Another memorable trip I made before I got my instrument rating or commercial license — back when I was just a PPL — was to Mozambique.
Before the revolution (which I believe happened in the early '70s), Mozambique had been a Portuguese colony, and Lourenço Marques — now Maputo — was a major tourist destination for wealthy white South Africans. I’d grown up hearing stories about the Polana Hotel, the legendary chicken peri-peri, fresh prawns, and bottles of Lagosta white wine (or vinho verde, as it's properly called). There was something in me trying to recreate the adventures of my dad’s flying days.
So I gathered a small crew:
Guy Johnson, my brother’s contemporary but a good mate of mine — a solid guy in every way.
Greg Bowden, school-friend of Pete Becker's and a med student.
Pete Becker himself.
And me.
This was 1989. Mozambique was just beginning to open up after years of civil war. The Soviet Union was in its death throes and withdrawing support from many of its African allies — Mozambique among them. For 25 years, it had been a battleground.
Through Guy’s engineering company, he had contacts in Maputo. One of them helped me apply for flight clearance via Telex — not fax, Telex — using Niels’ machine at Wood Creations. To my surprise, we got a positive response.
Off we went: four adventurers in KAJ.
The route was familiar — same as flying to the game farms in the Lowveld. You head due east from Johannesburg, over Dullstroom, Lydenburg, then reach Mariepskop, a beacon perched high on the escarpment. From there, the land drops dramatically — from over 6,000 feet to around a 1,000 — into the bushveld that stretches to the coast and Maputo.
The weather forecast had looked good. But as we neared the Mozambican border, the clouds started getting lower. I didn’t have my instrument rating, but — maybe a bit emboldened by my British tourist adventure weeks earlier — I pressed on.
We got within radio range of Maputo but still hadn’t picked up the NDB beacon. I eventually contacted Maputo Control, who informed me — in garbled Portuguese-English — that the beacon was not working. Instead, they gave me the medium-wave frequency for the local radio station. I tuned in and got a strong fix.
We proceeded, but the weather deteriorated fast. By the time we reached Maputo, it was pissing with rain. I was flying in and out of clouds, couldn’t see the runway, and we nearly hit the bloody radio beacon we’d been tracking as it suddenly appeared in front of us in a gap in the clounds.
I did a wide turn through the soup and, quite possibly, a low pass over Samora Machel’s official residence. How we didn’t get intercepted by the Mozambican Air Force, I’ll never know.
Suddenly, through a break in the clouds, I spotted massive white runway letters — “05 Left”. I radioed in instantly, “Runway visual.”
“Clear to land,” came the reply.
I lowered the wheels, full flaps — everything to slow us down — and did what was essentially a spiral dive through the hole in the clouds to land. Rain was hammering down. Water leaked through the antenna mount on KAJ’s roof and started dripping steadily into the cabin.
Once on the ground, we were directed to a parking bay. Guy’s contact picked us up and took us into town for lunch. It was surreal. Maputo looked like a post-war zone which of course it was— cratered roads, people living in the holes, and civilians walking around openly with AK-47s.
But the prawns were amazing.
Next on the itinerary was a short hop to Inhaca Island, just off the coast — where we’d booked a hotel via (what else?) Telex.
The short flight there was uneventful. But the arrival? Unforgettable.
We were greeted by hotel staff who literally hadn’t seen a guest in 25 years. Waiters who had probably been in their 20s when the revolution started were now in their late 40s or 50s, wearing the same faded, frayed uniforms. I presume the hotel had stayed open for the odd Russian dignitary visit during the Soviet years.
I’d imagined something like a coastal resort with fishing trips and cocktails. Nope. We were the only guests.
That night, over a passable (if not great) dinner, I asked the waiter — in a mix of Spanish and broken Portuguese — if he knew someone who could take us fishing in the morning. I’d brought a proper deep-sea rod and reel, and so had Pete. The waiter nodded, went away and returnded a little while later, “Be on the beach at 5 a.m.”
So, 5 a.m. next morning, there we were.
A man walked up the beach — not a black Mozambican, but what was then called a mulatto — part Portuguese, part local. That detail shouldn’t have mattered, but back then, it did. We agreed on a price: 50 US dollars for a day’s fishing. He took the money and said the boat would arrive in 15 minutes.
It did — though “boat” is generous. It was basically a dugout canoe with an inboard motor controlled with a shifting spanner.
Two black Mozambican crew members, who didn’t speak a word of Portuguese or any language I knew, waved us onboard. By sign language and context — the rods helped — they got the idea.
We cruised up the north side of Inhaca. Eventually, we were so far out we couldn’t see land. They stopped over a reef — probably 30 to 40 metres deep — and dropped hand lines. Singled us to do the same.
Instant action.
They were hauling in big grouper, snapper, bream, and other beautiful tropical fish. I dropped a line and immediately hooked into something massive — it pulled the boat around like a tugboat. Probably a giant grouper. It eventually broke my line.
Then things took a turn: behind us, a shark’s fin appeared — circling the boat, I kid you not.
Pete Becker pulled out a speargun and started taking potshots at it.. Absolute chaos. Everyone was having a blast — except poor Greg Bowden, who had turned a bright shade of green and kept begging, “Please can we go home, please can we go home…”
The weather started turning ominous. More prudence than pity, I signalled to the crew that we needed to return. Before we even spotted the island, the storm hit us. Waves broke over the gunnels. I honestly thought we might not make it back.
But we did — and with a good haul of fish.
We gave them to the hotel kitchen to freeze for the trip home. There’d been a strange smell coming from the kitchen — turned out to be pools of stagnant water in holes in the floor. The fact we didn’t all get food poisoning is a miracle.
My plan was to fly from Maputo down the Natal coast to Durban, where we’d meet up with Georgie Poulos (Briony’s ex-husband) and Robert Mauvice (her ex-boyfriend) — both owners of popular Durban restaurants: Georgie ran The Tropicale, and Robert, The St. Geran.
Before takeoff, I went to the Maputo weather office. Imagine my surprise: the chief meteorologist was a white Russian.
If you grew up in apartheid South Africa — where our conscripted friends were dying on the border fighting “Russian-backed terrorists” — meeting an actual Russian face-to-face was surreal.
He gave me a detailed and (surprisingly) excellent forecast — far better than anything I’d ever got from the South African Met Office.
We took off and hugged the coastline, flying low over Sodwana Bay, heading south. I never drank and flew. Ever. But my passengers? That was another story.
Halfway to Durban, they announced that unless I landed the plane, they were going to piss in it.
I spotted a tiny grass strip somewhere along the coast, did a precautionary circuit, landed, and let the three musketeers out. They stood on the side of the runway and too a very very long piss.
I told them: “That was your only chance. If anyone pisses in my plane, I’ll kill them.”
We carried on and landed at Durban Virginia Airport. Except… Virginia is not a customs airport. It’s not international. You can’t legally arrive there from Maputo.
All hell broke loose.
We were detained in the arrivals hall while an official from Louis Botha Airport (the main airport at the time) drove out to deal with us. He tore a strip off me. Absolutely fuming.
I got away with it — but if he’d known we’d made an unscheduled landing in the bush for a bathroom break, he’d have had an apoplectic fit.
Still, we had a lovely day and night in Durban and flew back to Joburg the next day.
One for the books — and a trip I’m sure none of us will ever forget.