Love Cafe

Our journey to Ponta D’Ouro began with a scarce handful of hours of sleep, involving a taxi, followed by a ferry, followed by a chapa and then a 20-minute walk uphill with all our bags. The road to Ponta was interesting, amidst the cramming of a 4 by 4 chapa we had the chance to observe the new infrastructures (roads and bridges mainly) that Chinese companies are investing in, and how they are hoping to connect Maputo to South Africa through Durban. Whilst driving to Ponta we slowly began to realise that the sand we had experienced in Tofo was going to fall short; the roads surrounding Ponta are barely roads, they are sand trails, kilometres and kilometres of sand trails. Upon arriving, we met Josh, our host at the lodge we were staying, it turned out that we were the unique guests for the evening, and accounted for 50% of the following days as well. This also allowed us to be upgraded from a dormitory room to private rooms (although Jaime’s experience was more short-lived).

Ponta was an opportunity for us to take a moment and internalise everything that had occurred the previous week, all the discussions that we engaged in, all the prospects and ideas that were formulated, and the partnerships that were potentially going to be created. Over the past 12 days we had experienced a lot of very intense emotions, especially regarding our drive and what we are seeking to accomplish, and for that a few days of introspection were necessary. In Ponta we had the chance to couple mornings of surf and afternoons of work. Renowned for it’s waves and its surf, we were not the most fortunate, we found ourselves in waters with incredibly strong currents and complicated exits (for our abilities). Despite this, we managed to enjoy a few hours each day serving as an intense workout. The evenings revolved a lot of discussion, troubleshooting and brainstorming; however, the second evening there was some confusion with Jaime’s room. Having unknowingly booked the room Jaime was in, he was forced to move out to another (less fancy) single room. This room turned out to be infested of spiders, thus there was a swift and disorderly evacuation towards the original 10 bed dormitory, to then be the single occupant.

An important task to carry out in Ponta was renewing our visa. Our current Mozambican visas allow for three months stay, but but we can only remain in the country for 30 consecutive days, thus we needed to exit and re-enter. We were thirty minutes away from the border so it was a swift procedure, despite a little hurdle when coming back in.

Ponta is predominantly a South African holiday retreat, and given now it is winter in the Southern Hemisphere it was fairly empty, allowing for a peaceful stay. After these three days of rest and reflection, we were set to head off to the North and see the work that is being carried out there by the NGOs working on the ground.