Mozambique. Everything you need to Know

The wall of sand on which I'm standing rears 175m above the surrounding topaz sea. Apparently it moves, constantly shifting before the Indian Ocean winds that sculpt Mozambique's shores, but, as I peer downwards, it feels pretty solid beneath my feet — or, should I say, my board. One shove and I'll be flying down this hot powdery slope balanced precariously on a snowboard and shrieking with pleasure.

Split Personality

Dune-boarding is just one of several firsts I try at Indigo Bay resort on Bazaruto Island, the largest of the eponymous archipelago that lies a quarter of the way up the Mozambican coast. At dawn I'd been cantering along the beach, even though I can't ride — which wasn't frightening, thanks to Gustav, the Afrikaans horse whisperer in charge of the stables, who possesses equine powers of communication and makes my mount stop simply by saying 'ssshhh'.

Later we dived the Potholes, a series of giant fish-filled coral bowls like no site I'd ever dived before. The Bazaruto Archipelago certainly is Mozambique's playground. It's also the country's most important national park and has been welcoming tourists for decades - even during the civil war, thanks to direct flights from South Africa and game fishermen who wouldn't be put off.

Nowadays, an ever-increasing host of lodges and small hotels jostles for position at Vilanculos, the mainland hopping-off point for the islands. Bazaruto and Benguerra, the two largest (large being relative: Bazaruto is 35x7km), host a handful of upmarket properties, including Indigo Bay, a small luxurious hotel with open-air bars and lounges, air-conditioned bungalows and tranquillising views of dune and sea. Although Bazaruto is just 600km up Mozambique's 2500km coast, it represents an invisible north-south divide, as far as tourism goes.

Above the Bazaruto barrier lies a largely undeveloped Swahili-flavoured shore, serviced by a sparse infrastructure and studded with historical treasures from Portugal's colonial days. The region is a palimpsest of African origin, with Arabic, imperial Portuguese and outlines of modern western script layered upon one another.

With its healthy infrastructure and a coastal tourist industry that has burgeoned since 1992's ceasefire, the south is almost another country, sheltering beneath the umbrella of the capital, Maputo, in itself suckled by the regional giant Johannesburg. South African accents ring through the five-star hotel bars of the sensitively refurbished Polana or the slick new Avenida.

One curio seller I haggle with pulls out his mobile phone. In common, north and south share a sensuous laid-back ambience born of Africa having met the Mediterranean. At Costa do Sol, a shore-side Maputo institution that has been serving spicy piri-piri prawns to the city's well-heeled since 1938, the flavours of garlic and Portuguese wine mingle with the sounds of African hip-hop from the car stereos of boys selling drinks by the beach.

A short walk from the Mercado Central, throbbing with vegetable colour and piscine smells, is the icy elegance of the mint-green and cream railway station, a colonial confection built to link then-Lourenço Marques to the gold-rich Rand. Near the gothic frills of the Natural History Museum, displaying an extraordinary moth-eaten collection of taxidermal drama and elephant foetuses, is the Nucleo de Arte, with its casual exhibition of sculptures made from civil war weapons.

Here's a memorial to Afrikanerdom's Great Trek leader, Louis Trichardt, who allegedly died in the city from malaria; there's the mansion shared by Africa's first couple, Nelson Mandela and Graça Machel. I contemplate Maputo's wonderful contradictions in the most European of ways, over espresso at a pavement café, while those most African of characters, the curio sellers, parade ingenious wares before me.

This city is easy on its visitors, letting them choose its identity: South African burgers and M-Net TV in a sports bar, or fabulous crab curry under neon lights with multi-hued Maputans at the Feira Popular. The further north you venture, the more you must take Mozambique as you find it. Above Vilanculos's metaphorical dividing line lies the ultimate physical barrier: the mature Zambezi, fat and voluminous, well fed by tributaries and sliding towards its gaping estuary.

Historically, it kept north and south separate; even today, only a car ferry links the two at Caia, where the coast road crosses the river. Above the Zambezi, roads crumble and distances are huge. Tourists with time considerations are best advised to fly to Nampula or Pemba to access this extraordinary region.

From Nampula, a couple of hours' drive on bumpy tar brings you to one of Africa's — of the world's — most surreal places, Ilha do Moçambique. UNESCO acknowledged its uniqueness in 1992, awarding the former Portuguese capital World Heritage status.