The last week of November we drove into Cabo Delgado, the most Northern province of Mozambique, for an adventurous one-week holiday. Cabo Delgado looks similar to Mtwara region: highland plateaus, impressive inselbergs, and valleys with beautiful baobabs and large mango trees. For the tribes living here (mainly the Makonde), the whole of the Mtwara region and Northern Mozambique has always been their homeland, despite the Europeans dividing the area by a (natural) border, the Ruvuma river. However Portuguese legacy has left a much better cuisine in Mozambique than the Brits in Tanzania. Cabo Delgado is as remote and underdeveloped as the Mtwara region; North Mozambique has always been left behind due to the capital Maputo being 3000kms away and focussing on South Africa. They even choose to have the same time zone as South Africa, which lead to strange hours for sunrise and sunset: around 4am and 5pm. The independence war against the Portuguese started in 1960 from Cabo Delgado with support from Tanzania, leading to independency only in 1974, and the subsequent long-lasting civil war (until 1992) also didn\'t bring the North closer to Maputo.

For us, this all meant that most of our trip was on rough roads through vast forests with only small mud house villages and monkeys on the road. As said, much of Northern Mozambique is very remote, the road network virtually nonexistent or under construction, only driveable by 4x4, and we were prepared for anything from potholed gravel to thick high sand, encroached by dense bush.

Until recently, the Ruvuma River splitting the two countries was almost impassable by car, but in 2009 a bridge was constructed 200km inland from the river mouth, a 333 km drive from Mtwara (5 hours including changing a flat tyre). This new bridge is quite surreal: coming from the dirt road, suddenly a brand new tarmac road starts, leading you to the bridge that could have been designed by a European architect (maybe they even shipped it straight from Europe), then a few kilometres tarmac road before the dirt road starts again. No visa available at the border, but we had them in our passports already.

After the bridge, a tropical storm turned the dirt road into a mud river. Sliding slowly forward, we stopped in a village, asked permission to park our car, and slept in the car. A very hospitable couple who spoke Kiswahili gave us ugali with mutton, delicious! The next day we continued to the coast, which is endowed with about a dozen of mangrove islands which form together the beautiful Quirimba Archipelago. We left the car in a coastal village and with sunset we joined a small boat to Ibo Island, a lovely island with some historical touches left behind by Arab traders and Portuguese governors. On our return, when leaving the parking garage (4 parking lots with a roof made of bamboo and leaves), our wheel pulled one of the standing poles away, which made the whole ‘building\' collapse! Very embarrassing, we can\'t write who was driving. Luckily only the nose of our car had a scratch, but the poor owner had to build a new garage, which we compensated financially by adding $5 to the parking fee. After that we continued to Pemba, a port town similar to Mtwara, but 10 years ahead in development thanks to a gas boom. With the current gas boom in Mtwara in mind (http://www.lngworldnews.com/ophir-jodari-field-has-potential-to-anchor-tanzania-lng-development/), Pemba gave us good picture of Mtwara\'s future. A big contrast: large industrial yards next to mud huts. People speak Portuguese but also we got along with Kiswahili. Nice beef, hamburgers, Portuguese and Indian restaurants, bread, coffee

To get back to Tanzania, we decided to follow the coast straight to Mtwara, rather than going inland again to the bridge. However, this would imply using canoes to get our car to the other side... From Pemba we drove north to Palma, a coconut groves village just an hour south from the border. Almost cut off from the world, it is Palma where they just started construction of a 18bnUSD LNG terminal (the biggest in the world as they say). However, the only sign of it now was a fenced off yard with containers and 4x4s in the middle of dense bush. The next early morning off to the river to be on time for high tide (the river is only passable at high tide). But then the Mozambican Immigration Office delayed us for so long (asking money for nothing) that the tide was going out already, leaving us nothing else then waiting for the next high tide 12 hours later! Poor network reception, books finished, swimming in the river but not for long because there are crocodiles, the other 11 hours we did literally nothing but waiting and watching the tide going out and coming back in. Not ideal, because if anything would go wrong not much sunlight left for any emergency action. Watch this youtube-movie to see our crossing of the river http://timmarijetanzania.reismee.nl/video/14462/crossing-the-ruvuma-river-bordering-mozambique-and-tanzania/ (and how the boatmen forgot to anchor the boats making our Pajero sliding onto the boat but luckily not into the water). The river crossing itself was in the dark, but here\'s a movie of two friends who did it at daylight: http://youtu.be/HZVS54pKQsA On the last part to Mtwara we got stuck with an overheated engine, but with some help of really wonderful people (no, there is no Tanzanian Wegenwacht) we got a bottle of water and we could charge our phone in a hair dressing salon so that we could call a friend (a hero) who came to tow us back to Mtwara around midnight.

Check out our photo page again:http://timmarijetanzania.reismee.nl/fotos/134380/road-trip-to-northern-mozambique/ Besides photos of our Mozambique trip we also upload photos of the traditional tribal dance festival that took place in Mtwara early November (see also this http://timmarijetanzania.reismee.nl/video/14463/makuya-traditional-dance-festival-mtwara-tanzania-by-adea/). The day was organised by ADEA (center for African Development through Economics and Arts): http://adeaafrica.org/Home.html