I don’t think I’ve ever been this glad to be back in my hotel room.

The entire day was filled with various cash and currency problems. I could spend the entire blog talking about all of that and I really don’t want to so I’ll highlight a few things and figure out how to summarize all that at the end. 

The agenda for the day was Maputo National Park. At a mere 665 mi.², it is a 10th of the size of Kruger in South Africa, but where that one is inland, this one is next to the ocean. So a completely different vibe. 

It sits south of Maputo. We finally got a chance to drive over this bridge which you saw in photos the other day. And you’ll see again later in this blog.

There is a parking lot at the entrance where we left the car and met a driver that we hired through our city tour guide the other day, Flavio. This guy’s name was Shinito. We needed both him and his vehicle, because from this point on you must be in a 4 x 4. It was another two hours of very slow and bumpy driving to get to our lunch destination which we got to about noon.

Lunch was at a resort called Montebelo Milibangalala. Talk about remote: the only way to it is by 4 x 4‘s or helicopter.

But really incredible views.

For starters, Ash had a smoked salmon salad. I had a traditional Portuguese soup with chorizo. It was kind of chilly and the soup was perfect for that.

Here are the photos we took of each other while sitting there. This includes Ash’s main dish, which was a shrimp pasta.

I had veal with Parmesan cheese and some vegetables. I ate all of the cheese and all of the vegetables, but it was a lot of meat and I couldn’t finish it. It was delicious.

We bought lunch for our driver, but he chose not to eat with us. He sat with other driver friends.

We started to head back about 1:45 PM. A couple of shots above of the view for four hours, two hours each way. Just to give you an idea.

I sat in the backseat, so I also had a lot of this view. But if you notice in the bottom photo, there is an elephant in the middle of the road.

And a baby elephant at that. Mama came up not too far after and we watched them walk away into the brush. She was 3 to 4 times the size, but I couldn’t get a good photo of her because of the glare of the sun and the brush.

Shortly after, we came across this monkey picking through elephant dung. Probably that mama’s. Elephants have horrible digestion systems. So lots of other animals are interested in eating what came out whole.

We also saw some Impala.

We made it back to our room about 6 PM after some errands, I’ll say for now, and tell the rest of it later. We decided to return to Dhow for dinner. 

There was a beautiful store associated with the restaurant. Ash had eyed a couple of things when we were there on Friday and we returned not only because the food was great but to see about getting those items. And we did.

Still my favorite view of the trip. This might be even better at night. But Ash wrapped in a blanket in front of it is perfection. Blankets were readily available for anyone that wanted them. The restaurant doesn’t really have any walls. It was about 60° and breezy; even I was cold. I had changed into jeans and a hoodie.

We started with crab samosas, which were incredible. They came with three sauces: ketchup, mayonnaise, and a staple at every Mozambique table, peri peri. Sometimes piri piri. It is crazy hot. But a tiny dab of it with the mayonnaise on the Samosa was amazing.

Ash had shrimp and salad for his main dish; I had a hamburger and fries. Primarily because I remembered how terrific the fries were when I was here on Friday. Some of the best I’ve ever had.

For dessert, we had what they called the Saint and the Sinner. Warm chocolate sauce with cashew nuts poured over vanilla ice cream. It’s the San Sebastian chocolate again, the third time now we’ve had it here. It is a very distinct flavor to it, but I don’t think I’ve had anywhere else.

They even poured the sauce right at your table.

When we were done, we headed back to the hotel. We made a beeline to the spa area, but they were already closing. They let us in anyway, but the steam room wasn’t very hot so we didn’t stay very long.

I set an alarm so we can pack in the morning and get out of here by 7:30. We have a 10 AM flight to Johannesburg and then from there to Maun, Botswana. 

So now you’re wondering about the police shakedowns, aren’t you?

Although not a police incident, we encountered similar behavior, we feel, the day we arrived here. We had made a reservation for a Rent-A-Car. They confirmed they had it and a car available. When they ran our credit card, they said it was declined. We knew that was impossible because it’s the card to travel with, and not 10 minutes earlier we had used it to pay for our visa to get into the country.

We had them try both another POS machine as well as another travel card. Four different times they said the transaction was declined. Again, we knew it was impossible. Especially when their solution was for us to go get cash, to include an amount that would cover the insurance they wanted to sell us. The reason we purchase the rental with the travel card is because the insurance is covered. So we weren’t going to do that.

We went to the rental car booth next-door. They understood the predicament. Ran our card ahead of time and it went through fine. And they had a car available for about $150 less for the week than the other guy. We were good.

When we went to the main market in Manzini, we were told by a woman with a clipboard that we were gonna have to pay 12 American dollars to park for every 15 minutes. That is so ridiculous in this particular economy I don’t even know where to start. So we just left. We wanted no part of any of that because it felt like a sign of what was to come if we entered the market.

Here is a good news story that happened today. The deal for our driver in the park today was 4000 MT, or about $70. Which we thought was ridiculously reasonable. When we got there, we learned that that was just for the driver. That quote didn’t realize that we needed the 4 x 4 as well, they thought we would have our own vehicle. The price then went up to 15,000 MT, which included the fees to get in the park. Which was fine, except no one there took a credit card and we were not prepared with that much cash.

Thankfully, the restaurant took a card so that’s how we paid for lunch. But because the driver and the driver’s boss know everyone in the park and also know Flavio, the deal that we made was we would get the cash to Flavio and he would bring it to them. So that kid spent six hours with us driving in very treacherous terrain. We did have 1000 MT to tip him with and he was super happy with that. When we got to Maputo, we went to the bank and we were and able to draw the 15 K we needed and at Fabio‘s request we left it for him with a specific person at the hotel. He will pass the money to them and they will pay the fees at the park tomorrow or some other day. 

So it’s a good news story because everybody trusted everybody and it all worked out.

Just after we crossed back over the bridge going back into Maputo, we missed a turn. We were concentrating on the map to see how we would get back on track when suddenly there are cops standing in the road waving us over. They’re just standing in the road. There’s no vehicles, there’s no sirens, none of that. They did have radar equipment up to make it seem legit. And maybe it was. We realized later the speed limit had dropped. But we were concentrating on the map and missed that. They weren’t happy that the only license Ash had was a photo of his. And said that they were going to fine us. Ash simply asked: how much? 2000 MT. We said great except we don’t have that much in MT right now. We actually hadn’t gone to the bank yet for Flavio. But we did the conversion and it was about $32. So we gave them $35 and that satisfied them. They handed us a small document and made Ash fold the cash in a particular way so that when we handed the document back, you couldn’t see the cash. So really legit. But they sent us on our way and we were glad of that.

Then we went to the bank, the hotel, and dinner.

On our way back from dinner, we did an improper lane change and once again we managed to do it right in front of policeman. We were maybe three blocks from our hotel. This one was super unhappy about Ash‘s drivers license situation. We told them we have our passports at the hotel and at first they wanted us to take them to the hotel so they could see the passports for themselves. Him and one other actually got into the backseat of the car. Instead, they said you have made a serious mistake and we are taking you to the police station. They had us make a right turn, opposite the direction of the hotel. And then had us pull over, oddly, in front of the same bank we had just left not an hour and a half before. They said: you want to end this in a friendly way, give us money. Fine, how much. $300. And honestly, that blew us away. Not because we couldn’t have come up with it, but because it was nearly 10 times the amount the last guys asked for. At first they suggested we go to that ATM but somehow we got out of that. We literally emptied our wallet of everything we had in Mozambique and American currency which in total was maybe $120. Thankfully, that was enough to get them out of our car.

Ash said later that those two stops made up for the $150 we saved on the rental 😎

And I remembered later that Ash actually has two drivers licenses: one with the Sacramento address, one with the San Francisco address. And one of them is in my wallet right now.  🤪

So yeah, we’re happy to be getting out of this country tomorrow.