Maputo, Mozambique

Breakfast was dull at Hotel Milénio. We were still feeling full from the heavy curries at dinner, so I just had boiled eggs and a bun. The stuff labelled as butter was some sort of processed stuff so I didn't have any.

Anyways we packed up and took a taxi to the airport, a short 3km drive from the centre of town. This was our only internal flight in Mozambique and the only option was LAM, of which I read unpleasant things about their reliability and cancelled flights. We arrived two hours before our flight, and were promptly and efficiently checked in. We boarded on time, and left the gate on schedule. Maybe we were lucky, or maybe you just can't trust everything you read on the web. We scored with the emergency exit row seats and lots of leg room. Flipped open their in-flight magazine and saw a feature article on Jardim de Aloes, where we had just stayed! Overall we were quite pleased with our LAM flight.

In Maputo the guest house had arranged for a taxi to pick us up and sure enough there was a driver with an Sr Erick Da Sousa sign waiting. From the air, I hadn't seen much traffic and it was a quick ten minute drive on good roads to Sommerschield Guest House, in an upscale residential area. We were greeted by Rita and Sylvia, who were great at making us feel at home. They opened the guest house because they wanted people visiting Maputo to have a home away from home.

They have a little restaurant open all day and so we had some lunch, and then headed out to tourist for the afternoon. Walked all the way into town down Av Julius Nyerere, about 4km. The architecture in Maputo is really cool - mostly designed and influenced by Pancho Guedes. The architecture is very distinctive and if I saw a picture of a random building I could likely guess if it was from Maputo.

We stopped in at JN 281 to check out the menu (based on their high rating in tripadvisor), made reservations, and then took a taxi back home. Had some issues with the water (they were doing some work at the guest house to add another 5,000L tank, there have been water shortages in Maputo recently). But everything was fixed up and we were good to go. It was still a bit early so we had a beer on the patio, with a nice breeze blowing through.

Then onto JN 281. Their specialty is picanhna, a popular cut in Brasil but not so common back home in Toronto. We both ordered it. The owner, Pedro, came by to recommend wines. He was quite the character and wine connoisseur. We selected our wine, which he decanted and then came by every couple minutes to sniff to see if it had opened up yet. In the meantime, we were being served slices after slices of picanhna, cut super thin and medium rare. We were worried we would fill up before Pedro allowed us to drink the wine! Finally he gave up on the the bottle, and opened another pricier one (but for us, Pedro said, the same cost). Because this also had to breathe for five minutes, he suggested a caipirinha, to which we obliged. It took them almost five minutes to make the drinks, but never mind, it takes time to make a good drink from scratch. Eventually we had the wine with the picanhna, which went very well.

Somehow we still had room for dessert, a homemade chocolate mousse of a secret family recipe. It was excellent. We took a taxi home and rolled ourselves into bed, rather full from dinner.