AFRICA'S HIDDEN GEM! 🇲🇿 MOZAMBIQUE (VILANCULOS)

Good morning everyone, here from Mozambique in Africa once again. Today we're in a place called Vilanculos which is on the coast. So in our previous video we were in Tofu which was also a beach destination and then we flew from an airport that's near Tofu in Nyambani and it just took around 40 minutes to get here. Really a beautiful flight though, you could already see how beautiful this place was when we were landing. And just like in Tofu, We're staying at a really cool place right on the beach, so this is called Baobab Vilanculos. $76 a day, so it is more expensive, but look at that for a view. So this place is known to have some of the best beaches in Mozambique. You can already see it's really white sand there. Also the water color is a lot more turquoise than Tofu. Some islands out there that you can visit, so yeah, we're going to be seeing all of this. and then inside is also pretty good so it is a AC room definitely need that right now because it's roasting hot so we got the queen size bed and also a single bed there the fridge the kettle some coffee and tea so that's included little working area and then through here is the bathroom also a really big bathroom too and through this way you got some of the other accommodations that are not beachfront they seem to be kind of the same though and we're just making our way to the breakfast area now. breakfast is from 7 until 11. so the breakfast area is also real laid back. here at night it was pretty busy. there's nobody here right now, we're having a late breakfast. and this is the menu. so i'm going for the panqueca com mel e frutas, pancake with honey and fruits, 2.50. what were you getting again? Cheese and tomato toast, $2.50 also. so we're going on a little stroll on the beach right in front of our place. the tide was higher before and i think when the tide was higher the color was a bit nicer too of the water. quite a lot of seaweed right now but it's not the stinky kind. i haven't really seen anyone swimming around here so far. It's not a surf beach anymore like Tofu. No, but they do have kite surfing here. We saw a guy kite surfing yesterday and it was really cool because he was jumping between the boats and stuff. It was really nice, but no surfing. I think that the majority of the boats that you've seen are fishing boats, but you obviously have the bigger boats for the boat tours. they have these nice little ones in mozambique. i don't know how you pronounce it. i think it's dhow. d-h-o-w. which is supposed to be a mix of a portuguese and arab boat but you see them all over. from what i read before the portuguese colonized mozambique, it was the arabs that kind of managed the sea trade, the coastal trade. so there's multiple points where the arabs were. the airport. i don't know if you can see on uh on the gopro here but this is a gigantic fishing net. all the fishermen are working on it right now. so i think that this is as far as we can walk along the beachfront become mangroves now. so we haven't seen any foreigners at all. i don't know where they're i think people mainly come here for the island hopping tour. yeah and some people stay at the islands for like crazy expensive prices. we're just about to go on a walk around Vilankulo and we're in the parking of our place. we stopped here because look at this magnificent tree. so that's what the resort is named after. i said baobab but i think it's baobab in english. so i think that's the kind of tree that i always see in pictures of madagascar my first time i've ever seen it though the size of it have you ever seen one of these before no no it's really cool i wonder how old that thing is must be hundreds and hundreds of years surely so i like the orange sandy roads that are around the part that we're staying in soon it becomes concrete it's just like the mini area that we're in hello Olá What is it? A gun? So, it's funny that people always speak English to us there, even though they speak Portuguese. Olá, olá gente, tudo Good afternoon. How are you? Good afternoon. How are you? How are you? We speak Portuguese. português Brasil português, sim What? I don't understand. I don't understand. I don't understand. I don't understand. I don't understand. I don't understand. We speak Portuguese. I don't understand. Yes, we speak Portuguese. Do you speak English? Yes, we speak English. We speak Portuguese too. You speak Portuguese too, right? Yes. I'm learning a new language. No? I'm learning a new language. So like I said, people always speak English to us. Actually, a lot of people do seem to speak a bit of English here. Yeah, like even the little kids, they seem to be learning, maybe because of the growing tourism. But we also talked to some foreigners in Tofu, and they said that they could communicate with people just fine. Yeah, so a lot of the time we reply in Portuguese to show them that we understand Portuguese, but they still keep speaking English. I think it's just because the majority of people that come here don't speak Portuguese. I think Brazilians you'll barely see any and we have heard some Portuguese from Portugal but still not that many. There's a lot of people from South Africa here since that's the place that's next door. A lot of the business owners too are from South Africa. Haven't walked down here before, kind of like this this area pretty cool. The huts here are like the little Filipino huts. I mean this overall like identical to the province in the Philippines. kind of interesting though, it looks like we're in a remote village here with the houses and you're gonna see in like 30 seconds we go to a place where it's just all concrete buildings, concrete ground. completely changes. so this is the main center that we wanted to come to. we actually came here yesterday for carol to put credit on her phone. one of these stores here, i don't remember It was a lot busier yesterday. I think we came a bit early, a bit earlier. Hello! i still think it's funny that we actually speak their language but they just speak english to us. is this where we wanted to go? the central market? Municipal market. they have lots of crab. yeah, crab, vegetables. I don't know how many tourists actually come here. Tomatoes, Potatoes, I don't actually know what that guy just said. Something about us doing a video. I think you can film here, I'm not sure. so they actually also speak their own local language a lot of the time between themselves so we don't know what they're saying. but they do also speak portuguese a lot between themselves too i think it just depends who they're talking to I can't see. i don't think i've ever been in a market like this before. no it looks very small from the outside But there's like a world here inside. Hello, good afternoon. A lot of clothes. Yeah, this is the clothes section. Hey. never-ending market. it just gets bigger and bigger and bigger. oils, clothes, everything. we wanted to buy some bracelets but we haven't seen a part with souvenirs or bracelet yet. but you can see it's not clothes for tourists it's clothes for locals. yeah yeah man it's so roasting hot. yeah I'm like melting. lots of the tuk-tuks here just like the ones that you see around India looks like the same style yeah it seems to just go on in the market. we've actually left the main market part already. You ready? i think it is still kind of like a market even outside. yeah it is but here they have like some stores for like cell phone and electronics and stuff. even fruits, vegetables, everything too. it's pretty cool seeing this though like more of the local life because when we were in Tofo... the center there was just tourism really, it wasn't really local at all. i think this place is more of a place where people actually live and not just for tourists. yeah sorry i'm trying to walk and film carol but there's vehicles coming out of nowhere here. yes i thought we'd see this kind of thing in Maputo in the capital but we were unable to unfortunately but like i said before this is just like one minute away from that quiet village looking area with the sandy roads and the little shack houses right next door. so in case any of you are wondering about safety around here it does seem like it's very safe also Tofo the locals even said we could walk around at night no problem we did we did walk around at night and it's not not dangerous but they say that solo travelers like female travelers shouldn't do it just to avoid some weird issues but overall i think it's quite safe we don't feel like any kind of sketchy vibes or anything. yeah i don't feel it at all i mean a lot of people look at us here but they just seem to be curious. i think i was wrong in what i said in the last video because i said that this was the major like tourist destination of Mozambique and yeah by the looks of it it's not Hola! Look at the little dude. Man, he is excited. Yeah, so I'm thinking that it is actually Tofo that is the main one. Actually, when it comes to safety, I think we are more like scared of having some encounters with the police because from what we heard... They are quite corrupt. I'm not gonna say like all of them are but there are some corrupt policemen and I thought it was only with foreigners but apparently even with the locals they they like ask for bribes so it's not good at all. Yeah so basically the locals all seem great and then the ones that are supposed to enforce the law are not so great and obviously if you saw our first video where we were supposed to film in Maputo you'll know why we have that impression too. so it is the next morning and we're going on a boat tour now that i mentioned earlier in the video. it's six thousand per person. that's not for a private tour that's a shared tour. so yeah pretty expensive for the country we're in. i think we've only ever paid that kind of price for a shared tour in like the expensive countries in the caribbean. but from what we saw online that is the normal price here and it's going to be our ride for the day. Doing the water entrance. Shallower. We've arrived at our first stop on the tour. This island is called Bazaruto. It's beautiful and peaceful here. No waves whatsoever. How long did he say we have here? 15 minutes I think for climbing the dunes and then I think we're gonna do some snorkeling. Around this island? I think so. I think the archipelago here is also called Bazaruto. And this island does have the fancy resort somewhere that Carol mentioned a lot of the islands have. We passed some others too but I don't see anything on this side. And here's the sign that we see everywhere we go nowadays. No drones allowed. almost every place that we go now you're not allowed to fly a drone anymore. it's funny because the hotels have helicopters to bring the passengers so we always see helicopters but no drone. yeah i really don't know what the big deal is with the the drones like environmentally it's not really impactful because you're just flying in the sky and like carol said yeah literally big helicopters you have boats you have the constructions right the hotels which are obviously way more impactful but not drones but i've never really read anywhere what the reason is why all these countries are like banning them now i know that some people say the sound is annoying but a lot of the new drones are actually very quiet only if i'm like flying right here next to me it'll be really noisy but the majority of the time we're flying like far away in the sky to get the amazing long shots so You can't even hear it whatsoever. I don't remember visiting many sand dune islands. No, usually they're like flat like the ones in the Philippines or in the Maldives. This one is very unique because of that. Bit out of breath now. Ended up running up the dune, the big one. So you can see some other cool parts of the island now. Almost like a sandbar this part and that's another island in the distance. Beautiful. So the east coast of Africa, is known for having like very nice white beaches so going up to like tanzania kenya you also have a zanzibar which is an island they all have really beautiful beaches some of the most beautiful beaches you'll find in africa before we head out on the snorkeling i don't think we're going to be snorkeling right here i think we're still going to get on the boat and go somewhere else we mentioned in the tofu video that the water temperature in mozambique is so nice it's like the perfect the indian ocean. not too hot and not too cold. right in the middle. to see dolphins. there are many of them. wow so close. there's like 10 of them. You know what I mean. yeah. oh wow. we're back on bazaruto island once again. the first island that we stopped at. they're just preparing our food here. i think we've got like an hour to relax. we're just going on a walk to the end here of the beach. and i said that we didn't expect to see dolphins. carol even saw a shark. yeah, while i was snorkeling but i was pretty scared because i didn't know how the sharks here act when they see humans. so i just ran away. you ran on the water? yeah. but apparently they are just almost every day there so i think nothing really happened when people are around but it's still scary because it was like a big one like like this not big big but bigger than some that we saw in the maldives and stuff you know the tiny ones yeah and the guy just said that there has been people that have flown the drone here before even though they knew the rule that you couldn't and they got fined 80 000 meticais which is like over a thousand dollars. we do see that on our travels like when there's a sign we still see people doing it even though they've been told. we never risk it though because of that reason. you're gonna get fined and they'll probably take your drone. it's not really worth it. and now we've arrived at the second island. this one is called bengera. looks absolutely incredible. i think it looks more beautiful than the other one. yes i think so. this area here it's like it looks bluer than the other one. and this is one cool sand strip. i don't know if it's always like this or if it's because of the tide. yeah so from the last two videos you can probably see that mozambique is definitely an incredible beach destination in africa. we didn't know much about this place before we came here and it's definitely surprised us. world-class beaches. hard to even open my eyes. yeah because it's really really white. yeah i need to keep the sunglasses on in this place. so i don't think i mentioned earlier but this is gonna be the final video from Mozambique and from Africa for now. so on this trip we visited Morocco in the north then Namibia, South Africa and here and originally we did plan to visit more places but i'm glad that we changed our minds because we would have the same time but to do more countries and i think it would be way too hurried, too rushed, too rushed and yeah but we know that we're gonna come back and explore some other countries that we want to go to Especially beach places, that's what we love the most. Yeah, so our next video is going to be from Japan. we're going to be visiting my parents there and if we weren't visiting them we would have probably stayed longer in Africa and i think we would have done like Tanzania, Kenya we originally wanted to go to São Tomé and Príncipe which is another island where they speak Portuguese that's on the west coast but the flights there were super expensive from Portugal so that's why we didn't go but i like to go there in the future yeah there's a lot of countries if any of you guys have been to Africa Let us know your favorite countries here because we want some ideas. Ghana also looks really cool. Cabo Verde which is another Portuguese speaking one. That one looks amazing too. So yeah there's many options and yeah we're definitely going to be back here. Yeah so it's definitely kind of different this place. It's like we're in one big lake. A massive lake. There's even a little sandbar island here. absolutely nobody here just our boat tour. even on the other island there was only one other boat that came with four people. nobody really around at all. there is a bird here that's his island. he's gone now. so we're back from the boat trip now. it's still only around 4pm but i don't think we're going to be doing anything else today. just relax for the last few hours of our trip. just on the balcony once again. Enjoying the nice breeze and overall really enjoyed Mozambique after our rough start with the immigration in Maputo. It seems like it's probably one of the least touristy places that we've ever been because we just came from South Africa and Namibia like I mentioned and there were tourists everywhere there but here there just hasn't been that many at all only a few but we are not in the peak season yet but even in low season usually. the places that we go we still see a bit more people than here so it seems like it's kind of a hidden gem a hidden gem of africa so i never really seen that much about mozambique online and places like instagram and stuff when you see pictures travel pictures i never really seen this country before you can obviously see the huge potential that it has just some incredible beach places and they do have the safari activities here just like we did in Namibia and South Africa You can do that here. We just didn't do it because we had already done it in those other countries so we wanted to focus more on the beaches. Obviously they need to fix the issues that we faced with the corrupt immigration officers. Not a very good thing for tourists to arrive to. Their first impression will be that. but besides that everything else was great the people are really nice too so yeah i just really enjoyed it and as i mentioned the next videos will be Japan so that's where the next series is coming from and we've never been there before so really looking forward to that too if you like this video just drop a like to support us subscribe to see more follow us on Instagram and we'll see in the next one