What a visitor's money does in Mozambique: every guide rated from very cheap to very expensive, cheapest first, then the things that cost travellers money without buying anything — the ATM, the taxi, the SIM.
Mozambican Metical (MZN) · 1 EUR = 72.3 MZN · 1 USD = 64.1 MZN
Dive centres and the better lodges quote in dollars or rand and take cards; the market, the chapas, the bakery and most beach bars are meticais in cash. Rand are accepted in many places at a poor rate. Change or draw in Inhambane, where the banks are.
Avoid: counting on a machine in Tofo, using a machine after dark
Use: Millennium bim, BCI, Standard Bank (all in Inhambane)
Draw enough in Inhambane for the stay, or for the days until the next trip into town. Dive centres take cards, the village mostly does not.
Prawns, crab and the catch of the day off the boats, grilled with piri-piri, and matapa (cassava leaves cooked with peanut and coconut) on the side. The Tofo market sells fresh bread rolls, pão, from the morning bake; buy fish there and most lodges will cook it.
Swahili, Portuguese and Indian Ocean cooking in one place: grilled fish and squid, matapa de siri-siri (seaweed cooked with coconut), and crab and prawn curries. The restaurants are small and the menu is what came in on the boats, so ask what there is rather than reading the list.
Prawns, crab, calamari and line fish are the whole menu and do not disappoint. Vilanculos market has the cashews and the fruit; a seafood lunch cooked on the beach is what a day dhow trip includes.
The cost rating is this site's own, for a visitor, from the guides' authors and the corrections readers send in. The general rules — the conversion prompt, shoulder season, the airport taxi — are in budget travel tips.
TofoMozambiqueA sandy village on a long surf beach, with mantas and whale sharks a short boat ride offshore
Bazaruto ArchipelagoMozambiqueFive islands of dune and reef in a marine national park, with the last dugongs on the East African coast
Ilha de MoçambiqueMozambiqueA coral-stone town three kilometres long that was the capital of Portuguese East Africa for nearly four centuries