This article first appeared in SIGNATURE Magazine

June 2009

“Travel, in the younger sort, is a part of education; in the elder, a part of experience.” Those words, penned by Sir Francis Bacon some four hundred years ago, express very neatly a thought that occurs to me more and more as I grow older.

When I was in my twenties, there was no doubt in my mind that Bacon was right: those who visit a foreign country in the flush of young adulthood are, in many ways, “going to school”. Fresh out of varsity, I wanted to learn – travel was a cultural, linguistic, gastronomic, architectural and geographical education.

Some years later, my travel priorities have changed. I still want to discover new people and places; but, ground down by long hours at work and in traffic with my fellow inhabitants of the urban sprawl, I don’t always have the energy to revel in the great metropolises of either the developed or the developing world.

Instead, I find myself agreeing with something that another great essayist, William Hazlitt, wrote a couple of centuries after Bacon: “Nature is company enough for me. I go out of town in order to forget the town and all that is in it. The soul of a journey is liberty to think, feel, do just as one pleases ... to be free of all impediments and of all inconveniences, to leave ourselves behind, much more get rid of others.”

Sound appealing?

If so, I have three words for you: Medjumbe Private Island.

This little piece of paradise – just less than one kilometre long and 500 metres wide – is located at the furthest tip of the Quirimbas, an archipelago of 30-odd islands stretching along the coastline of northern Mozambique.

Until a few years ago, Medjumbe was uninhabited and uninhabitable; there was no fresh water source on the island. Then Rani Resorts obtained a 99-year lease from the Mozambican government along with permission to build 13 chalets and, in 2004, the lodge began welcoming guests. 

The nearest airport to the Quirimbas is Pemba, a couple of hundred kilometres south of the border with Tanzania (not to be confused with Pemba Island near Zanzibar). From there it’s a 45-minute flip in a light aircraft – usually stopping off at other islands along the way – over a seascape that includes every imaginable shade of blue: turquoise, navy, azure, aquamarine. The island-hopping flight is a highlight in itself, offering aerial views of dhows breaking the still surface of the ocean, or the dark arteries of waterways cutting through dense, emerald-green mangrove swamps.

But once you’ve come to a halt on Medjumbe’s perilously short runway; once you’ve been greeted by the small but dedicated team who run the island; once you’ve admired the lodge’s spacious main building, with its bar and restaurant looking out across the bay; and once you’ve been shown to your chalet, with its own 180-degree ocean vista and private pool ... suffice it to say, after this introduction, you’ll secretly be hoping that the plane never comes to collect you.

Life proceeds at a pleasantly languid pace on Medjumbe. The clocks are moved forward by an hour to maximise daylight, but most guests dispense with their watches fairly soon after arrival. There’s no rush to get to breakfast, lunch or dinner. When you’re not reading, sleeping or sipping a caipirinha, lazy walks on the beach are encouraged – it takes about an hour to circumnavigate the island on foot.

Indeed, walking around Medjumbe at different times of the day is the best way to appreciate its ever-morphing shape. The shifting tide brings about surprising changes: sand spits appear and disappear, giving the island the alternating appearance of a starfish, an apostrophe or a pearl earring.

The Medjumbe experience is not, however, limited by the shoreline; various watersport activities are on offer. Snorkelling, sailing, fishing and kayaking are all possible – but, ultimately, this is diving territory. There are twelve known dive sites along nearby coral reefs, including the aptly-named “Edge of Reason”, where the coral shelf plunges vertically into the abyss (deeper than anyone has yet dared to venture).

Moray eels, barracuda, kingfish and stringrays are amongst the fish species commonly seen; those who are lucky may have a close encounter with dolphins, turtles or humpback whales.

Of course, one of the privileges of island living, in addition to viewing sea-life, is tasting it. The chef at Medjumbe has his pick of the best seafood local fishermen can find: crayfish, lobster, prawns, crab and calamari come straight off boats that have been ploughing the ocean north to Tanzania and south to Pemba. Fishing is a long-established way of life in the Quirimbas. So far, it seems, the balance between the marine ecology and the “human” ecology has been sustained.

The only sign of human activity on Medjumbe prior to the establishment of the Rani resort is a crumbling lighthouse, which would once have warned ships travelling south down the African coastline of the potential threat of the archipelago. No-one seems to know when the lighthouse was built, or by whom, but it’s likely that – on the grand historical scale of the region – it’s a relatively recent addition.

Recent, that is, compared to the thousand-year-long history of navigation between the Quirimbas, the mainland and the open sea. The fishermen who sail up and down the coast today may be following a lifestyle that was established by their ancient forebears, but over the centuries this continuity has been interrupted by numerous “visitors” (some less welcome than others).

First, there were the Chinese in their junks; then Arab ships of trade and slavery dominated the Indian Ocean, before the Portuguese took over the role of east African conquistadors. This often-sordid but nonetheless fascinating history of conquest has left its mark in the region, in particular on the island of Ibo (south of Medjumbe). So if you do want to follow Bacon’s advice to “go to school” while you’re in the Quirimbas, you can always stop at Ibo en route.

The island is home to some 4,000 people, but walking around Ibo one can’t help feeling that this small figure pales in comparison to the number of ghosts who haunt the town. Many of its streets are lined with the hollow shells of buildings abandoned overnight when the post-independence Mozambican government expelled all “foreigners” in 1975. Other structures – many of them built from an ingenious mix of coral and limestone – have been preserved, to a lesser or greater degree: former colonial mansions, administrative offices, churches and, of course, military forts.

Back on Medjumbe, there is no noise other than waves striking the shore and seabirds calling to one another. Indeed, walking along its beaches, you’re likely to find yourself sympathetic towards Hazlitt’s sentiment about “getting rid of others”. But whatever you do, don’t take his words too literally. Nature might be great company, but Medjumbe is not a place for solitary travellers. It really should be shared with someone special.

* Airlink and LAM fly from Johannesburg to Pemba via Maputo.