We awoke this morning to yet another beautiful day in Africa and decided to head back along the coast for a bit of exercise and to take in our surroundings. After packing away our belongings, we armed ourselves with hats, sunscreen, our camera and a water bottle or two and set off, slowly making our way along the six or so kilometres of deserted beach that lay between us and the small town of Ponta do Oura (who’d have thought we could walk so far without motorised assistance).

After threading our way around the town for a bit we stumbled across a fabulous little place called Kaya Kweru, and sat atop their deck overlooking the town on the one side and the gorgeous stretch of beach we had just walked along on the other. It took us all of 30 seconds to decide on the prawn dish as a main course and sat back with an ice cold Deuce M or five, soak up the sun’s warmth and taking in the view around us.

Our delicious lunch at an end we headed back into town for another look, but then decided to forgo the hike up to the lighthouse and head back to our camp as a number of ominous looking clouds appeared on the horizon.

We spent a few more lovely days at Malongane, trying to determine our next steps and to plot a rough course for our estimated stay of two to three months in the country. We had hoped, perhaps naively, that we would meet similar people doing overland trips as soon as we arrived in Mozambique, or at the very least other adventurous campers with whom we could share information and hopefully gain a little insight from their previous experiences.

Although the camp itself was wonderful and not all that busy, the people who were there kept very much to themselves, with barely more than a nod hello when our paths did cross. Of those few friendly happy campers who were willing to chat, none had been further north than Malongane or Mamoli.

Unfortunately the local knowledge was sorely missing as well as most of the inhabitants have never been out of the area, although they were all immensely pleased that we wanted to see and get to know so much of their country.

Nobody that we spoke to seemed to know of anywhere else in the area that offered a camping option and so it was that we decided to leave the beautiful beach of Ponta Malongane and make our way up to Maputo, with an intermediate stop in the Maputo Elephant Reserve.