After two nights in a row of 10 hours of sleep for both of us, we both woke up about 2 AM this morning and couldn’t go back to sleep. It was bound to kick in sometime.

We drank coffee in the room and watched stupid things on TV which is all there is at that time of the morning. Breakfast opened at 6:30 AM and we were there on the dot. The big agenda item for the day was driving back to Maputo and we were on the road before 7:30 AM.

This time the border crossing went smoothly. We figured out that the military guards who sent us back to the border on Tuesday radioed the guard there and probably gave him a hard time about letting us get through without stopping. Because he was quite agitated with us when we got back there on Tuesday. We were wondering if he would be there today.

And he was. He was the last stop at the gate to collect what they called the Gate Pass, which indicates all of your paperwork is in order. We hand it to him and he looks at us and smiles and says “at least you didn’t cause any trouble today.”

We got back to the hotel about noon. This is where we stayed Monday night and are back for four more nights before we head to Botswana.

Our room is next-door to the room we had the other day only a little bit better. It’s laid out so there’s more open space, and the balcony jets out the farthest of any so we have an unobstructed view on either side.

But I’m a little ahead of myself. Our room wasn’t ready yet when we checked in so they held our luggage and we got something to eat first.

This is the same hotel restaurant where we had dinner on Monday night. Our breakfasts are in the same area.

Our lunches were pretty simple. I had a chicken sandwich with french fries. Ash got an Indian dish that he was pretty disappointed with, but it was still tasty. Just not what he expected. Let’s just say masala is not masala everywhere. 

We got settled in, including unpacking and some ironing. Ash took a nap and I started working on this and made some progress on a different writing project I started this morning when we had a bunch of time to kill.

We decided on a place for dinner, showered and made our way out about 5:30. It was about a 25 minute walk along the road that runs below our balcony.

This avenue had some pretty pricey real estate on it, including several embassies.

Our destination is a restaurant called Salt, about a mile walk from our hotel and on the ocean. There weren’t a lot of reviews on either Google or TripAdvisor but what was there was very good and they were correct. Ash is writing a TripAdvisor review as I type.  This was our best meal of the trip so far. 

Some of the reviews that we read raved about the garlic bread so we had to try that. Imagine a quesadilla with mozzarella and garlic inside cooked over an open fire. It was stupid good.

This is springbok carpaccio. It was fun to see it on the menu. I had this at my very first meal in Africa, in Johannesburg in 2023. It was so good I had it the next night as well. This was just as good as I remember it. Springbok is a very small antelope. This is a very delicate meat. It was prepared beautifully with arugula, olive oil, and a kind of nut I couldn’t identify. (And an amusing discussion with the waiter at the end of the meal that offered no clarity on the nut question!)

I had the filet mignon. The red sauce is a gorgonzola sauce colored by beetroot. In the bowl is a wonderful risotto. All of it pretty incredible.

For dessert we shared with they called San Sebastian cheesecake. That’s a very tasty but somehow light chocolate sauce dripping all over that puppy. It was spectacular.

We had ambitions about walking around a bit after dinner, but by the time we got back to the hotel, we were pretty done.

I did go sit in the steam room for about 20 minutes and had a fun conversation with the attendant there about American politics. Let’s just say we saw things the same way.

We booked a tour of the city highlights tomorrow which kicks off at 10 AM. That’s as much as we have planned so we’ll see what else we come up with.