The Island of Mozambique/Mozambique Island – Ilha de Moçambique in Portuguese -, is one of the most beautiful and historically culturally interesting places to visit in Mozambique.

We visited the island in 2017 for the first time and I loved it. I will never forget staying in this centuries old house named Casa das Ondas (House of Waves) which was full of beautiful wooden furniture. I felt like I had stepped into a different era, a different time. A time long gone but still so present and so tangible that present and past intermingled in an almost surreal way. The image of a local lady dressed in a beautifully-coloured capulana (type of a sarong) sitting in front of the house, gazing over the endless calm turquoise blue Indian Ocean, is an image printed in my memory.

This time it took us a bit longer to get there, as we didn’t fly to Nampula like we did in 2017. Instead, we travelled on local transport all the way from Vilanculos. We were lucky that, after leaving Gorongosa National Park early at sunrise to wait for a bus, that one came almost immediately, taking us all the way to Nampula (16 hours) from where we could go on to Mozambique Island the next day.

To get to Ilha, we took a chapa (local minibus) from Nampula and while we were waiting for the bus to fill up, local sellers passed by selling fresh fried prawns on a stick in homemade Peri-Peri sauce, for 5 meticais (about 5 Euro cents). Delicious!

Cramped in a jam packed chapa, the journey took much longer than expected, partly because we lost half of the cargo halfway down the road and had to go back and find it. Secondly, these chapas stop EVERYWHERE as they need to load off their cargo. They are really more cargo carriers than passenger buses which frustrates me immensely and there were quite a few times I lost my temper on this trip. Not very mindful, I know, but travelling on local transport in Africa has its challenges. We finally crossed the bridge to the island after dark.

Arriving on the small island, my memory had not played tricks on me. It was still a beautiful and special place. It felt like arriving in a different world, a different time zone, a different energy. An energy of peace, of inspiration and beauty.

We based ourselves in Hotel Central, had a cold beer and I had a quick walk around town feeling like I had travelled far back in time, just like I felt back in 2017. I visited Casa Gabriel, the guesthouse of Italian Gabriel who has been living on the island for years, and who beautifully restored one of the old buildings into a charming and cozy little guesthouse, which is very reasonably priced.

Ilha de Mozambique was declared a UNESCO World Heritage site in 1991 because of its important cultural history. It was the capital of Portuguese East Africa under Portuguese colonial rule, after Vasco da Gama discovered the island in the late 14th century. It then became  the first capital of Mozambique. Its name was derived from sultan ‘Ali Musa Mbiki’, a sultan who ruled the island in the 15th century. And that’s how the country also got its name.

Later, the Dutch also tried to attack and conquer the Portuguese settlements here, but didn’t succeed. However, history goes much further back than that. Arabian tradesmen already came to the area around the 10th century and Bantu-speaking people- perhaps as early as the 3rd century- migrated from inland to the coastal areas. This mixture of Swahili, Arab and European influences make the island a unique destination in Mozambique to visit. Different cultures and religions have peacefully lived here together for centuries and the island breathes an atmosphere of openness and tolerance, which feels very pleasant.