Our neighbours have been telling us for a while what an amazing place Ponta D’Ouro is. It’s well known with South African’s and is right on the border. From us, in Maputo, it’s about an hour and a half away. So we had a quick skim of AirB&B and found some accommodation, has breakfast on Saturday morning and we were off.
It’s not a long drive and it’s on a fantastic road which makes it easy driving. But about two-thirds of the way there it gets really interesting as you have to drive through the Maputo Special Reserve. Formally known as the elephant reserve this place has some amazing wildlife. In normal times you can go into the main entrance, drive for hours down the sand roads and see huge amounts of wildlife. Imogen, Harriett and I visited in October during our exploratory trip. We saw giraffes monkeys, dik-diks, Elands, zebra and the highlight, the African elephants. We saw a herd of them right next to the road. But these aren’t normal times and access to these roads is currently blocked.
So with the restrictions, this is really the only chance to see the amazing animals of the reserve at the moment. Through the reserve, we drove at a snail’s pace to get a chance to see some of the animals. We had barely been in the park for five minutes when we saw our first group of Impala. these really are impressive animals. They have such clear amazing markings. They were used to the road and weren’t really bothered by the cars or us looking at them. They stopped and had a good stare at us a few times to make sure.
There were also some amazing birds, but as I’ve mentioned them in a few other blogs I’ll leave those for now. About half an hour further on we got to a group of giraffe. They are so stunning. They were further from us than the Impala, but they are such bizarre and amazing animals. There were quite big groups of the including a good few young ones.
It took a while to get through the park, especially as Harriett wanted to gets photos of all the signs including, warning elephants can push over cars, antelope crossing and give dung beetles right of way.
It was then a quick left turn off the road to the border and we arrived in Ponta D’Ouro. As we got towards the beach the tarmac ended and we were driving on sand roads. The first thing we saw was a central area with a bank supermarket, a few other essentials and a surf/beach shop. With the pandemic, it hasn’t been easy for the girls to get to many shops and this was an exciting one. So the first thing we had to do was go to the surf shop. We got a new boogie board as we only had one good one, and a few other goodies. The girls loved browsing the I love Ponta t-shirts and other tourist items in the shop.
If I thought the shopping instinct was then quelled, I was wrong. We moved the car and parked in the community camping and beach car park. From there we headed back to Ponta’s main street where there were a load of local’s stalls selling a mix of clothes, traditional African crafts and tourist trinkets. There was a lot of browsing and bargaining to be had. There are very few prices in Mozambique where the price is haggled over, but this is definitely one of them. The guys in the shops were so pleased to have customers. With the border closed there usual steady supply of tourists has been totally cut off. We left with a personalised Djembe, several types of wooden fish for the pool, garden and house a photo frame and a wooden heart. The usual odd mix you end up walking away with from these places. I’m kept busy as Zoe never really likes bartering and the girls haven’t quite got the hang of it, so I’m left to get a good price for everyone.
After our busy shopping and wildlife watching experience, it was time for food. the Mango cafe had been recommended to us by our neighbours, and we were not disappointed. Zoe had her first latte in three months (although why she doesn’t just pick one up from the local cafe that’s open and does great coffee is beyond me). The kids and I had great juices. The cafe is on the top of the dolphin centre. It’s surrounded by trees so it’s like being sat in the canopy. I can only guess that they were Mango trees, but my tree identification here isn’t good enough to tell for sure.
The food was equally stunning as the views. I had some wonderful fish tacos. Harriett and Zoe went for the Greek kebabs and Imogen was grinning from ear to ear when a huge plate of french toast was put down in front of her dripping with maple syrup.
The guide book and the proximity to the South African border gave the impression that Ponta was more South African than Mozambiquan, that’s not how it felt to us, although it may be different when the border is open again.
Our trip carries on in the Ponta Melongane Blog
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