Exotic Quirimbas Archipelago, Northern Mozambique

Sue Segar, recently trav­elled to the remote and exotic Quir­im­bas Arch­i­pel­ago in north­ern Mozambique.

What do Daniel Craig, David Roth­schild and Tokyo Sexwale have in com­mon? Well, one thing, I gath­ered on a recent trip, is that they have all dis­cov­ered Mozam­bique. In par­tic­u­lar, they have been cap­ti­vated by the remote Quir­im­bas Arch­i­pel­ago, a vast chain of 32 off­shore coral islands which runs for some 250 km along the country’s north­ern coast­line.
In fact, so cap­ti­vated is our new Human Set­tle­ments min­is­ter that he recently bought his own island, called Quilalea, in this rel­a­tively little-known par­adise. Till recently, the small island of Quilalea boasted the most expen­sive lux­ury resort in Mozam­bique, but Tokyo, who report­edly bought it for $20 mil­lion, will keep it for the pri­vate use of his fam­ily and friends.
Fly­ing over the islands in a small plane recently, it was easy to see why this com­pelling arch­i­pel­ago is increas­ingly being described as the ”New Mal­dives”. And why the Roth­schilds bring their friends and have invested hugely in the area. It explained why Dave Coet­zee, a pilot for the Rani group of lux­ury lodges, threw in his job as a man­ager in the freight indus­try to fly small planes in the Quir­im­bas.
Fly­ing over the islands is, in itself, an expe­ri­ence of won­der. Think of a vast ocean made up of a hun­dred dif­fer­ent shades of blue and green, punc­tu­ated by a long string of largely undis­turbed pale islands and islets, with just the occa­sional white-sailed dhow, sail­ing, frag­ile and alone in the watery expanse.
The islands, which begin about 70 km north of the his­toric port of Pemba and con­tinue up to the Tan­zan­ian bor­der, are mostly unin­hab­ited and tourism has made lit­tle mark on them.
They are known by dis­cern­ing divers for their jaw-dropping ver­ti­cal drop-offs, some up to more than 400 metres. And for the extra­or­di­nary size of their reef-fish — includ­ing par­rot­fish, angelfish, cave bass and morays. Bird-lovers come for the lilac-crested rollers, coconut vul­tures and fish-eagles.
Knack­ered from a spate of bad news, I decided to pack my bags and regroup in the most remote spot imag­in­able. Where else then, but Mozam­bique, a place which has always fas­ci­nated me.
The instruc­tion notes on trav­el­ling to the Quir­im­bas islands said any lug­gage weigh­ing more than 15kgs would be left behind. So, armed with the Bradt Travel Guide to Mozam­bique, as well as my bat­tered copy of Alec Garland’s cult clas­sic, The Beach and Lisa St Aubin de Teran’s com­pelling book, Mozam­bique Mys­ter­ies, I packed my light­est clothes, my gog­gles and a note­book and turned my back on the bleak Cape win­ter. ”Very, very far north in Mozam­bique,” was all I said, when peo­ple asked where I was going.
An Air­link flight from Johan­nes­burg had me in Pemba at lunch-time. Pemba, which is sit­u­ated on the tip of a penin­sula on the south­ern side of Pemba Bay, is the cap­i­tal of Mozambique’s most north-easterly province, Cabo Del­gado. (It’s a town which I later explored after my trip to the island and which car­ries an intrigue all of its own.)
The Ital­ian diplo­mat sit­ting next to me couldn’t con­tain his enthu­si­asm for the view of Pemba Bay, which he said is one of the deep­est and most pro­tected bays in the world.
”Did you know that Pemba is the third-biggest nat­ural har­bour in the world — after Syd­ney and Rio,” he said. I had not known that — but was equally gob­s­macked by the view of the enor­mous bay with its wide, sandy, palm-lined beaches. This diplo­mat, on his first visit to this part of Mozam­bique, had done his home­work — and told me that, despite being off the beaten track, Pemba — with its coral reefs, safe swim­ming and excel­lent snorkelling — has enor­mous poten­tial as a tourist des­ti­na­tion. There’s just the small prob­lem of rea­son­able flights — it’s cheaper for South Africans to go to Mau­ri­tius.
My exotic itin­er­ary told me to wait for a light air­craft trans­fer with CFA Char­ters from Pemba to Matemo Island — and within min­utes, a small group of us were mak­ing our way in the heat onto a very light air­craft. The more remote the island, the smaller the air­craft that takes you there, (and the more fas­ci­nat­ing the pilot) it seemed. (Dave, apart from hav­ing flown in the Inter Trop­i­cal Con­ver­gance Zone of coun­tries like Gabon, Benin, Liberia and Sierra Leone (think hor­rific thun­der­storms with cloud heights as high as 55 000 feet), also man­aged to take a plane­ful of peo­ple out of Gabon dur­ing the coup d’etat in 2003.) He’s also flown in Sudan and car­ried numer­ous heads of state and celebri­ties.
An hour or so later, after a breath­tak­ing flight over the seascape — at times lime green and at oth­ers a rich indigo — we landed on the sin­gu­lar island of Matemo on an airstrip that could not have been more than ten metres from the sea.
Matemo is one of the few inhab­ited islands in the expan­sive arch­i­pel­ago, which falls under the pro­tec­tion of the Quir­im­bas National Park. Tourism is care­fully man­aged and the tourism devel­op­ments are, in the main, exclu­sive. Think ice-cold cock­tails on arrival, a wel­com­ing com­mit­tee of all the staff — and cray­fish curry in coconut served out­side under the stars at sup­per time.
Things were look­ing up. Maybe the guy who wrote The Beach was right: ”Escape through travel works.”
Matemo is also one of the few islands in the region with an upmar­ket lodge, owned by Rani Resorts founder, the top Saudi Ara­bian busi­ness­man, Adel Aujan. He founded Rani in the early 1990s, after being over­whelmed by the region’s breath­tak­ing beauty and wilder­ness. His lux­ury lodges on Matemo and the nearby island of Med­jumbe, as well as one in Pemba — the Pemba Beach Hotel and Spa — offer world-class lux­ury ser­vice and have hosted numer­ous famous per­son­al­i­ties: Not least Gil Sander and the peo­ple who own Lacoste. And even our own for­mer Finance Min­is­ter, Trevor Manuel, who chose Matemo as the spot to take his bride, Maria Ramos on hon­ey­moon not so long ago.
After a stroll on a white beach scat­tered with bleached cowries, and a swim in the sea, I took up the offer of an island tour of Matemo and learned from our guide, Eliseu, that the Quir­im­bas Arch­i­pel­ago — and par­tic­u­larly Ibo Island, which was nom­i­nated as a World Her­itage Site by UNESCO — has a rich his­tory, made up of a mix of African, Ara­bian and Por­tuguese influ­ences.
The islands were orig­nally mainly made up of fish­ing set­tle­ments. Later, Moslem traders set­tled there and the area became part of a com­mer­cial net­work which orig­i­nated in the Gulf of Oman and went down the East African coast. Dhows, bear­ing goods to barter, would sail down the coast mak­ing use of the so-called ”trade winds”.
The next morn­ing, after a lan­guid morn­ing pad­dle in Matemo’s warm water, I flew on another small air­plane to nearby Ibo. Our pilot pointed out the strik­ing star-shaped Fort of St Joao Bap­tista, built by the Por­tuguese to keep con­trol over local trade, as we flew closer.
Goats scat­tered from the grass land­ing strip as we landed. Soon we were dri­ving through the island’s old fortresses, its cathe­dral and the once-grand old homes. The authors of the Bradt travel guide describe Ibo as the most fas­ci­nat­ing and atmos­pheric town in the coun­try after Mozam­bique Island. ”It’s a strangely haunt­ing back­wa­ter … the most allur­ing off-the-beaten track excur­sion in north­ern Mozam­bique.”
Ibo became the main hub for Moslem traders in the 1500s, but, after the Moslems on nearby Quer­imba Island refused to trade with Chris­tians, Por­tu­gal attacked the islands in 1523. By the end of the 16th Cen­tury, most of the larger islands of the Quir­im­bas Arch­i­pel­ago were run by Por­tuguese traders, with Ibo firmly estab­lished as the major town on the islands. By the mid­dle of the 18th Cen­tury, Ibo was estab­lished as the main sup­plier of slaves to the Indian Ocean Islands.The island declined when trade moved to Pemba in the early 1900s and is now back to being an island of fish­er­men.
I dis­em­barked at the mag­nif­i­cent Ibo Island Lodge — once the Bela Vista man­sion — where a lunch of cold cray­fish salad, white rolls and hot cof­fee awaited.
My hosts offered an array of options to while away the after­noon — I could go for a sail in a dhow or on a beach excur­sion (tide-dependent, as the lit­tle par­a­dis­i­cal beach dis­ap­pears at high tide). Or I could go snorkelling (”it’s bet­ter than Mau­ri­tius”) or go for a kayak through the man­groves. (In 1760, the Por­tuguese made the slaves cut a chan­nel through the man­groves from Ibo to Quir­im­bas Island.). Else I could take a walk from Ibo to Quir­im­bas Island when the tide allows. I was par­tic­u­larly inter­ested to do the walk to Quir­imba Island — as I had heard about a third-generation Ger­man fam­ily, the Gess­ners, who have made their life on the island and who run a suc­cess­ful guest house. But time did not per­mit this, so I opted for the walk­a­bout his­tor­i­cal tour of Ibo.
Our Zim­bab­wean guide, Har­ris, described how, when inde­pen­dence came to Mozam­bique, the Por­tuguese elite on Ibo put salt in their car engines and drove them into the sea, how they put sugar in their print­ing presses and other machin­ery and smashed their expen­sive crock­ery — any­thing to pre­vent the locals from inher­it­ing their pos­ses­sions.
Sup­per back at the lodge was crab curry, accom­pa­nied by a cou­ple of cold 2M beers and an early night with Lisa St Aubin de Teran’s book.
I left Ibo the next day, vow­ing to go back for at least a week to do all the hikes, pad­dling and sun­tan­ning I had not man­aged to do. But not with­out a visit to the local Ibo sil­ver­smiths. Since the 12th Cen­tury, arti­sisans on Ilha do Ibo have been hand-crafting intri­cate sil­ver jew­ellery reflect­ing the African, Ara­bic, Indian and Euro­pean influ­ences in their design. Today, about 40 sil­ver smiths on Ibo, some work­ing out of the old star-shaped fort and oth­ers oper­at­ing from an old house on the island, ply their trade, still using the ancient tech­niques.
Next stop was Med­jumbe Island, where the Rani Group has, in my opin­ion, its finest lodge. Its lux­ury chalets, with mus­lim mos­quito nets bil­low­ing over gor­geous white bed­li­nen, have their own plunge pools and jacuzzis, vir­tu­ally on the beach.
At Med­jumbe, I jumped at the oppor­tu­nity to go for a snorkel in one of the coral reefs, after which I went bird-watching and saw a large fish-eagle.
My hosts told me there are at least 54 species of birds on the island.
Sup­per was cray­fish and a choice of other fish straight out of the sea, cooked out­side in front of us, beside the pool and over­look­ing the beach.
I left Med­jumbe the next day, not before hav­ing swum around the whole island — a girl’s got to keep fit.
And then on to Pemba, where I spent one night at Rani’s Pemba Beach Hotel, where Patience, a woman from Zim­babwe, gave me an unfor­get­table facial.
Then, still in Pemba, a few nights of rel­a­tive rough­ing it with Brenda — a charm­ing under­wa­ter gar­dener and witch — and her hus­band, Rudi at the Pemba Dive and Bush Camp, showed me another side of north­ern Mozam­bique. Rudi promised me that if he took me out snorkelling on his old boat, I would be swim­ming with dol­phins within ten min­utes. I was.
By the time my trip was over, I had a new role model — the gor­geous St Aubin de Teran who describes in her book how, after three mar­riages and a very inter­est­ing life, it was only when she arrived in north­ern Mozam­bique (the Quirinthe Penin­sula to be pre­cise) that she finally recog­nised what she has been look­ing for all her life.
”On my first visit to Mozam­bique I was curi­ous. By my sec­ond, I was in love,” she writes on the cover of her book. I agree.

Infor­ma­tion Box:
South Africans do not need visas to visit Mozam­bique.
It is rec­om­mended to take malaria tablets while vis­it­ing the Qurim­bas Arch­i­pel­ago.
The offi­cial cur­rency in Mozam­bique is the Met­i­cal (MT) = 100 cen­tavos. US dol­lars are widely accepted. Trav­ellers cheques can­not be changed in Pemba and there is no Bureau de Change at the air­port.
A US $3 — $5 per per­son stamp duty is required when pass­ing through secu­rity at Pemba.
When depart­ing from Pemba, all trav­ellers are asked to open their lug­gage — and bags are searched by an offi­cial. This is stan­dard pro­ce­dure, and partly to check that no shells or other nat­ural items are removed.
There is a strict 15 kg restric­tion per per­son of soft lug­gage, includ­ing hand lug­gage on all air trans­fers to the islands.

© Sue Segar 2009