I will share my experience starting my exMPM DONE ticket. Sorry for the long post, I think that at least some information could be useful for fellow travelers. I visited MPM for some days, so didn’t actually transited there, but had a stopover. Moderators, feel free to move to more appreciate place.
I ended my previous DONE5 in CPT. So, I needed to travel from CPT to MPM. I found cheap flights from CPT to JNB, but flights to MPM for my dates were bit expensive. I was feeling bit adventurous as there was cheap bus connections from JNB to MPM available. I booked bus ticket from Citiliner, who advertised to have “semi-luxury coaches”.

I was planning to try to get visa on arrival as my home country doesn’t have Mozambiqan embassy. However, after booking the bus tickets I got notification from the bus company, that I wouldn’t be allowed to board the bus without a visa, because per the bus company, visas on arrival are not offered anymore. I decided to apply visa in CPT to avoid later problems. Applying visa was easy, but it needed multiple visits to the embassy. The embassy in CPT take visa applications only between 8-12am. I was there first time in afternoon so I needed to come back on next day. It was same person who took my visa application on next day who said that I need to come back in morning, so it was bit weird why they couldn’t receive the visa application on afternoon. Cost of the visa was 600ZAR. It needed to be paid in their bank in cash, the embassy didn’t take any payments directly. I needed to go to specific bank branch to make the payment and bring the receipt back to the embassy. The whole process took around 2 hours.

Problems arise on afternoon, when I got a call from the embassy that they couldn’t give the visa because my passport was too new. In addition, the passport didn’t have South African entry stamp that was also told to be problem. The embassy figured out that I had double passport (although both are from same country, so that I can travel while processing visa with another passport). So, they demanded that I needed to provide my other passport to the embassy, otherwise they would have denied the visa. I swapped passports at the embassy following morning. It’s only possible to collect passport with visas between 14:00-16:00. There was delay getting the passport back as the embassy was open for last day before festive season. I got my passport back around 14:15. I had flight to JNB on 16:00. Because I needed to collect my luggage on the way from embassy to airport, I almost missed my flight, but fortunately the flight was bit delayed, so I could catch the flight. It didn’t help that I had oversize baggage with me. Don’t except to skip queues in South-African airports, there was no priority queue, I also asked if I could skip the queue because my flight was leaving in 5 mins, security just directed me to the end of queue and said that I should have come earlier. In the end, I just got on to the JNB flight just before closing the door, because the flight was so late.

The bus station in JNB Park station is completely zoo experience. The Greyhound and Citiliner buses are boarding only from one gate and there is multiple of night bus departures. Local people try to get as much as possible luggage on board, as the price level in South Africa is cheaper than MPM. People are queuing to bus with loads of groceries; fruits, onions and so on. I was forced to check my cabin bag, because the cabin shelfs was already full of eggs and the staff thought that the eggs were more fragile than my bag, even though I complained that I had fragile electronics in it.

The bus very new Volvo, but it had very packed 2-3 seat configuration with more narrow seats and less leg space than even cheapest low cost carriers’ planes that I have flown. I was hoping the get some sleep during the trip, but they screened movies with high volume until 3am and other passenger were very loud, so I didn’t get any sleep. Moreover, the bus driver wasn’t the best, it seemed that he didn’t remembered sometimes that he had trailer full of luggage when he accelerated after speed bumps. Crossing the land border is also very different experience compared to airport immigration.
And thanks for everyone here that helped with my DONE tickets, my just ended DONE5 was wonderful experience. I couldn’t have found that deal without help of Flyertalk. I hope the next trip will be as nice as the previous.