Ana Lúcia and Oliver Wood's Travels: 24 hours in Ibo Island

We took a 6-seater plane 100 km North of Pemba to the island of Ibo, part of the Qurimbas national park. It's a brilliant 20-minute ride beneath the cloud ceiling, over a conditional coastline of creeks, mangroves, sandbars, mudflats, reefs, turquoise water and dhows creeping through the channels. The islands are hardly distinct from the mainland or the sea and look like a high tide would wash them away.

Smooth landing on a grass airstrip and a bus-shelter of a terminal. The pilot retrieved our bags for us. Just after 8am and already, as promised, fearsomely hot. Hamid, a local man explained that he would take us into town. There being only one car and a tractor on Ibo, a cab-ride was out of the question. He leads us down a dusty track, soon passing his home, the family lounging on the veranda. A sister wears the mud-mask common amongst Northern Mozambiquean women, the unmarried ones, he explains.

We're soon joined by a man of greater years on a natty bicycle, sporting a rear-view mirror. Surely an unneccesary luxury? Our first taste of the historic Ibo is a ruined cemetary. THe buildings look old although some of the headstones are just 25 years old. 15 minutes on we hit the town proper - one ruin after another. Trees are growing on the very bones of the buildings, providing playgrounds for the local kids.

Our bed is in a homestay, which turns out to be a rather gracious Portuguese villa with flaking lime walls, high ceilings and a cool breeze. After a week of truncated sleep thanks to our poor setup of the tent, this looks rather promising. The lady of the house is very friendly, with two sons, one who refuses to change his appallingly grubby clothes, and the younger who mainly screams and hides from us. Apparently there's an old tradition that the white man will buy little children for his dinner, and indeed I am offered to buy one more than once around town.

The town was once rather splendid, with a shallow beach and signs warning that defecating is not permitted on this part of the waterline. Further down it's OK as long as you cover your tracks with a trowel.

While strolling we bump into a mzungu (white man) called James, who's lived on Ibo for 10 years, "like a pirate", he says, and indeed he does have nautical way with a neckerchief. He takes us in from the unbearable heat and brews Ibo coffee and dishes out cold cokes from a gas-powered fridge. His arm has a huge burn which he earned installing it. He's building a boat which he hopes will solve one of Ibo's great problems - there's nothing to eat. We discover this when we visit the one and only restaurant for lunch. He has only water. The beer ran out two weeks before, and he can't even manage to rustle up a chicken, which is unheard of. James's boat is a great flat-bottomed thing resting on the mud in the bay and is half-finished. He's Zimbabwean, but grew up in the UK, and is the go-to man on Ibo for every little project. People question him there about anything from building up a chicken farm to fixing a bridge, although he is no engineer.

Somehow, our homestay host manages to rustle up a fish stew for dinner, eaten by oil-lamp light. After looking at the profound stars we totter off to bed at about 7:30 done for by the heat and sun. Although this place is a mess, tiny, difficult and incredibly hot it has a magic, seductive feeling. On the way out in the morning we pass a sign: "ruin for sale". No, we didn't buy it.