Captivated by Bazaruto's beauty
At Vilankulo, a small friendly coastal hamlet and mainland gateway to the magnificent Bazaruto islands, translucent blue water gently laps on heavenly white sandy beaches in a town which is fast becoming the hottest spot in Africa.

Since the civil war ended with a 1992 ceasefire, foreign aid has poured in making Mozambique one of the fastest growing countries in the world, and turning the southern African nation into one of the biggest untapped tourist destinations on the map.

In Vilankulo I found a good many South Africans working as tour operators or manning hotels and lodges. At the local mercado (market), where you can buy anything from fresh fruit and vegetables to branded Manchester United soccer shirts for a mere R80, small boys bargained to lend me a hand in return for a small tip.

Multi-lingual
Most of the boys and locals could speak a good mix of Portuguese and English, but I almost fell over backwards when one young boy who helped me procure a T-shirt and a beer, rattled off a few rudimentary lines in Afrikaans.

This boy, like everyone else you meet in Vilankulo, was extremely friendly. In fact it is quite easy to stop and chat with smiling faces in the street or sit down with townspeople at one of the many reasonably priced eating places, like Tize or Bimbi?s ? where you can grab a tasty plate of rice and fish or soup and bread.

Paradise!
But my real reason for being in Vilankulo was to visit the nearby island wonders of Benguerua, Magaruque, Bangue, Santa Carolina and the larger Bazaruto (which is also a nature reserve). Besides light planes, which take off and land regularly at the nearby airstrip, the islands are best reached by traditional Arabian triangular sail dhow.

The boat set off early ? at 6am when the tides were at their lowest ensuring we made the best of the day. With the sun already baking down on me, I took to lounging lazily and staring dreamily back at the mainland getting smaller and smaller as we chugged towards Benguerua Island.

After some three hours of motoring along we passed between the narrow straits of Benguerua and the larger Bazaruto Island, waves splashing aboard as the skipper and his two deckhands navigated through the tricky heads. Soon a thin line of white wake came into sight.

Underwater wonderland
When we drew closer we could make out waves crashing into the cavernous reef. We tied up behind the safety of the reef, the sea so calm the boat hardly winced as we sprung off one by one into the clear blue water with flippers and mask. Below us was another world, something heavenly, indescribable which up until this moment lay locked away, away from man, his machines and the calculated world.

Fish of all colour appeared before us, darting between coral which rose from the sea like leaves from an old fig tree, or like a massive cerebral cortex. While inside sat shy moray eels hiding between broken tangled caves of coral.

Reluctantly we emerged from this quiet subliminal world, the boat buzzing towards Bazaruto Island as we stared whimsically back at the reef, the rush of the great white waves being all we could hear.

Beneath us, we watched as passing fish loomed in the clear blue water, giving way to playful dolphins that readily swam abreast our dhow. After a long day out on the islands and at sea and with the afternoon edging in, our three-man crew spread the triangular sail and steered the dhow in the direction of the mainland.

A touch of South Africa
Later, as the sun set a kaleidoscopic purple orange, I cooled off with a few beers at ABs, a quaint local pub owned by a South African, Adrian Benjamin. Here, sea charts from across the world pasted up above the bar counter tell the remarkable story of how Benjamin, an ex-Naval officer first landed here four years ago after his plans to boat round the world were scuttled when his yacht ran aground just kilometres north of Vilankulo.

At the dawn of a new day it?s difficult to drag yourself away from the beauty, the serenity and the stillness (which occasionally gets interrupted by boisterous beer-bearing South Africans who flood the town?s campsite during the summer holidays).

Yet, how long you wonder will the rare tropical paradise of Vilankulo survive before city slickers and property mongrels from South Africa invade the resort and turn it into the next Club Mykonos.

To read more of Stephen Timm's stories, click here to access his iafrica.com Writer's Club portfolio.