As it is the 10^th poorest country in the world, Mozambique makes our third sequential stop in a truly third-world country (though I’m told we don’t use that term any more) and it is.  However, compared to Madagascar, our buses are newer and air-conditioned—though I realized the advantage of no air-conditioning is that the windows are open and you can actually take pictures from the bus.  The official (and common) language is Portuguese though there are many native languages well.  As of November 2018, Maputo is home to the longest suspension bridge in Africa to connect the sides of the bay and paid for largely by the Chinese in their ubiquitous investment in Africa.  Our guide mentioned that, though the bridge was useful, its tolls meant most people couldn’t afford to use it and he thought spending 18 million dollars on a bridge when there were no schools, etc. showed misplaced priorities.

On the brief bus tour, we passed the lovely train station, through some nice neighborhoods, to the botanical garden, and stopped at the Maputo Crafts Market, charmingly situated in a lovely garden.  Everywhere you stop (whether you get out of the bus or not), you are besieged by locals trying very hard to sell you things (and reducing their prices the longer they harangued you.)  I don’t do well in those circumstances, but we did manage to purchase some batiks in the market.  At dinner we talked with a waiter (Papillon from the Philipines) who’d gone to ‘the mall’ to purchase necessities and was equally bemused by the street sellers who followed them for blocks trying to sell them wooden drums (and also gave them wrong directions to the mall.)

Our guide taught Portuguese to foreigners and was at school to become an English teacher.  He was very funny with excellent English.  I realized later there was no mention of the cyclone devastation in the north (Maputo is in the south) and the resulting homeless people.  However, pierside were many pallets of goods from Viking destined for aid.