Tight squeeze

Exiting Tanzania for Mozambique, a tuk-tuk squeezed too ambitiously between the taxi I was in and another taxi, ripping off lights and bumpers. The tuk-tuk driver seemed to have fled the scene until he reappeared sheepishly from behind a wall.

The journey to Mozambique wasn’t too shabby. Around 90% of the passengers boarding the flight to Pemba (the first stop in northern Mozambique) were Indonesians going to work in the offshore gas developments.

Meanwhile my old landlady in Maputo, she of the flirty disposition, sensing somehow that I was arriving in the city, wrote to me to ask to borrow money. I decided it wasn’t something to pursue.

In Maputo I called my old bud Paulo the txopela driver. He arrived at the airport with tunes pumping out of his tuk-tuk. ‘Para me divertir um pouco’, (to have some fun) he said.

I have booked at a place which had left a fruit platter and two pastéis de nata as a welcome gift, which was perfect timing as I had been mulling how to acquire a light dinner. The fruit was accompanied by a note addressed to someone called Luca but I assumed it was mine as they’d put it in my locked room.