Having arrived in mid March 2020 we had not seen in person any of our family or friends. The toll was starting to tell and by November we were keen to get family out here to visit. The UK December lockdown with associated travel ban put paid to that idea. But with a lot of work, 99% of it from Zoe, and slipping out through a tightening net of international restrictions on UK citizens travelling we managed to get my parents here on Christmas Eve. It’s probably best if I leave Zoe to tell the epic of getting them out here, the flights not allowed on, issues in the airport and more.

But we managed, and at about lunchtime on Christmas Eve, two shell shocked and tired looking parents arrived at our house in Maputo with Zoe. Zoe had spent the last few hours dealing with issues in the airport to get them into the country. It was an emotional reunion and one that we had been very unsure was going to come off. If they hadn’t made it, there would have been a double disappointment from the children as most of their Christmas presents were coming out of the UK in Mum and Dad’s suitcases.

Christmas day was spent at home in Maputo. Harriett wanted us to put the air conditioning on full blast and wear Christmas jumpers, but we overruled that suggestion. Frankly, our air conditioners just about keep us cool but I can’t see them managing to produce an arctic gale. I was over-ruled on my idea of a Christmas day barbeque, but I did, with a little help from my neighbours, manage to get us a Turkey. I think it came frozen all the way from Brazil. But the choice of turkeys in Maputo seemed to be limited to this or nothing, as far as I could tell.

Our first Christmas in the heat was nice. It felt quite odd eating roast turkey outside in the shade, sheltering from the African sun. Having a swimming break to cool off was again amazing, yet felt slightly odd. In the UK Christmas is so linked to the time of year it’s hard to separate the two.

My parents quickly got used to life in Maputo, the lack of restrictions compared to the UK and the warm weather. They had joined us in the wet season, which is summer when it can get very hot and humid. Although in our experience it only gets really bad for a day and then there is a storm. It rarely stays like that for long. The rainy season also gives the wrong impression. It doesn’t seem to rain that much. When it does though, it properly rains.

We were keen to show Mum and Dad what Mozambique had to offer and so not long after Christmas we headed off to a house in Ponta Malongane. The house was in a beautiful woodland. Each house had its own area of garden, there was then a communal restaurant. It had a roof for shade but was outdoors, and then there was a boardwalk down the sand cliff to the beach below.

This was the first time we had been to Ponta when the South African border had been open. It wasn’t at it’s busiest as the nearest border post still hadn’t opened. But even so, it was far busier than we had ever seen it before and the vast majority of visitors were from South Africa. For our time here we had become used to there just being a few people visiting from Maputo. The borders being open (they have closed again now – January 2021) is a double-edged sword. The tourism money is vital for the local economy. Tourism employs almost all the locals in this area so is vital. The closed borders and beaches had caused great problems for those living in Ponta D’ouro and the surrounding area. While this is positive, the tourists from South Africa were coming over at a time where COVID numbers in their own country were rising rapidly. And, like the UK, a new, possibly more dangerous strain of the virus was spreading. So while it was great to see the place start to come to life and see locals getting their livelihoods back, it was worrying about what this would do for the COVID cases in Mozambique. And for keeping ourselves safe while we were there.

This was Mum and Dad’s first experience of a Mozambican beach. So, after we had lunch on the deck of the restaurant, we headed down the slope to the long golden beach and warm, turquoise clear Indian ocean.