Cahora Bassa Travel Guide
From Wikitravel
This dam in Mozambique is large hydro electric scheme that supplies electricity to grids as far as South Africa. The nearby town is called Songo.
Contents |
Get in
From Tete take the road back towards Zimbabwe, turning off at the Songo turnoff. Then just follow your nose - the road is good quality and will take you into Songo itself. If going by chapas, they leave from outside the TDM office on Av de Liberdade. It costs around 80,000 meticais and will take 3-4 hours. The drive up through the mountains is pretty spectacular.
Get around
Songo is a company town devoted to the Cahorra Bassa dam, and is entirely unlike any other in Mozambique in that there's no formal city centre - it's more a series of loosely connected barrios. Nor are there any chapas running around the town. This may sound like a nightmare, but in actual practice it doesn't matter an awful lot - there are only a couple of places you can stay and the best thing about Songo itself is the walking, which is pretty spectacular.
See
The hills and the dam. The former are easy enough - just look around you. The latter takes a little more effort, but isn't difficult. You can't just turn up - Cahorra Bassa is a secure site and you'll get turned away at the gate even if you do walk the distance between Songo and the dam. Fortunately the owner of the O Sitio restaraunt in Songo is head of the public relations so head there and ask him about visiting.
Do
Buy
There are no shops in Songo.
Eat
Drink
Sleep
Get out
This is trickier. Due to the lack of a centre, chapas heading back to Tete drive round Songo picking people up, so you need to arrange this in advance. It's best to ask the driver who brought you there and he'll let you know the score.
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