26 August 2009
Posted By Sika on May 21, 2010
We got off the bus at the Vilankulo turn off of the EN1. We caught a chapa, for which perhaps we were overcharged due to a confusion about the difference between 15 and 50, although it left immediately and didn’t wait to fill, so perhaps not.
Once we got into town, we noted that there is no consensus on how to spell Vilankulo, as we saw it spelled three different ways within three blocks. While trying to get our bearings, Luz, a woman, in a minivan with her kid, stopped and asked us where we were going, and when we said Zombie Cucumber, offered us a lift. It’s hard to feel threatened by a middle-aged woman with a kid. Especially one who is driving a minivan (note to anyone who aspires to a career in serial killing—be a middle-aged mom with a minivan and a kid). I was ok with a dorm bed until I saw them and discovered the private chalets were Mt500, only a bit more than the dorm beds. The dorm is in a somewhat open-sided rondavel, 10 mattresses arranged in a circle on the floor, with no cubbies or lockers or anything for storing stuff.
Luz called Dolphin Dhow, the same place that Courtney (a PCV I met in Ilha) had recommended to me for dhow “safaris.” Junior, one of the owners of Dolphin Dhow, is Mozambican, which in some ways makes Dolphin Dhow a better place to give money than any of the plethora of South African-owned places in Vilankulo and the rest of the southern Mozambican coastline. This is an issue because many of the self-catering places in the area are owned by South Africans, are rented almost exclusively by South Africans, who pack in all their food and everything else, which ensures that hordes of people can visit another country without putting more than a few meticais into that country’s economy.
Unfortunately, Dolphin Dhow only had one chalet remaining, and Junior took offense at the idea that Junior and I weren’t willing to share. So, Luz called Baobab Beach Backpackers who had chalets available for Mt500, and we headed over there.
The road to Baobab wasn’t all paved, and there was a funny spot where Luz sent her daughter out ahead of the minivan on a particularly treacherous bit of sandy road. The minivan horn was broken, so Luz’s daughter needed to holler people out of the way as the minivan did a number of half spinouts this way and that down the road.
We got to Baobab, where the grass chalets were small but sweet, with shared toilets and outdoor showers with piping hot water. The beds were comfortable on poured concrete platforms, and while a bit tatty, the mozzie nets did their job.
I kept waiting for Luz to ask for money or to try to sell us on something more than just handing us her guide/transfer brochures, but she never did. She was just being nice.
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