Apologies ... christmas and new year.

My lack of blog writing has been hanging over me, i apologise. I haven´t been writing my diary either. I have been very busy in the last 3 months, and i don`t know where to start.

Christmas was memorable, especially killing christmas dinner - guinea fowl and chicken. Stebba and I had our own private as possible icelandic celebration on the 24th. We eventually ate our fried guinea fowl and dodgy sugar potatoes at 11pm, dressed up in 80´s party dresses and exchanged gifts bought from the local second hand market. The 25th was quite hectic, lots of invited and uninvited guests for the weirdest christmas supper i hope i'll ever have.

By the 30th we were desperate to get out of Maganja and set off to Pebane, 3 hours away on the coast, for lying on the beach with cold beer, and not having to deal with builders. We sat on the back of a truck in the burning sun with a Mozambican pop star and booked into a nice guesthouse we had been recommended.

The first disappointment was that there was no beach in pebane - it was quite a few km away and we had to get the guesthouse owner to drive us. Secondly, all the bars on the beach we had been promised didn´t exist, which kind of ruined the fantasy of drinking beer. The weather was pretty crummy and Stebba was eaten alive by something - she counted a total of 250 bites on her legs. We struggled to stay awake past 9pm on New Years Eve, and eventually saw in 2007 in the local disco, listening to phil collins with cheap fire crackers flying dangerously in all directions.

We decided to leave the next day to Nampula. We could have gone back to Maganja, then to Mocuba and taken the big, nice bus all the way to Nampula. We decided instead to go direct from Pebane up the coast. It was an epic, unforgettable trip.

The truck was meant to leave at 11pm and was going to pick us up from the guesthouse, where we were sleeping. Not the normal practise, but being white and paying extra to sit in the front they seemed to be happy to do this. The truck, already piled high with people and coconuts eventually arrived at 2.30. Half asleep, we climbed into the cab to begin our journey north. We both semi-slept until 5.30 when the truck rolled to a quiet stop, in the middle of nowhere. We had run out of petrol.

Fortunately, someone had a bicycle on the back of the truck, so the driver set off for the nearest town to remedy the situation, and we sat on the side of the road for a few hours until he came back. We arrived in Naburi and had to get to the 'river'... except in Naburi there is no organised transport as such, so we waited and waited and waited. Six hours later, having found no food, we were about to pay 2 motorbikes to take us to the elusive river, when a big blue open truck pulled up and we jumped in. The driver began debating with the passengers as to which the best route was (i always assumed that drivers would know these things).

The best route, apparently, was the one with lots of cashew trees, with rather low branches. Anyone familiar with cashew trees in central Mozambique will be aware of the large brown ants who nest in the branches. Every time the truck hit a branch... every 5 metres or so.... we were showered by dozens of these ants (which bite) and various other animals, including hairy caterpillars which leave huge puss filled blisters on your skin. Nice. The branches were sometimes so low, no amount of ducking would help, cue enormous scratches and bruises.

The 30 kilometres to the river took about 2 hours. A leaky canoe transported us to the other side (just), and we then walked to a dried fish warehouse. We got onto another truck, piled high with burlap sacks of dried fish, and headed north. We told people we were heading for Nampula, but no one could tell us distances or times. All we knew is that after the fish truck we needed to get one more chapa to Nampula. We estimated that we would be on the fish truck for about an hour and a half. The road was awful and i had to tie myself onto the truck i was so terrified of falling off. It wasn't comfortable.

Eight hours later we arrived in the seediest town in Mozambique, wet from a thunderstorm along the way, smelling of fish, bruised quite badly by branches, and having only eaten biscuits and cake since leaving Pebane. It was 11pm- Stebba went to find accommodation, the only place looked suspiciously like a brothel and was shut anyway. So we slept in the chapa, feeling slightly freaked out at how drunk the driver and his helper were, and that they didn't seem to be stopping drinking gin anytime soon. Thankfully, it wasn't the driver, they were both helpers 'looking after' the minibus. We arrived in Nampula the following morning, 29 hours after we left Pebane.

Unfortunately my photos from the trip were accidentally deleted, but I promise that it is all true. It certainly wasn't pretty.