Benguerra Island - Mozambique

A report from Jamie Doward in the Observer

I enter my chalet and London feels a long time ago, the stress of the journey instantly expunged. There is a four-poster bed the size of my spare room that looks as if it has come from the set of The English Patient. The shower is an impressively colonial affair; the floor is polished teak and there is a huge fan hanging from the ceiling. Outside my door lies a hammock on which I can watch the sun go down over Africa and ponder on the uncomfortable fact that only a few years ago Mozambique was a geopolitical basket case, a country ripped apart by a seemingly interminable civil war that saw landmines planted with the sort of enthusiasm normally reserved for GM cash crops and Marxist ideology disseminated to the locals with a gusto once confined to East Germany.

You can find the full article here.