Island-Hopping in Mozambique by Andrew Eames

There weren't many foreigners waiting for the Maputo flight in the airport at Pemba, in northern Mozambique, so I fell into conversation with a cotton planter, a British man in his sixties who'd obviously spent the last 30 years knocking around southern Africa. He and his colleagues were bringing jobs to what had, until recently, been an overlooked and economically bereft corner of a country emerging from three decades of war. Their task had included re-introducing the locals to the whole concept of money.

"When we started, 10 years ago," he recalled, "we'd pay our wage bills in kilos of sugar. And for the children, who'd come in to thin the crop, the reward was watching cartoons on video, at a rate of two hours' thinning to one hour's cartoons. It took a couple of years before a cash economy was restored."

The planter's experience would have been the same all over Mozambique. Until a decade ago subsistence - or just plain survival - was the order of the day in this shank of coastal Africa. After 30 years of communist government Frelimo slugging it out with foreign-sponsored rebels Renamo, the country had sunk as far as it could go, officially designated as the world's poorest. But twelve years of peace have reversed the decline and order has long since been restored, along with road and air links. Consequently outsiders are beginning to discover that, contrary to its reputation, much of Mozambique is unspoilt, peaceful and pristine. This is particularly so in its less discovered north; with cultural and natural gems that have attracted the attention of UNESCO, it is rapidly joining the club which is fronted by the likes of Vietnam and Croatia - of ex war zones which now feature large in tourist brochures.

Even in its more developed south, whose beaches have long been popular with weekending South Africans, Mozambique is fundamentally a gentle, graceful slice of Africa, with none of the continent's oppressive humanity. The war may have held it back economically, but it has also acted as a preservative against unfortunate outside influences, as indicated by the low incidence of AIDS at just 15 percent compared to 50 percent in neighbouring Malawi.

The wide-boulevarded capital of Maputo may not be particularly handsome, but it is one of the more pleasant and safer cities in Africa, still massively influenced by Portuguese heritage, and uncolonised by cashpoints or McDonalds. Inland is a mixture of forest and savannah, interrupted by volcanic inselbergs and the lazy riverbeds of the Limpopo and the Zambezi, with a wild animal population which is also recovering from civil war, partly thanks to proximity to South Africa's Kruger National Park. Meanwhile the 2,500 km coastline is punctuated by crumbling colonial outposts left behind after many centuries of Portuguese rule.

Until the wildlife population reaches sufficient density to launch a safari industry, it is that coastline which will be the biggest single attraction for visitors, with dhows scudding across hues of blue to forgotten islands wrapped in a clear, warm sea. Here the main human activity is a dugout-based fishing industry that ensures that you're never far from a plate of fresh prawns or a Hemingway-like scene of a local fisherman carrying giant marlin on his head to market.

During the last decade these beaches and islands have begun to welcome European tourists, predominantly in the south. Until recently you either came here as a backpacker, prepared for flea-infested beds and long days bumping along dirt tracks, or you flew in on a privately chartered plane, zeroing in on a handful of islands where enterprising lodge-owners had carved out their own, very select, niche.

While these extremes of tourism are developing, the middle ground is also just beginning to take shape. Scouts for the hotel chains are prowling through the archipelagos, and backpacker dens are upgrading themselves to middle-market lodges where you can get a decent room for $30, and a meal of succulent mangrove crab for a couple of dollars a head.

This is where the northern region around Pemba comes into its own. New air links with Dar es Salaam just across the Tanzanian border make Pemba a more natural entry point for travellers from Europe, and shaves two hours off flying time from the northern hemisphere. The north also shares borders with Malawi, Zambia and Zimbabwe, making it a good beach option for travellers coming off safari.

Pemba itself is little more than a megapolis of marula-thatched huts dotted with baobab and paperbark trees, with what must be the most under-used stretch of dual carriageway in Africa. It sits at the mouth of a giant natural harbour famous for mangrove crabs and the occasional visiting whale. The rundown colonial port buildings house tailors, coppersmiths and fishermen, who rise with the dawn and retire with the sun, for there's little electricity here. Makonde carvers work on the outskirts of town, watched by black sunbirds, bartailed godwits and an old gent sozzled on nipa - a rudimentary beer made from flour, sugar and water.

On the fringe of this primitive urbanscape, on a stretch of shore that used to be the townspeople's toilet, is one of the new crop of hotels, the incongruous Pemba Beach, built in Arabian style but with rooms that stylistically resemble an upmarket American motel. A kilometre or so along the more charismatic Wimbe beach are further new bungalow complexes, a casino about to open, and several beach bars with cane chairs on the sand where you can order garlic lobster for under five dollars.

Amongst an eclectic mixture of locals, expats and travellers in the Delphine bar I met Diogo, a Maputo-based businessman who was bemoaning the changes. "Back in the war years we used to party all the time", he said. "As soon as someone had whisky we'd all be round to their place. Now everyone's too busy to come, however much whisky you may have."

Diogo apart, most of the travellers on Wimbe beach had their eye on a trip offshore to Mozambique's newest destination: the Quirimba archipelago, a chain of 32 immaculate islands set in coral shallows, with excellent diving and very rich marine life. Two of these islands - Ibo and Quilalea - now have tourist facilities, with another four opening up in the next few months.

Ibo and Quilalea are distinctive enough to justify the trip by themselves, but not everyone will be able to afford both. The former is a crumbling colonial outpost, a sort of African equivalent of Angkor Wat, while the latter is one of the most exclusive barefoot island hideaways in the Indian Ocean, well worth the experience if you can afford the £210 per night.

Travellers to Quilalea have a choice of a speedboat service or a short flight to a bumpy airstrip on a neighbour island owned by a veteran German coconut planter, a Conradian character who has been isolated out here since 1928. "My wife makes the jam you will have for your breakfast," he told us as we bounced around in his pickup to where the Quilalea boat had come to pick us up. From there it was a short transfer to Quilalea, to be greeted by Mahat, a dainty bushbuck with a nose for petit fours.

The island has nine Makuti-thatched villas with teak decks and carved mahogany doors, each with its own private outlook over the sea. There's a decanter of madeira in every room, a basin of fresh water by the deck for the songbirds at dawn and dusk, and wonderful diving straight from the beach, with lionfish, sweetlips, huge parrotfish and giant clams in the shallows. The dugong, marlin and whales are a touch further out.

The resort is the creation of Anglo-Belgian couple John and Marjolaine Hewlett. Prior to their arrival the island was uninhabited, and it has yet to be discovered even by mosquitoes. The Hewletts have created a marine reserve around their property, and persuaded the fishermen to come onshore and sashay across the restaurant bearing champagne. Men like Santos, with his idiosyncratic English, who responded to every request with "oh yes, absolute!" accompanied by an electric grin. "You want coff?" he asked when lunch was finished, and you couldn't be sure whether he was offering caffeine, or the chance to chuck up like the Romans, and start again.

Getting to neighbouring Ibo is a more rudimentary process. A sailing dhow sets out from Quissanga on the mainland twice daily on the rising tide, tacking out through sandbars that come in translucent strips, and ambushing clouds of rare toosey tern in the mangrove channels. With a fair wind it's a four hour crossing to the island, distinguishable from surrounding islands thanks to the casuarina trees planted by the Portuguese.

Originally settled in the early years of navigation - the era of Vasco da Gama - Ibo was a major hub in Portuguese East Africa, particularly active in the slave trading business. Today it is largely in ruins, its clay-tiled and coral-walled colonial mansions slowly being throttled by strangler figs.

The settlement is guarded by a fortress built in Portuguese granite, its inner courtyard dominated by a giant spreading African almond, with a resident mangrove kingfisher in its upper branches. To me, stumbling out of the bright sunlight into its dark dungeons, it seemed for a moment as if the slave trade was still active. Hunched figures squatted against the walls in the greenish gloom, working silently, bent over filigree necklaces crafted from melted down meticais, the Mozambican currency. It was a brave stab at a souvenir industry, but sadly there's so little silver in the coins that the necklace I bought rusted at the first sign of moisture.

Otherwise, there was little that moved in the heat of the day. Most of the few residents are fishermen, absent until evening. Ibo's manor houses, governor's residence and church are mostly abandoned. Goats have over-run the once-formal square with the wrought iron Lisbon lantern at its centre. However the island governor, who arrived on his motorbike - the only island vehicle - to check out his visitors, said that virtually every ruin had been bought by a foreigner. "It is only a matter of time before the whole place is completely renovated."

There was, he added, one foreigner already in residence, and he took me to meet the ebullient Lara from Cornwall, in one of the restored houses overlooking the port. Bella Vista sounds like a B&B in Bournemouth, but is actually Ibo's first visitor accommodation, with flushing toilets, large wooden bedsteads placed in the middle of cool, cavernous rooms, and a menu that features pancakes and mangrove crab. A bargain at $20 a night.

Business, said Lara, was erratic, and with no electricity or effective communication with the mainland other than messages brought across by the dhows it was hard to know when to expect the next customer to walk through the door. Until that changes, the island will remain an undisturbed fragment of history.

The essence of Ibo comes in a more accessible version four hours south of Pemba, down a loping, scenic and barely used road. Ilha do Mozambique, once the capital of the whole of Portuguese East Africa and Goa, is also an island, but this one is linked by a causeway to the mainland, and as a consequence is still a thriving community. Strangely, though, the current population steers clear of the colonial buildings, so the lozenge-shaped settlement comes in two halves; the decaying colonial bit with one of the most formidable fortresses in Africa at the outer tip, and the local reed hut village of muslim traders, boatbuilders and fishermen closer to the causeway.

The fortress is hugely impressive, despite its poor state, and it not surprising to learn that the Portuguese community survived inside its walls for three months during an assault by the Dutch. An underground fresh-water tank the size of a cathedral is still used by the locals. There are patients, too, in the old, pillared Portuguese hospital, although only in the rooms where the roof has yet to fall in. Meanwhile the governor's palace has been turned into a museum, which will open at any hour if you can find the caretaker with the key, and cross his palm with meticais.

One of the former colonial homes has recently been restored by an Italian doctor Rino Scuccato into a simple but elegant guesthouse, Escondidinho, which even has a swimming pool. Currently, though, the pool stands empty thanks to a shortage of fresh water, but Dr Scuccato was optimistic. "One day soon the pool will be filled", he predicted. "Everything in Mozambique is beginning to move".

It's a gradual process, and if all the hotel scouts and investors currently roaming the country get the permissions they require, then Mozambique could one day emerge as a more active Maldives, a less slick Caribbean or a Thailand without the jet-lag. But then this Africa, so there are no guarantees.