After an amazing few days in Kruger, VY and I made good on our intention for a jaunt into Mozambique, the promise of stewed crab and piri piri prawns on our minds. Djuma to Maputo (ma-pu-tu) is only a 5h drive and, having sorted all our visa arrangements in SA beforehand, we made our way into Mozambique's capital.

Maputo is an interesting place. It has all the effortless cool of Berlin but replaces the German city's edgy grittiness with the breezy, laid-back feel of a coastal city like Rio or Barcelona. It bustles with night life yet isn't boastful of it. It has the right mix of expats (few) and locals (many) who congregate in bars and clubs with borrowed influences but that have a distinctly organic and "Mozambican" feel all their own, plagued with none of the affectations that characterise so many bars in London. And yet, as trendy as I find Maputo, it is never spoken of as an "up-and-comer" in the same ways Istanbul, Beirut, or Tel-Aviv were before they burst onto the international scene. In coming here, I felt like I had stumbled upon a city on the verge of transformation, but what I liked most about it was that no one seemed to care. People weren't talking of all the cool, must-attend events springing up around town because they were too busy having a good time! A city after my own heart. I definitely want to come back and explore not only Maputo in greater depth, but the rest of the country which I've heard so many good things about.

Over our five days here, VY, a Maputo veteran, showed myself and a few of her friends around, and did not disappoint. Our time here had all the makings of a good trip; heady nights out, cultural exposure, interesting locales and misadventure. Highlights include:

• Mistakenly being given the keys to someone else's room, and, upon finding it occupied, moving all the contents to the hallway. I can only imagine what this poor guy was thinking after coming back from a late night out only to find someone else's clothes all over his bed and his personal effects unceremoniously dumped in the hallway.

• In an act of what must be karmic justice, having our GPS route us to the very bowels of the Maputo ghetto; a giant roundabout where rough-and-tumble locals, barracking and belligerent, gather to engage in episodes of public drunkenness while merchants sell used shoes and belts, bass heavy music bleeds together into an incoherent trainwreck, and vendors grill street meat over flaming oil barrels. Imagine their confusion (and our panic) as two Asians, who clearly did't belong there, drove through this scene in a gleaming Honda Civic...

• Going to an open mic night and bearing witness to what must be the world's only all-black, Portuguese heavy metal band, appropriately clad in Iron Maiden and Megadeth (Megadeaf?) T-shirts. They were legitimate however, deafeningly loud and resolutely angry.
  

• Embarking on a seafood odyssey in Maputo's fantastic fish market. The fresh catch of the morning is traded here and the sheer variety of what is on offer is stunning. We had clams of several varieties (black, razor and baby), lobster, conch, mud and water crabs, and of course Mozambican prawns (tiger, queen, king and everything in between). The best part is the adjoining restaurants which prepare your food any way you like. From purchase to plate while you wait. Oh. Em. Gee.

• And last but not least, our run in with the Mozambican police which I'll cover in the next blog entry.

CC negotiating with a local selling handicrafts. She's the best negotiator I've ever met, which is a good thing because she loves shopping!

Youths practicing their capoeira on the beach showing off their insane athleticism

We took a car ferry to visit this port town just across the river where adults were getting pissed at 11am. This child was playing with bottle caps probably waiting for his parents. The guy in the back was absolutely blotto

These youths in trendy threads were such a contrast to the others wearing tattered clothing

Fat mud crabs for sale in the seafood market

This lady knew how to make a sale without having to utter a word. Those black, tennis ball sized clams at her elbow left an unpurgeable taste of old sock on the palette

Clams of all sorts for sale by a lady with her nails did

Massive clawless lobsters of dazzling color

VY enjoying some mud crab after a hard day's bargaining

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