Great walks: Maputo Boulevard

Great walks: Maputo Boulevard…

Having finally, after many years, made friends with dear old Maputo – I thought it would be great to enjoy a walk along the east facing beaches – from Clube Navale, to Clube Maritimo.

I started at Club Navale, with an ice cold 2M. And then another. Then paid my honest bill of R30 per beer – beautiful frosty drafts, and headed north into the tropical sun.

The wall along the beachfront reminds me of the construction method so prevalent in old Cape Town – stone construction. Huge stones. Rocks. Hewn and woven together to produce a beautiful angled wall that runs the entire stretch and beyond. A sea wall. Rick in textures, colours – and character. You could almost hear the slaves slaving away, rock by rock.

Along the wall are many openings, with stairs taking you down to the ocean’s edge. You could imagine, in days gone by, people using these stairs to access the unspoilt waters of Maputo Bay. Not anymore – the water is putrid and brown, flavoured by the many storm water drains that drag the city’s scourge down into it’s own waters, like a child pissing in it’s nappy. As I merrily closed my nostrils and walked on the top of the wall, a rock moved in the distance ahead of me. I then passed a pile of old clothes and realised that the black rock moving in the distance, was a human being – taking a dump. Right there, 5 m from the road, and in full sunlight. Hastily I scarpered past, snapping off one ugly shot as proof.

So after a kilometre or so, just blazing heat, passing cars, palm trees until finally I come across the gold. Three beautifully old looking structures that look just like the cottages found in the deep Transkei. Some pilgrims journeyed all this way back when, and invested their fortune in these holiday rondavels. You could hear the laughter. Smell the fire. Feel the music. They are now some sort of offices for something tourism, but now stand as a reminder to the days when Bob Dylan might have walked these very same streets.

At this point, things got a bit confusing. A huge excavator was on the beach and throwing around huge rocks into some sort of formation. As I climbed through the construction area, the new revamped sand anchoring piers lay before me. Extending a hundred metres into the ocean, the certainly will stabilise these beaches – some serious planning here.

Then the wall becomes populated atop with restaurants and hotels. Some big hotels mind you. With Chinese writing all over them. Construction projects seemingly financed and carried out by huge development entities. The tentacles grow. All the way around Africa.

I stopped for a refreshing beer. Small bottles only. 120 Mets!? That’s hard to swallow when beer drinking is so much fun, so I rapidly shoot that one and keep moving. It’s been an hour or more now, and still no Clube Maritimo. Just vaste tracts of huge developments. Huge. Towering. Abusive looking. Ugly.

And then I finally spot another fortress looking complex, to find Clube Maritimo. A final cold beer, a delicious draft served on the verandah over the slipway. More images come to life. People wining and dining. Tourists cruising. Boats launching. Birds squawking. And I look around me, and there you have it. Except for the development and smells – I could have been sitting here 40 years ago…

Stay at Fatima’s when in Maputo. Clean. Fun. Central. And a major source of local information…