On the road again… already!
I’ve been so busy I didn’t even get a chance to write about the end of my last adventure until a few days into the next one!
I’m just outside of Vilanculos, Mozambique now. Since my last blog, I flew from Kinshasa to Johannesburg, where I spent a few nights, and this is the first day I haven’t been on the road Mozambique in four days. We arrived in Maputo after dark on the first day after a surprisingly easy border crossing, and stayed in our favorite guest house from the last trip, called Palmerias. The breakfast there is the main selling point (along with the internet connection). We had a very interesting dinner experience that night in the “Feira Popular” which is basically a permanent fairgrounds - full on with rides - right next to downtown Maputo. I’ve never seen the rides operating, but the dining ambiance is quite nice. The next day we walked around quite a bit, and later met up with a Mozambican colleague of mine from Johannesburg, then had dinner down by the water at a pretty fancy marina club.
The next morning we drove north, past Xai-Xai (where we had stopped last trip) and into untread ground! I got a speeding ticket for going 72 km/hr in a 60 zone. For the metrically-challenged reader, that means going 45 in a 37 zone. I’m not saying I didn’t do anything wrong, but it was kinda lame. I did chat and laugh with the arresting cops, though. We were actually quite lucky (knock on wood) with the police - I got pulled over another time for a “random” documents check (we have South African plates, which means $$$ here) and didn’t get extorted. I think trying to speak Portuguese and appearing nice and relaxed helps quite a bit in these situations.
That night we stayed at a camping spot in Maxixe, which was absolutely spectacular (and very cheap - Mozambique tends to be on the expensive side). We set up the tent just up the hill from a beautiful bay, right across from the city of Inhambane. Although the idea of taking a dhow (dug-out traditional boats) across to Inhambane was considered, we decided instead to move on the next morning, as we’d heard the road ahead was very rough. It was indeed very rough, and made for a long, exhausting morning of driving the next day. This was yesterday, and it was particularly exhausting because we’ve had a hard time getting the food we’re looking for here, for what seems to be a combination of reasons: restaurants tend to serve a disproportionate amount of fries/rice/bread for the amount of meat or seafood (or vegetables) on the plate; this, combined with my special dietary needs (low-starch) and my overactive appetite (and it gets worse when I “fall behind,” as I already have here) make me pretty much perpetually dissatisfied; the hotels where we stay don’t have kitchen facilities, and so far, when we’ve camped, by the time we roll into town and set up camp and get oriented, it’s late to go to the market. This was a bummer yesterday because we actually had struck our camp, had coffee and started driving by 7:30 AM, and made it to our destination (here in Vilanculos) by just after noon, but were distracted until sundown.
The distractions, however, were not unpleasant! We’ve met some really interesting people - there is a huge community of white South Africans and Zimbabweans (we’ve mostly fallen in with the Zimbabweans, who came after they were kicked off of their farms) who are running tourist businesses. Among them is a horseback tourism group, and our first act (after having a drink at the bar) was to go on a horseback ride. This was really cool and special, although quite uncomfortable and a little scary for yours truly. I was thinking, after I’d given up on trotting (or, I should say, after the region between my legs had given up on trotting) and was trying to just relax, that I would love to know how to ride a horse. I think it would be way cool. However, I really have no interest at all in going through the process of learning to ride a horse. They just scare me. I guess it’s like guns - you can see that it’s useful and quite cool (depending on who you’re talking to) to know how to use them, and obviously people who are comfortable around them had to learn to be that way, but it’s just scary until you’re comfortable. I should note, just to point out what a big wuss I am, that actually, the risk to me was quite small, as my horse was being held the whole time by a very nice Zimbabwean on foot.
Anyhow, the coast here is absolutely spectacular, and I’m hoping to have some delicious seafood. I must admit that even the huge plate of prawns I had last night was not that great, although it might have had something to do with my physical discomfort. We camped again last night, with the sound of ocean waves rocking us to sleep. Tonight we’ve been invited to stay in the guest room of a quite nice lodge in the resort next door to the one where we stayed last night, where I’m sitting right now! We spent the late morning at the local market in the middle of town. After weathering some overly-friendly boys and men on the way in, we wandered deep into what turned out to be an enormous market. After finding some beignets for 1 Meticais each (something like 5 U.S. cents), some peanuts, and walking by some amazing produce for sale, we found a place to sit. The woman there - named “Anna” - served us big helpings of beef and fish with rice. It was delicious, and with a Coke only added up to 45 Meticais (the equivalent of about $2). This was the springboard for quite a bit of reflection about the economy here - the tourist places where we’re staying charge prices that seem somewhat more “normal” to the Western outsider ($8 U.S. or so for an average meal, and about $2 for a beer), but exist almost completely independently of the local population, apart from a few employees (mostly cleaners, it seems - the more skilled jobs seem to go to English-speaking black Zimbabweans). This kind of contrast in adjoining spaces (the market is about a 15 minute drive from the resorts, but the resort’s immediate neighbors seem to be a part of the “town” economy) is totally baffling to me. And the big question for us is this: if there is such attractive fresh produce available, why do the restaurants only offer bread and fries with a tiny bit of meat? Do they intentionally avoid serving vegetables for some reason? Is it a question of taste? Practicality, like the potatoes just don’t spoil?
Some other random observations: tons of people speak English here, even in the markets - I’m assuming that’s because a lot of the money coming in is from anglophone tourists (especially South Africans); as in other places I’ve been in Africa, it’s HOT in the sun, and quite nice and cool in the shade; the people we’ve met are almost embarrassingly welcoming and generous - I’m not sure if that’s how they are to everyone, or if it has to do with us being American, or being a potential source of publicity; the birds are amazing - beautiful and diverse; I was able to call from a cell phone to wish my nephew a happy birthday - as a friend and blog-reader wrote to me recently: “ain’t technology grand?”