Mozambique - Africa with a Portguese flavour Hi Guys We managed to make it to Northern Mozambique, travelling over 1500 kilometres on their main road (which is like a country lane back home), so are now in Ihla de Mozambique. It´s an island off the mainland which was the first place the portuguese landed and was the country´s capital and main trading port for hundreds of years. There are lots of crumbling colonial buildings here (not sure if UNESCO actually give them funding or just the World Heritage title...) and we´re actually staying in a family house dating back to the 1700s, amazing! The people here seem very laid back and some have Asian rather than Afro hair, from the mixing of Asian and European traders with locals no doubt. We are planning to spent 4 or 5 days here chilling out and pottering around in the narrow streets before we journey to the Malawi border by train and minibus. The journey from Southern Mozambique was pretty interesting (starting with a dodgy stomach was not ideal but was ok in the end - the unspeakable toilets we encountered en route seem to keep my muscles firmly sealed!). The roads were generally good (except for a bad 50k patch where we kept being flung into the air - they really test the suspension here). The minibuses can take hours to fill up but we were fairly lucky - they squeeze about 20 people into a bus designed for 12, pretty uncomfortable for a 10 hour journey. Mothers with babies and children are given so special treatment here and the kids are incredibly tolerant of the long journeys and rarely cry. The little boy I was sitting next to on one journey ended up weeing on his feet (having been lowered out the back window to wee on the street) and then wiped them on my hair - nice! Mozambique has been really interesting to travel in and we´ve been lucky to meet so many friendly and helpful people who have practised their english on us or tolerated my Spanish-Portuguese combo! People haven´t hassled us at all here and generally let us go about our business. It´s nice that you can say hello to anyone walking down the street and they smile and talk back to you, and children are free to play outside. The women are amazing here - they carry big bowls of things on their head with a baby strapped to their back, I think they keep the whole country going! Big hugs Soph & Yemster xxx