Flight into Mozambique

What an incredible experience - we set off on Friday last week in ZDL for our first international flight on an adventure to Mozambique flying with our mates in their Sling 2 - SAA. 

 

Our plan was to fly the 2 1/2 hours to Maputo, clearing out first through passport control and customs at King Shaka International (a five minute flight from our home base at Virginia). This was an experience all by itself.  After handling immigration and customs, we then stayed in Maputo for the night and on Saturday we flew the next 2 hour leg to Inhambane up the coast north of Maputo where we parked the plane for the next 5 nights. Homeward bound this Thursday we flew directly back to Maputo to again clear customs and passport control and continued on to Durban - doing the full 4 1/2 hours flying in one day. With 2 international airports and the 3 legs to get us home to Virginia it was a long day departing at 8am and only getting home at 5pm with our brave little plane all washed and packed away in our hangar for the night.

We laughed at Inhambane Airport when the trolleys came out to fetch our bags

Casa Algodoal was an excellent choice for a beach cottage at Tofo, 24kms by road to the coast from Inhambane Airport

This photo I took near the end but was so proud of our little plane standing at King Shaka on our return with the big guys I had to shift it up out of sequence. In fact to land we had to be slotted in between heavy traffic and I followed an airbus in from long final approach.

A rare experience to arrive at an international airport in your own plane!

Again out of sequence but we were also proud to wear our uniforms for the international flight - seen here on day one as we prepared to leave Virginia Airport for King Shaka

In the air and on our way

Maputo Bay with Maputo on the other side coming into view. I was last in Maputo when it was Lourenço Marques before independence and about 35 years ago. My step-dad was a Springbok yachtsman and he used to compete in the LM to Durban race, so we sailed with him to LM from Durban in his yacht "Golden Fleece" and then flew back while he raced. My has the place gone down and resembles a slum African dump, when once it was a proud Portuguese city, although we did see signs of construction and renewal. Is there hope for the future? 

Maputo Airport is brand new and actually pretty modern and nice and organised. I was pleasantly surprised. We also used a ground handling agent here and we were whisked through passport control, customs and the apron office as fast as the system would permit and also refuelled our plane, paying some exhorbitant prices for fuel, landing fees and immigration.

From Maputo up north-east the coastline is known as the Lakes District with brackish fresh/sea water lakes hugging the coast as far as you could see.

After 2 hours of flying out of Maputo we reached Tofo, flew over the beach where we would be staying then turned inland 25 kms to the Inhambane Provincial capital "city" where we landed. Inhambane Province is also the coconut capital of Mozambique with some 2 million coconut palms and contributing a major portion of the income of the country with some 14% of the total population in some way involved in the industry.

The favourite drink in Tofo, apart from the good local beer, is Tipo Tinto, a cheap local rum which you conventionally mix with Sparletta strawberry juice. I think between the four of us we consumed 3 bottles in 5 days along with copious numbers of beer. My favourite is 2-M, whilst Laurentina is the other favoured brand which came in a good clear, Premium and dark variety. All very good. We found it cheaper to buy the rum in 500ml plastic bottles for 50 Meticais which brought the price down to about R30 a litre (approx Euro 2,50) which was ridiculously cheap, tasty and strong.

Casa Algodoal - our rustic but excellent beach cottage for our stay. Excellent open plan design, lovely bedrooms and spectacular view over the Tofo Bay and beach with Mozam's typical reed thatch style roof, and our own walkway down to the beach.



Poverty abounds and we marvelled at the fishermen who rowed these 2-man boats out kilometres into the sea and reefs each morning to bring in their catch of fresh linefish, squid and crayfish by lunchtime.

Yummy crayfish tails in the outdoor pizza oven at our cottage which our mates Marc and Lee experty prepared for a nightly feast.

A feast fit for a king!
 

A typical roadside view of the Inhambane area with coconut palms and groups of family thatch huts



Those entering Tofo beach by road will be familiar with the oddment of signs announcing the dive centres, abundance of accommodation and restaurants in this quaint little village alongside the bay. We joined Tofo Scuba on one of the mornings for some snorkelling and managed to find a whale shark swimming about 3 metres away from us which was an incredible experience. I took my underwater camera with and tried to get it out of my pocket without dropping it to the ocean floor and I think managed to get some pics of my goggles as I peered at the camera trying to turn it on, by which time the whale shark had long disappeared. Am going to see what footage I did get and will do another post.

Local market in Tofo where you need to bargain enthusiastically for the array of local crafts. 100 Meticais local currency was about R30,45 so it was easiest to divide the Meticais by 3 to get a rough Rand equivalent. Beers generall cost 40M in the market to 60M at a restaurant, so between R13-R20 for a beer which is about double what would pay in South Africa at a liquor store but about the same as you would pay in a restaurant... you win some, you lose some.

Liquor bargaining also took priority and there was a good range of local but mostly South African spirits as well as beers with at least 15 liquor "shops"/stands all selling the same things. If you bought a 6-pack you could get the beer price down to R10 a beer.

A visit to Inhambane would not be complete without a dhow ride across the bay to Maxixe, the larger "city" in this province and the only point in Mozambique where the national EN1 road touches the coast. This makes it a first stop for backpackers and travellers by bus to get out, then catch the cheaper and faster ferry across to Inhambane town and Provincial capital and then a short hop to the beach where we were staying.

The dhows used to be a major feature in the Inhambane bay as it was the southernmost trading port for the arabs from Zanzibar and further up the coast where they had influence. Inhambane was also in its day a major slave-trading post and thousands of slaves were shipped out from here in the past. Now we only saw a few and they were definitely relics of the past leaking and patched together.

Maxixe as we were about to land. The town was pretty derelict and most of the town's folk seemed to be queueing at the ATM machines everywhere we went. Cash is king here and small notes are in short supply, so I don't know why the ATMs chuck out 1000 and 500 meticais notes. In many places you need to buy up to the cash in your hand as there is limited change available. It seems like ATMs are in short supply and are one of the main growth centres for the economy. Some of them would not take our visa cards and we had to find a BIM bank to get our cash.

Samora Machel, the first President of Mozambique after it gained independence from Portugal on 25th June 1975 (my matric school year and shortly after my last visit there). Machel was killed in an airplane crash over South Africa in 1986 in mysterious circumstances and his wife Graca Machel is now married to our former President Nelson Mandela. The statue stands proudly along Independence Avenida in Maxixe.

The view coming into Maputo from Inhambane on our way home with the bay of Maputo and city ahead and the airport out of the picture to the right.

 


After parking at Maputo, we are joined by our mates in their Sling ZU-SAA. When asking where to park, we were told "Park at your discretion", so I was debating whether we should pull up and expect the walkway to come down and connect up with our cockpit, but I chose a quieter spot to the right of the the big planes (I think there was only one there from the Mozambique Airline), but we also saw an SAA Airbus come in later... looked like there were only about 5 scheduled flights per day compared to about 10 per hour at home.



My favourite pic of our Dragon Warrior ZU-ZDL having delivered us safely back to the apron at King Shaka airport. Again we used a ground handling agent - BidAir (best and inexpensive thank you guys). So now that we have the international procedures waxed, I am looking forward to planning something else, like a trip to Victoria Falls, or Namibian desert, or Okavango Delta in Botswana or even Lake Malawi... yee haa!!! I will be publishing a comprehensive checklist on the route, the frequencies for the radio-work and the procedures for anyone who wants to make a similar trip to Mozambique. Watch this space.
 

More night

 

 

Llewellyn has picked up on his flight training in ZDL and is particularly keen to be able to take off and land the plane ahead of our trip to Mocambique this Friday. His time is limited so if his lesson is not at 6am he has been doing the last flight after work before the sun goes down. Unfortunately this means for either lesson the plane has to stand out in the open for the night, which is not really a good idea at the coast. Anyhow, we wrap the plane up and close up all the holes to keep the angry air out. It also means that I have been taking advantage of the plane being out to have a few more night flights.

 

Venturing out into the dark

The sun sets and the moon rises over ZDL at Pietermaritzburg

Pietermaritzburg airport under the setting sun and moonlight

Rounding Durban harbour the city comes into view

Now that I have my night rating and have done a few coastal flights it was time to venture inland. As the darkness can be very disorientating, I wanted to fly to Pietermaritzburg while it was still light, then make a night flight back to my home turf. I needed to file a flight plan for the journey back and, as Virginia airport was closed for the night, had to get my flight plan "search and rescue" contingency arrangements cancelled by King Shaka Airport when I landed.

I imagined that the route to Durban would be one big black hole but I was actually surprised at the carpet of lights all the way. It's incredible how development has taken place joining the two cities. I did notice though that mountains disappear in the darkness and we could not even see Alverston mast.. quite scary what you could be flying towards in the dark.

Seeing at night

I need reading glasses to see the cockpit instruments and this is more critical at night, whereas I see better outside without glasses. So Llewellyn has been trying out a few options and working out with masking tape where my line of vision and focus should be. It is different to sitting at your office desk as the computer screen and papers are gererally closer to your eyes than the cockpit instruments.

 

So a solution is in hand.

 

Into the blue with James

Into the blue.. that's all you can see over Durban.. what a great weekend of blue skies and sea. My daughter's boyfriend James had his first Sling experience today. The "angry" front view of our Sling ZDL and the sky/sea pics were taken by him.

Getting ready for Mozam

We're doing the flight planning for our trip to Inhambane, Mocambique at the end of this month., the first of our international flights in Sling ZDL and Marc's Sling SAA. We're busy with the flight permits needed to fly in Mocambique, have done some route and frequency planning and are getting the planes ready for the trip. As we intend to fly over water as well, we have also bought life jackets for the planes. A beach cottage in Tofo awaits!! The route we will be taking is up the north coast of KZN, having cleared customs at King Shaka, then crossing the border near Ponta d'Oro and continuing up the Mocambique coast to Machangulo and cutting across the bay to Maputo.  In Maputo we clear customs in and file a new flight plan to Inhambane, following the Mozam coastline up north to about one third of the way up to the northern border.




Sling SAA






Flying across the bay to Maputo

 

 

Queen Mary 2 sets sail from Durban

The Durban night sky was spectacularly clear tonight and I took off in ZDL from Virginia shortly after the sun had set.

Marc joined me for his first night flight and we were just in time to see the cruise liner the Queen Mary 2, Cunard Cruise lines’ flagship ocean liner, leave it’s berth to continue it’s around the word cruise. It is the world’s largest ocean liner.

We continued our flight down to Amanzimtoti climbing to 3000 ft to get a better perspective of the lights of the city and watched as the setting sun spread a cloak of darkness over the world as we could see it... the twinkling lights of thousands of homes grew brighter and the stars flicked into focus.

After doing a few turns down south we flew back to the harbour in time to catch the ship entering the ocean and we circled overhead amazed at our spectacular and private overhead viewpoint.

Returning to Virginia, the darkness had set in and again was surprised how the land rushes up at you when landing.... the night optical illusion makes the dark runway appear further away than it is in reality as you unexpectedly touch the tarmac.

Durban and Sahara Stadium by night, with the GPS reflection in the cockpit window

Getting ready for our night flight as the sun sets.

Here's an idea of the size of the ship compared to the world's largest passenger plane.

Flight 'n bite

 

 



Inanda Dam from the air

 Anyone recognise the airfield in the top photo? We did a quick flight to Pietermaritzburg last Saturday and for a bite at the airport which fills up when the Airlink plane makes its regular Johannesburg flight. Quite a neat little airport and they make a great cappuchino.