Captain Graeme Darch checks his Guide to Airfields of Southern Africa 2002, dips the nose of his four-seater Cessna 210 and skims the waves breaking over mother of pearl sand bars. 'Landing in one minute. Welcome to Mozambique,' he shouts above the 'whup, whup, whup' of the propeller. It had taken 15 years, two false starts and four flights, but I had finally made it to a country I'd wanted to visit since I was a teenager growing up in Zimbabwe.
To start with, I just liked the name of the country. The maps I had at school spelt it with the old Portuguese 'ç', instead of the English 'z', making it the exotic-looking 'Moçambique'. It even sounded good. Most Africans pronounce it 'Mozzambeekaay', which makes even Zanzibar sound a few syllables short of paradise.
Then the stories began. Growing up, I heard that Mozambique had the best diving and big game fishing in the Indian Ocean. The red acacia and lilac jacaranda trees were the brightest in Africa. The diet - lobster-sized prawns, crayfish and fresh cashew nuts - was better than the Cape's.
Lourenço Marques, as the capital used to be called, was the most louche city in southern Africa, and there was, of course, the 1,500-mile-long white-sand coast, where Mick Jagger spent the summer of '69 and Bob Dylan wrote his Seventies album, Desire .
But by the time I had left school and was old enough to go, I was already too late; the party was over, the border closed. In the Seventies, facing defeat in the war of independence, the Portuguese colonists abandoned Mozambique with everything they could carry after a revolution at home led by left-wing army officers fed up with the futile fighting.
South Africa's apartheid rulers immediately supported a right-wing guerrilla movement, Renamo, which tried to overthrow the independent left-wing Frelimo government of Mozambique in a conflict that lasted for 20 brutal years, killing hundreds of thousands of Mozambicans and wiping out huge herds of game.
After apartheid collapsed and the war ended, I booked a flight to Maputo, the capital's new name, but had to cancel it when the huge floods of 2000 swept the resort I was planning to visit into the Indian Ocean. Few countries have been as tortured as Mozambique. But now, third time lucky, my plane is taxi-ing along the grass-strip runway. A few seconds more and I will be on the ground - or, at least, in the sand.
I wanted to relax and dive, so I chose to stay on Benguerra Island, a 10-mile long sand dune, rising a few hundred feet above the sea. The island, which Harpers & Queen recently voted one of its 'Top 50 Blissful Beaches', is a half-hour boat ride from one of Mozambique's best dive sites, Two Mile Reef.
With little or no commercial fishing during the decades of war, fish have thrived off Benguerra, and coral gardens have become underwater jungles. On my first dive I saw stingrays, stacked up in floating towers several 'storeys' high. Hawksbill and green turtles, their shells polka-dotted with barnacles, were as big as cars. Two 10ft-long sharks - a white tip and a grey reef shark - spiralled up from the deep, scattering a school of barracuda in an explosion of silver.
Later I saw a giant grouper, devil rays and scorpion fish, their dorsal fins fluttering like feathers in the current. Brain coral, red sponges, giant fans and bright blue starfish lined the sea bed, which was scoured with caverns, 'swim-throughs' and deep rock alleys which looked like underwater streets.
The marine life on the reef is as good as any in Africa but the real, unexpected attraction lies in the mint choc-chip green waters just off the sand bars that ring Benguerra. If you wait long enough and have a boatman who can 'see' under the waves, you often find pods of dolphins feeding and playing. Many divers swim among them.
For an exhausting half-hour one morning, I swam with 17 bottlenose dolphins, including a mother and calf. They came as close as 3ft from my mask, squeaking their sonar messages, like dozens of badly tuned radios. They ducked and dived, split into two groups and sped past in opposite directions, dodging each other at the last minute in an underwater game of 'chicken'. It was only when I was back on the boat that I realised I had been swimming so hard to keep up that my fins had torn the skin off my toes.
Apart from diving and fishing there isn't much to do on Benguerra apart from enjoy one of the most relaxed places in Africa. With a population of just 750 people, there is no begging and no crime. The 13 reed, thatch and timber beach cottages at Benguerra Lodge, a former fisherman's bush camp, do not have locks - because there aren't any doors. Leave anything anywhere and it will be there when you get back.
Locals are happy to show you the beaches and coves, take you sailing on dhows, fishing or birdwatching, just for the company. More than 130 species of birds live in the archipelago, including bee-eaters, fish eagles, and flamingos. In the evening chefs cook fresh crab and crayfish, while waiters serve cold Manica beer from the upturned wreck of a schooner that serves as a beach bar.
There are only two telephones on the island, no mobile phone signal, no shops, no bar e discoteca, no tour buses. There are no roads, no air conditioning and no television. Guests fly in and out whenever they fancy. Some, like the bare-footed Margie from Zimbabwe, land alone in their own planes. How Out of Africa is that?
Was it worth the 15-year wait? Did Mozambique live up to its reputation as the A-list playground of southern Africa? The country feels like a stately colonial hotel that was once the place to be seen but which has fallen on hard times. The floors are wonky, the crystal chandeliers were stolen long ago, the sign to the 'Ladies Powder Room' has faded now, and the ivory on the piano keys is chipped and yellow. It may be crumbling, the corridors may be full of ghosts, but it is still taking guests the only way it knows how - with cold beer and beguiling African charm.
When the last cassava-leaf basket of crayfish is lifted off a dhow on Benguerra beach and the evening wind carries the scent of piri-piri prawns grilling on the barbecue, it is not hard to see why Bob Dylan liked the place so much that he wrote about 'taking a peek of magic in a magical land'. 'It's very nice,' he sang, 'to stay a week or two. And maybe fall in love, just me and you.'
