Paradise found. An aerial view of Machangulo Beach Lodge.
A landscape can look utterly magnificent in a tempest, and the view from my villa at Machangulo Beach Lodge is exemplary. I’m perched on top of a giant dune at the tip of Mozambique’s Machangulo peninsula, looking across to the island of Inhaca over the narrow straits of Santa Maria village. The roaring swell is strong and steady, the surf spectacular, and the gloomy sky brings out Africa’s more sinister face. When the storm lets rip, the rain plunges perpendicularly outside my verandah, as if I’m allowed only to peek at the cataclysm through vertical blinds. The downpour lasts just a few hours but it was worth it for the drama — and the natural air-conditioning the storm brings in its wake.
Once normal sun service resumes, I find myself lying on one of those empty stretches of Mozambican coastline that are the stuff of legend among beach cognoscenti: sugar-fine sand and translucent sea that starts off yellow-green on the water’s edge and turns emerald halfway to the horizon before disappearing into a lapis lazuli-blue. A family from Hamburg, lying next to me, explains why they chose to combine their Kruger safari with a week at Machangulo. I’m not surprised: Maputo lies just over a hundred kilometres away from Kruger National Park, and the peninsula is a mere hour away from the capital by speedboat. A South Africa-Mozambique combination is a good alternative to the beach-and-bush holidays offered by Kenya and Tanzania.