Mozambique

Mozambique has 2,500 kilometres of coastline and is still, in most of the world's imagination, barely a name. The Bazaruto Archipelago sits in water the colour of the word turquoise before you have seen what turquoise actually means. Ilha de Mozambique is a coral-stone island that was once the capital of Portuguese East Africa and now carries that history lightly, in its chapels and its fish markets and its slow afternoons. The country is in no hurry to be discovered, which makes discovering it feel like something you earned.

Our guide is being written from the ground up, with the time this place deserves.

We are still gathering the notes that make a guide worth keeping: island crossings, coral lodge routes, peri-peri trails and the beach towns that do not yet have names on travel maps.