Adventures with Kingsley Holgate - Afrika Outside Edge 21

We've reached Inhambane in the late afternoon. Dhows and ferryboats move slowly across the bay taking passengers and goods from the jetty at Maxise across to ancient Inhambane and back again. In January 1498 the great Portuguese explorer Vasco da Gama anchored in this very bay and was so well received that he called it Terra da Boa Gente, "The Land of Good People". And it is still like that. The people of Inhabane province are some of the friendliest and productive in all Mozambique. Their villages of handcrafted reed huts thatched with palm fronds are beautifully maintained. It's naartjie season and there are splashes of yellow between the tall coconut palms. We load up more bales of mosquito nets to take south. The Land Rover roofracks creak and groan under the weight. We are still doing what we came to do.

The last time we'd cross 23°27' the Tropic of Capricorn was with a windstorm blowing in the great sand ocean of the ancient Namib where the cold south Atlantic washes against the Skeleton Coast. Now 420 days and 32 countries later, this time on the East Coast where the warm Indian Ocean washes against palm fronded beaches of Mozambique, we pose for a picture under a sign that reads Tropico do Capricornio - we can smell home.

We cross the Limpopo at Xai-Xai and then follow the red earth track down to the Zongouene lighthouse. It's a beautiful day and long lines of white foaming waves break slowly into the mouth of the Limpopo. Village by village in the shade of old mango trees we distribute small numbers of mosquito nets to mums and babies along the winding sand track through to Bilene.

We take the busy Catembe ferry south across Maputo bay. It's a strange feeling, travelling down the coast we're beginning to move out of high-risk malaria areas. Late rains have turned the road into a quagmire; we pull into the bush and camp wild near the Maputoland elephant reserve. If all goes well we'll cross into South Africa tomorrow - so close to crossing back into our own country after more than 400 days of tracking the edge. Now that we're this close to the finish, how easy would it be to cheat a bit, hit the highway south to the Cape of Good Hope, we could be there in three days. But our outside edge challenge is not like that. We're still committed. Ahead of us is one of the most fascinating coastlines in the world: lake systems and high forested dunes of Northern Zululand, the wild coast of Pondoland, the beauty of South Africa's Eastern Cape coast, East London, Port Elizabeth, Knysna and the Garden Route, the Breede River, the whales, Arniston, Cape Agulhas and the Cape of Good Hope.