SEX ON THE BEACH

On the dunes at Bazaruto Island, with Benguerra Island across the water

IN REHANA'S WORDS

Friday, 17 May 2013

Why are tropical islands so sexy? It could be because they’re packaged that way by the travel industry. In the same the way diamonds are sold as an essential ingredient for an engagement, a tropical island honeymoon offers the promise of the cherry on top of a successful wedding.

Perhaps we find them sexy because film directors use tropical beaches as a metaphor. Can’t find good-looking actors who can pull off a sex scene with conviction? Focus instead on the soft waves lapping on the sand.

There are a few resorts on the Bazaruto Archipelago in Mozambique, a cluster of six tropical islands on a shallow shelf between Mozambique and Madagascar. All of them offer honeymoon packages with the rates for the suites, chalets and rooms quoted in US dollars. Their location practically guarantees a surge in libido.

The seduction begins with the vista. My vocabulary is not large enough to capture the variations of the colour blue in the warm water that beaches on the six islands. There are stripes of turquoise, aquamarine, azure, lapis and indigo in the water, varying according to the depth of the shelf and the strength of sun above and blending into each other.

The sky adds another spectrum of blue hues to the landscape. It’s often draped with bunches of tropical clouds that turn pink at sunset and dawn and promise relief from the unrelenting sun.

No amount of sea and sky gazing can break the spell that the waves of colour stitch onto your retinas with your first dumbfounded stare. The enchantment will only be broken after your last, lingering look at the blue sea and skyscape when you leave the archipelago.

On Margaruque Island looking across the Indian Ocean towards Madagascar

Step onto any beach on the six islands and the love affair begins. The toffee-coloured sand seeps warmly between your toes, and gives each one a loving suck as you withdraw a foot to take a step. You’re immediately forced to slow your pace; hot fudge can’t be devoured in a rush.

Look down and admire the whorls in the sand left by the waves sucked back by the receding tide. Sink down into the channels of water trapped in the whorls and receive a warm embrace that’s hard to break.

Eventually the sun’s kiss becomes a blast and you’re forced to move into the hypnotising sea. Sink into the water’s caress, turn and float lazily on your back. Or take a boat to one of the reefs, soaking in the fresh breath of the Indian Ocean.
Don snorkels and a mask and have your eyes popping on stalks at the profusion of coral that’s neon green, red, brown, black and every other colour in the rainbow. The fish that swim and nibble delicately on the coral match its spectrum of colours.

Our reef for the day. Ours alone! The men on the boat are grilling fish for lunch

Another day, another island, another lunch on the beach

Off season the archipelago offers a solitude not easily found. It is possible to be dropped off on a beach, or an island, and only encounter a handful of other people. At low tide sandbanks grow into miniature islands and its' possible to walk out to them and pretend that it’s yours alone – but watch out for the returning tide or a local fisherman will charge a premium for a rescue.

We sat on an island beach that had tables with white cloths, shaded by white umbrellas, each one with a waiter in a white suit. There were only the six waiters, a couple at one of the tables, two speedboat skippers and us on a beach that stretched as far as the eye could see.
I turned my back on the five-star beach bar and pretended it wasn't there. I was jealous, didn’t want to share my love affair with anyone else.

Pretending the others don't exist - this is all ours for the day

Tropical islands are sexy, I realised, because they force you to succumb to their stunning beauty. You submit to it and are quickly tempted to remain in its warm embrace forever.
Problem for honeymooners though, is that after spending a day on the islands, you sink in to a deep lethargy. The islands stir up your libido but demand that you give all your juice to them.

Giving my juice to Bazaruto

The town of Vilank/culo/s, on the other hand, has little interest in maintaining relationships with tourists.
We camped at Baobab Beach, which has chalets, backpackers’ dormitories and a campsite dominated a huge baobab tree. The young people from all over the world who were travelling across Africa using public transport were sweet-faced, committed fellow lovers of the soil and good company. There was a pool table and competitive players, we were kept busy at night.

There’s mostly low-end accommodation in the town, very little for the mid-range traveller who can’t quite afford a honeymoon suite on one of the islands, yet doesn’t want to spend too much time with noisy 19-year-olds at a backpackers establishment.
An art-deco hotel near the harbour is being renovated and will hopefully add a bit more pizzazz.

The beach at Vilankulos, our campsite's through the white pillared gate

The Baobab tree at Baobab Beach campsite. 

The beach at Vilankulos belongs to the locals. They smash their beer bottles with abandon on the toffee-coloured rocks and sand, turning an impossibly beautiful place into a sinister minefield. A group of sweet young men at our campsite were mugged and one was stabbed on their last night in the scruffy town.

On our last night music blaring from a local establishment had me tossing and turning until I decided that, because I didn't have an axe to smash the speakers, I might as well greet the dawn.
I've never seen the sun rising from the ocean. But there was a thick bank of clouds on the horizon and another cloud of mosquitos around my head, adding to my aggravation. 

At dawn the fishermen set off in their ramshackle dhows and return at sunset. Crowds of women gather on the beach with plastic tubs to buy the catch of the day, mainly small silver fish that later turn up dried, salted and reeking at the municipal market.
We spotted a few of the spectacular reef fish on sale on the streets of the town. The discards of the fishermen’s catches are left strewn on the beach for everyone to step gingerly around until the tide sweeps it away.

The deck at Baobab Beach

The best place at Vilankulos is on the wooden deck at Baobab Beach, overlooking the beach from a safe distance and watching the dhows return. Their sails are mostly combinations of white, green and black canvas or plastic – colours found in the flags of Arab republics – yet another reminder of their influence on the Indian Ocean coastline.

And finally, I ate loads of peri peri prawns. When I told the staff at Baobab Beach Camp to hold the chips and only bring the per-peri prawns they gave me a big heap. I ordered the same meal night after night, building piles of pink shells in the corner of my platters.

THE FISHERPEOPLE'S DANCE ... in two parts

In the sand at Jay's Beach Lodge. The dunes are just behind the trees

IN JULIA'S WORDS

Part I

The day is a mild grey, the sun behind light cloud.

The beach stretches either end as far as the eye can see through the seabreeze mist. It slopes quite steeply to where the waves seriously crash against the seashelf that lies just beneath. The sound on the beach is big: the serious crashes, water rushing, burbling, then retreating hiss. Etc, ens.

There are 11 fisherfolk – one a woman – lined up singlefile in two rows no more than 20 metres apart. The men are generally youngandburly; over the standard shorts/shirt, one sports a pin-striped jacket. In the row with the woman in it are six people. The woman is gogotypestyleage and wears a breast-high kikoi and a longsleeved shirt. And a doek, and her leatherhands needed to grasp, pass, grasp, pass, grasp, pass, grasp, pass a rope hundreds of times without retiring hurt from shredded blisters.

In the other row, five. Both single-filed rows line up from the ocean to where the dunes end in scraggly vegetation. The people are spaced about 10 metres apart, each with an arm horizontally extended so the rope they’re all holding can be wound around it so they can extract it from the  swallowing ocean. The ropes stretch under the breakers to a vast fishing net. It will take hours of pulling before the net reveals whether or not it’s the catch they’re hoping for.

Up on the dune’s verge, a boy’s dance is to gather in and coil upon coil the rope as the lines of fisherfolk reclaim it from the sea. Almost languidly, so well does he know his role, does he stretch his arm out, sweep it in, swoop down, coil rope, again and over again, a gain, a gain.

The fisherfolk’s dance is this:  always with their seaward arm horizontal and wound with the rope, they lean away from the ocean almost to the angle of the sloping beach, waiting for the lull between wavecrash and backwash. In that lull, all take as many footsteps up the beach as they can, altogether, before stopping again, all together, as the water draws back. Each one straining against the water’s pull, locked in their joint commitment never to give back an inch of what’s gained from the ocean. As the one furthest up the rope reaches the edge of the dune, s/he lets go of the rope and trudges down the beach, to pick it up again as first in line where the waves sweep in.

Crash, rushinfroth; in just that moment, that ocean breath, the fisherfolk take their small steps up the beach; hiss water across sand suckedout and the people stubbornly freeze; crash, rushinfroth; a breath in which the fisherfolk take their small steps up the beach; hiss water across sandsuckedout and the people stubbornly freeze; crash, rushinfroth, a breath in which the fisherfolk take their small steps up the beach; hiss water across sandsuckedout and the people stubbornly freeze …

Part II

The rope yields to the beginnings of the net as it is heaved out from the breaking waves. The rows of people break up and become a gathering at the sea’s edge, a crowd to heave the final finale home. Only two burlymen, armpit-deep retrieving the net from the sea, have a sure dance:  grab and thrash and heave – pause – grab and thrash and heave – pause - grab and thrash and heave – pause – grab and thrash and heave…

All the rest are just constantly at the ready, should their heave be needed - and it is. So it’s a dance of quiet haphazardness for most as their mighty struggle at last beaches the net and its catch, kersplonk, on the sand. It is only then that any of them finally know what all that effort has bought them.

Now’s a new turn to the dance: against a backdrop of general desolation, the burlyestfisherman splutters his frustration and beats his chest at the sea. The catch is mostly heavy, unusable jellyfish; the rest, only the common silvershardfish, useful only for smoking and eating at home. Almost nothing of value, and all that effort. So outraged is he that his chestbeating becomes fierce to the point where he’s in danger of beating himself up; and then he too succumbs to desolation.

But just for a moment, and then he’s furiously demanding the rest to get over it. Two remain to rinse, mend and fold the ginormous slingshot/trawling net, while all else ‘cept the woman gather around a small rowing boat. Collectively they heave it up the dune, out of reach of the sea.

Two biggish boys swoop the fish from the net's middle into a crate, carry it up the beach and dump the catch, silver jerks of suffocating fish [this a sad shadow play too?].

From stage right two tanned boerseuns emerge. First circling the jellyfish plopped discarded on the water’s edge, they then prod and spear their translucent domes with sharpened sticks. Perhaps they hadn’t realised the jellyfish were waiting for the tide to release them from the beach to swim again.

Perhaps they had.

Goo camp dog at Jay's Beach

IN REHANA'S WORDS

Wednesday, 15 May 2013

We’ve finally had a long, satisfying slog north. All we needed was a stopover on the way to Vilankulo, Vilankulos,  Vilanculo or Vilanculos, as it is generally spelled, so we replaced Tofo with Maxixe.

We all rose early on Sunday, Mike and Carol practically at dawn as they had to go south first to get their car part that had finally arrived in Maputo.

The ferry was at the dock when we arrived not too many hours after dawn, just a short wait before we were across a river with water hyacinths drifting down its swollen banks. As we reinflated our tyres on the other side, a man on crutches came to stretch out a hand, one trouser leg tied below the knee. Landmine victim, you have to think.

The single-lane highway to Maxixe was smooth and bustling. In places the red earth creeps over its culverts towards the centre line. The highway is lined with settlements sprouting vegetable gardens and clusters of reed houses connected by clean-swept sand yards.  

Many traditional dwellings have been replaced with unplastered breezeblock houses, their discarded reed roofs rotting into a compost heap. Many a clean yard sports piles of breezeblock, sand and stone waiting to transform lives.

Vodacom and Coca Cola are painted almost every building lining the highway between Maputo and Maxixe red; the few they skipped are MCell yellow. Portuguese trading stores with faded Omo and Five Roses advertising boards are mostly abandoned husks surrounded by wood and iron huts offering all sorts of goods and services.

Jules was caught by a sneaky speedtrap operated by a fresh-faced youth who probably graduated from traffic cop school a few weeks ago.  There was no attempt to solicit a bribe; he and his colleague were professionalism personified. 

There’s a settlement or a town smack bang on the highway every few kilometres, where speed limit drops from 100km/hour to 60km. There are ample signs warning drivers’ to reduce their velocidade, but few showing where you can pick up speed again. The cops lurk on the edges of the villages with their traps, where they appear to be collecting ample revenue for the state. Jules paid the fine, collected the receipt.

We caught up with Mike and Carol at Xai Xai, where we attempted against all odds to find something decent to eat. The first restaurant we tried had an extensive menu, the waitress took our order and disappeared for a long while before coming back to explain that they had no cheese and no bread. 

I went inside to check why the place was buzzing. All the patrons had their heads down over plates heaped with white rice with a small splatter of what looked like grey chicken stew on the side. We went to the place where Carol had found a fried egg sandwich, which went down well with Selif Keita pumping in the background.

It was getting dark when we reached Maxixe, and we realised there was a hazard to driving at sunset that we hadn’t factored in and were immediately determined to avoid – hundreds of cooking fires sending thick grey drifts of smoke across the road.

Mike had found the municipal campsite by the time we arrived. They had two chalets available, which seemed adequate – especially after a day’s drive. The campsite restaurant seemed adequate as well, until its grilled chicken and fruit juice surprised me on the upside.

The next morning we woke up in heaven. The lagoon lapped a few steps from the doors of our chalets and the croaking sound I thought signalled frogs turned out to be flamingoes honking. Inhambane twinkled across the lagoon and small ferries were scooting across to the town.

Our flamingo neighbours

It took seconds to reach consensus: we had to take the ferry across the lagoon and spend a few hours in Inhambane. It had been an important trading centre for the Arabs hundreds of years ago; they shipped thousands of slaves there from the shores of Africa, never to return again.
Imhambane took Julia and I back to Havana; it was as cheerful, but a lot more crumbly.
Julia and Carol’s photos do justice to centuries-old buildings we found on our wonderful three-hour walk around the town, and the spectacular mural on a suburban wall.

I thought the ferry staff was hilarious when we first crossed the lagoon; they all wore proper blue and white sailor suits complete with small white hats and square collars over their shoulder blades. The skippers stood during the 40-minute ride, steering with one foot on the rudder while they peered over the roof at the hand signals given by their mates at the front of the ferry.

Our skipper on the trip back had me deep in thought. He too steered with his right foot, but one hand was planted firmly on the knee of his crooked leg, like Captain Morgan in the rum advert.
But he would never have anything to do with rum. Above a face sculpted by high cheekbones and wide brow sat a white and yellow kuffiyeh.

He made me think of Moussa Mbiki, who had established a huge sultanate in this country long before the Portuguese arrived. I’m embarrassed to admit that I only read about him for the first time a few days ago in Maputo.
We were really fed blatant lies at school about Portuguese navigators who discovered everything worth finding. The Arabs, Indians, Chinese and other people weren’t airbrushed out of apartheid history; they were excised. Moussa Mbiki, at least, lives on in the name of a country (wonder whether there’s any relationship to a South African family with certain tendencies).

I’m no longer surprised by the profusion of mosques and the children in chadors coming home from madressah. Islam reached Mozambique centuries before it found a foothold in the Cape.

We left for Vilank/culo/s at lunch time. On this stretch it was Mike’s turn to get caught in a speed trap. Minutes after we crossed the Tropic of Capricorn I saw my very first baobab tree ever.

But that’s a story for another day, because my vocabulary is still struggling to describe the Bazaruto archipelago.