Mozambique. Everything you need to Know

I'm careful not to trip over loose 16th-century cannon balls while strolling the weedy ramparts of São Sebastão Fortress in disbelieving solitude. Just 2.5km long, this film set of an island has a palace stashed with intricate Goan and European furniture, a disproportionate number of churches, streets of ruined villas and a vast decrepit hospital.

Its thriving reed-hut village supports 7000 people, who frequent the pretty mosque and sell fish and coconuts with careless grins. This end of Mozambique definitely doesn't let you choose, but accept it for what it is and it's intoxicating. At Pemba, Portugal takes a back seat to unsullied Africa.

Makua women sport skin-softening facemasks of white paste. Makonde carvers work chunks of liquorice-like ebony — pale on the outside, dark within — into powerful human forms. A brightly-coloured crowd of women and children sits peacefully below majestic mango trees, marking the day when the community's sons go to the bush for initiation into manhood.

The mothers have shaved their heads for the occasion. We watch children playing between beached dhows at sunset, boys showing off with backflips, girls parading with garlands of curly seaweed round their heads and hips, Polynesian-style. Leaving the Swahili-tinted comfort of the new Pemba Beach Hotel, we board a tiny old plane heading north over a shore where sea meets bush and nothing is man-made.

The north's staggering emptiness hits home. We overfly a string of islands and land in a coconut plantation, before transferring by boat to the tiny private-island resort of Quilalea. In airy chalets with interiors of rich wood and billowing white muslin, we live in barefoot luxury that could hold its own in any ocean.

A gleaming speedboat takes us game fishing en route to Ibo Island, where we abandon sybaritic indulgence for historical fantasy among the shells of 18th-century houses that people in Europe would pay millions for just to restore. In the old slave fortress silversmiths produce impossibly intricate jewellery from old molten coins.

We rush back to Quilalea before the tide cuts us off, to dive in the surrounding marine sanctuary. At sunset we sip iced beers beneath the squeaking rig of a dhow in a sea of molten bronze. Maputo seems a world away; even Bazaruto, with its air links to Johannesburg.

Britain may fret about its north-south divide, but Mozambique should take pride in its dual identity: it makes travel in this beguiling country doubly rewarding. Time will erode the logistical contrasts, but in personality Mozambique will always be split.

Mozambique in a Nutshell

Best Beaches:

In the far south are endless dune-backed sands at Ponta do Ouro and Ponta
Malongane, beloved by South African fishermen and divers. Outstanding palm-fringed beaches occur throughout Inhambane Province, especially within 30km of Inhambane town.

To the north are Tofo and Barra beaches; to the secluded south, Jangamo and Paindane Beaches and Coconut Bay. Consisting of sand dunes, the Bazaruto Islands are all fringed by kilometres of unbroken, untouched beach. Wimbe, outside Pemba, is a long strip of white sand with bars and a dive centre. The Quirimbas, 27 offshore islands of fossil coral rock in the far north, harbour innumerable intimate castaway beaches.

Wildlife

Mozambique's best-known national park has no safari game: Bazaruto NP is a marine reserve, home to the endangered dugong and many coral and fish species. Humpback whales visit between September and November, heading north with newborn calves, and can also be seen in Pemba Bay in July-August. Sadly, many of Mozambique's other NPs don't have much game either.

Protected land forms 11% of the country, but war and poaching have taken a tragic toll on erstwhile rich wildlife populations, and park infrastructure remains sparse. Gorongosa NP, a large area of brachystegia woodland above the Beira Corridor, was once Mozambique's flagship, with 12,000 annual visitors and more game than Kruger, but few animals survived the war.

Rehabilitation has included de-mining, bridge building and lodge repair. Wildlife – including lion, buffalo, sable and elephant – is drifting back slowly. In the remote north, game is more prolific. New tourism ventures are penetrating the diverse Niassa Game Reserve, bordering Tanzania, where the 2002 aerial census put the elephant population at 12,000.

Overall the situation is slowly improving due to restocking, natural regeneration and transfrontier Peace Parks projects. Mozambique's government is investing R109m in restocking and upgrading Limpopo NP, which will be linked with South Africa's Kruger and Zimbabwe's Gona-re-Zhou, forming the Greater Limpopo Transfrontier Park. The planned Lubombo Transfrontier Park will join the Maputo Elephant reserve with protected areas in South Africa and Swaziland.