Travelling to Mozambique: Pemba

I wanted to make a short trip in Southern Africa before leaving - my original trip to Botswana with Julia had to be cancelled, and the thought of going there by myself wasn't really attractive. So I thought I'd do something with a bicycle (my farewell trip with my beloved but now also aged Marin Bear Valley), a trip for which I could also avoid flying.

This plan was turned on its head in stages. Firstly, the plan not to fly would have - at least in Northern Mozambique - have involved 5 days of hard bus travel with the bike in each direction - and I only had 10 days. So I compromised: I'd fly, but I'd have the bike trip on the other side.

Enter SAA, in the guise of Airlink, and now way down there as my least favourite South African company. The fact that I'd recently sued them over stolen luggage should have warned me, but when you're flying to Mozambique, the choices are limited. The interaction with them went like this:
Me (on phone): can I take my bike with me as sports luggage
Airlink: oh yes, of course
Me (on phone a couple of days later): can I confirm that I can take my bike as sports equipment?
Airlink: yes sir! Of course!
Airlink (at airport): Of course you can take the bike with you! But we count it as normal lugage, so it will cost R1400 (US$200) excess in each diretion. Double the price of your ticket! And no, you can't cancel your ticket now...
Me (silently): fuckin' SAA.
It wasn't the last time I'd think this. So I end up flying, and sans bike, into a radically different plan. But it was still fun.

Pemba from the air as the plane curved down to land was dhows on the brilliant blue water of the bay and sprawling areas of densley packed huts with grass and leaf rooves, pockmarked by giant baobabs.

The town was large (almost 250 000 people in the greater area, I heard), and I spent a couple of days adapting to Mozambique in it, trying to get a dive in (and failing) and hanging out on the beach, something which I'm miserably bad at.

I stayed at a place called Russels, which has a lot of original local art work in it (Russel used to be a dealer) and was a great hang-out apart from the damned MTV blastig from a giant plasma TV.

Then on Monday, I got up at 3am to catch a 4:30am bus to Ilha de Mozambique. It had been a while since I had travelled in the 3rd World, and I'd forgotten so much: the hawkers with live chickens held upside down and cokes thrust through the bus window, the undersized seats and the heat and the dust. But the bus (and then a lift in a 4x4) got me to Pemba by 3pm.