Maputo

Maputo runs on a grid of acacia and jacaranda avenues named with revolutionary conviction — you will walk Karl Marx to reach Mao Tse Tung, and turn on Kim Il Sung toward the sea — laid over a bayside city that mixes Portuguese tiles, Indian Ocean light and a musical pulse all its own. The showpiece is the CFM railway station, a mint-green and white confection with a great dome, so lovely that travellers photograph it before their own trains.

The traveller walks the Baixa between the station, the fortress and the tiled facades; climbs to Polana's clifftop gardens for the bay panorama; finds Mafalala, the historic quarter where marrabenta music and half the country's founding poets and footballers were raised; eats the city's diplomatic triumph — prawns grilled with piri-piri, LM-style, with matapa alongside —; and crosses the great suspension bridge to Katembe, the continent's longest, for the skyline it was half-built to provide.

The Guide's practical counsel: Maputo is walkable with city sense — daylight freely, evenings by taxi apps, phones quiet on the promenade —; Portuguese opens hearts and 'khanimambo' (thank you, in Ronga) opens them wider; the far northern province writes different weather these years — travellers bound beyond the capital check current counsel, while the city and the southern beaches keep their easy rhythm —; and the Tofo whale sharks and Inhaca's reefs make Mozambique a country the first visit only begins.