Guludo Beach Lodge, at the northern tip of Mozambique, is really something special. We reach it, my ten-year-old son Raymond and I, after a bone-crunching, three-and-a-half hour drive from Pemba, the nearest town. For miles and miles we drive past small villages full of women grinding cassava, men circled in deep discussion and children proffering bananas and bags of peas, coal and firewood, packets of biscuits and legs of roast chicken on woven platters. They wear no shoes and have soles as thick as tyres. My son, who has never been to Africa before, stares at them. “Don’t people have shoes round here?” he wonders aloud.
By the last hour of the journey, on the bumpiest dirt track I have ever encountered, he is almost silenced by his confusion. “Is that a monkey in the tree?” he asks. “Why has the road stopped? Is this actually a road or a river bed?” We finally pass through Guludo village, a neat and tidy collection of huts made from palm trees and wood, and the villagers come out to wave at us. Raymond waves back. Then we turn down a sandy path and at the end, near the bluest sea and the whitest sand I have ever seen, is the lodge. A man stands at the entrance holding glasses of fresh juice. We can hear the sound of the waves. We also smell something delicious on the stove. Raymond sights some chocolate brownies. He grabs one and sinks down onto the comfortable cushions in the sitting-room area. “This is more like it,” he says, and promptly falls asleep.
I have always wanted to take Raymond to Africa. Some people thought me odd when I said we were going to Mozambique. But I felt that Raymond was at an age where he could appreciate the beauty of Africa, as well as try to understand its problems. I had lived in Kenya years before, as a teacher for a charity, and the experience had profoundly changed me. I have often talked to Raymond about it: how the animals wandered freely; how I once met a black mamba on a path; and how, desperate for a pee, I ended up crouching behind a giraffe’s leg, believing it to be a tree. I have told him about the generosity of the African people, the endless cups of chai I drank, the grisly goat stews I ate, and the miles of walking I did just to get to a shop to buy sugar and maize. I wanted Raymond to experience this and perhaps gain some perspective on his own life. And I have always wanted to go to Mozambique. When I lived in Kenya, and travelled through Uganda, Tanzania and Zimbabwe, everyone told me how beautiful it was. They would talk about the country’s magnificent coast, its clear, sparkling sea and its animals – and then sigh. But, until recently, it was impossible to come here.
Mozambique has a chequered history. It was a Portuguese colony until 1975 when, after years of sporadic warfare, it was granted independence. Samora Machel, who was head of the communist-backed Frelimo party, became leader of the new government. (His wife is now married to Nelson Mandela – Machel died in an air crash in 1986.) But Mozambique descended into civil war, with the Frelimo party battling the South African-backed Renamo guerillas. Vast areas of the country were landmined, people starved to death and Mozambique fell off the tourist map. But, in 1992, a peace agreement was signed. Gradually, a few hotels appeared, first on the islands off the mainland and now here, at Guludo, in the middle of the Quirimbas national park at the country’s northernmost tip.
The national park is wild and barely explored, and the villagers and staff at the lodge tell us it is lion country. They also tell us it is snake, elephant, baboon, warthog, antelope and monkey country. And there are other creatures that we spot almost immediately. Huge, dopey bees buzz around us. Crabs scuttle back and forth in a game with the sea. Fishermen haul in octopus, kingfish, jackfish and prawns. And it seems that there is no one here but us. It immediately feels very magical.
The camp itself – it is not, strictly speaking, a hotel – is the brainchild of a dynamic British couple. Amy Carter and former footballer Neal Allcock are amazingly fresh-faced and young, just 26 and 28 respectively. Guludo Beach Lodge has been their obsession for the past four years. “We’ve really done nothing else,” Amy says. “We dreamed of creating a destination to protect a fragile environment and to help a poverty-stricken community, and this is it.”
