Ilha
de Moçambique
The island town of Ilha de Moçambique, called simply Ilha to
most locals and visitors, may be one of the most special and beautiful
urban landscapes in all of Africa. There's a bit of magic in
Ilha, and I don't use that word lightly, generally reserving it for
places like Nepal or Easter Island. The tiny island off the coast
of central Mozambique, easily walked from end to end in a leisurely
half hour stroll, was established as the original capital of the
Portuguese southeast Africa colony of Mozambique, due to its easy
defendability. The Portuguese heyday long since over, Ilha has
been allowed to decay steadily, bypassed by the centuries of history
and almost forgotten in its little offshore timewarp. The
residents seem to have evolved with the town, never losing their
unperturbably calm and peaceful demeanor, untouched by development,
civil wars, and now the trickles of tourism seeping in. I am
shocked at how few tourists venture up here from the crowded,
fashionable beaches in southern Mozambique not far from the South
African border. Ilha is a living ruin. Buildings have
crumbled and rotted, and in a few cases, trees grow out from within the
facaces of the colonial houses. But they are still lived in, and
very much a part of the fabric of contemporary life. The heavy
ambience is almost palpable here. There are only a small handful
of guesthouses and two local restaurants in Ilha, and the 2 hours it
can take to prepare you a fish dinner at one of those restaurants
is the surest indicator that this languid gem of a place is not
expecting a tidal wave of tourists any time soon. They could be
wrong. I hope this pictorial convinces you though that Ilha is
perhaps the city not to miss
in all of southern Africa, and worth the few extra hours detour on the
road.
The ruins of a resort hotel at the northern end of Ilha near the
citadel. The suspended stairway once led to a diving board into
the hotel swimming pool overlooking the Indian Ocean.
You know you're in a former Portuguese colony when you see those wavy
stone mosaics on the ground.
Bye bye Ilha!
TO
MOZAMBIQUE