement (hotels and restaurants), but in 2009 it was rather unexplored.
Click here for more travel inspiration for Mozambique.
Schrijf je in met je e-mailadres en blijf op de hoogte van nieuwe updates van TeppieTravels.com.
