Mozam 1

Kosi Bay sits at the northern fringe of South Africa's east coast. Approaching on the road that cuts through the St Lucia wetland park and the Huluhwe game reserve, you pass several rural Zulu villages marked by their mud brick rondavels before a small mall complete with bottle stores, cash points and other modern conveniences signals the entrance to the border town. You pass the police station, the church and a small school before joining the queue of 4x4's that marks the frontier with Mozambique. Pulling up at the red and white tapered barrier a uniformed guard approaches, taps on the window and asks you politely to go to the white washed SA immigration office for your passport to be checked and stamped for exit. Stamp promptly completed, the barrier is then raised and you are waived through.

Passing under the barrier the tarmac vanishes and the suspension grapples with the dirt and sand for stability whilst over inflated tyres immediately struggle for traction. A mere ten metres on, you are called to a juddering halt by a plain-clothed official sporting a large grin next to whom stands an armed man in army uniform looking out impassively over a litter strewn dirt field that poses as the official parking lot for the Mozambique border. The boundaries of the parking lot are marked by hastily erected plastic huts selling insurance of all sorts and a menacing yet decaying, moss-covered concrete bunker about which army officials lounge on faded plastic chairs smoking cheap cigarettes. To the right of the parking lot, fringed by overgrown grass and discarded polystyrene coffee cups, is an iron container with two barred windows through which two large ladies dispense Mozambique entry stamps. They cost 179R, sometimes they charge, sometimes they don't.

In the baking dust bowl of the parking lot, overweight drivers fuss over oversized 4x4's, prepping them for the rough terrain and eager to press on but any effort for haste and efficiency is confounded by the grinning plain clothed officials who seem more interested in the checking out the glistening chrome than processing any sort of official paperwork. The more you rush the more you wait: impatience draws an apathetic shrug often underlined by a mischievous grin: Smiles buy time, cigarettes buy miracles. In the hot air brows quickly furrow.

"What year was this car?", "How many kilometres?", "How much you paid this car?'", the voices roll with a slight Portuguese infliction and all formality is ditched as officials ponder the pimped out trucks with wide eyes and child like enthusiasm. In the space of ten metres, it's clear this is no longer South Africa but Mozambique.

From beyond the parking lot and out towards the distant and unobstructed horizon stretch vast, empty fertile plains. Dry wild grasses sway in the wind in a display of browns and greens and all signs of settlement vanish as you take your pick of several deep sand tracks that lead away from the sheet plastic roofs of the border control. After several kilometres of guessing your way through the unmarked, interlinking sand trails it becomes immediately apparent that there are no roads, less so a recognised road network. Trails appear only to vanish as they follow the contours of the land, many have been reclaimed by the dense bush whilst others are lost under drifting dunes.

Driving onwards the landscapes are vast but uncomfortably empty. Staring out over the countryside there are no fences, no fields or farms as there is, astonishingly, no livestock. Though fertile the countryside is barren and featureless, a sinister hangover from the 16 years of war that consumed the country once the Portuguese left in the 1960's. Throughout the years of conflict livestock and all wild animals were either slaughtered as famine took hold or blown up by the millions of landmines that litter the countryside; nobody ventures too far off the beaten track around here.  Before the war Mozambique was Africa's 8^thmost successful agricultural economy however farming here is dead with tourism now offering the most obvious way out hence the vast tracts of coastal land now being fenced off by developers as they move in from abroad.

Rounding the dunes and nearing our coastal destination, we pass the first settlement since leaving the border. Small reed huts cluster tightly together in a small community and a road-side barraca advertises cold rum and bbq chicken served in the ubiquitous and violently potent green peri peri sauce. Children play in the shade and run alongside the car; our progress is slow in the soft sand. Strong looking women carry large leaking water drums on their heads while men work the fields harvesting hay into tightly wound bundles; thatching for the huts. The closer we get to the coast the more settlements we find until we begin to pass concrete ruins that were once holiday homes for the wealthy from Maputo, condemned and abandoned when their owners fled the country or became confined to the capital when fighting broke out. We stop briefly to take a closer look, entering through a charred concrete arch that once functioned as the main entrance. In the corner of what was once the front room my eyes are immediately drawn to the smouldering embers of a fire and a rusted iron kettle. I hear footsteps and soon a young girl and her father enter, our eyes meet briefly and they stare at me blankly in silence. Embarassed, I offer an apology and leave the burned out shell that was once an opulent holiday home and we push on until we are greeted by the deep turquoise ocean and the long right point, the ‘warm water J-bay', that has surfers coming here in their droves. It's stunning and easy to see why, but there is so much more to explore.

Looking down the beach from our balcony you can make out the outline of a small white lighthouse perched high on the dunes to the South. Roughly 3km away, the lighthouse also marks the border with South Africa. It is possible to walk here from the beach South African side but also illegal, hence the slightly longer drive inland is necessary. By road the border is only 10 kilometres or so but on these roads a 45 minute drive. Just a line on the map but it takes only 10 metres, not 10 kilometres, for everything to change.