Aventura

I met up with my friend Rodrigues for a trip to the beach, which ended up being a cool mini-adventure with some interesting logistics.

The first hurdle was convincing him that we could leave at 8am instead of the 6am that he was threatening. He accepted and we met along the coast at Costa do Sol to look for public transport towards Macaneta, a popular beach around an hour north of Maputo. We eventually found a bus going to Marracuene, the town closest to Macaneta. From there we boarded an open-backed pick-up truck stuffed with people, sugar cane, sacks and buckets of all manner of things. Lining up along the sides, one drunk guy couldn’t maintain the required balance and babbled incoherently in Shangaan. As his Portuguese was limited, I started talking to the older woman next to me, who called me her son as I was born in the same year as her eldest. On learning I now live in Tanzania, her only question was ‘têm feijão lá’? (do they have beans there?). I loved the query more than I can possibly convey.

We arrived at the end of the line on the pick-up, and negotiated a ride across the water in a small rickety boat with two women, their sacks of goods, and the drunk guy. They all live on remote Mbengele Island (variously spelt Bengalena, Bengalene and numerous other ways), separated from the sandy spit of Macaneta by a lagoon / channel / inlet.

Many of the islanders were getting drunk on locally brewed corn wine or wine fashioned from another staple such as cassava or rice. Rodrigues and I poked around the dunes and simple homes on the island, where people live pretty much off grid. Later we hitched a ride back across the channel and moved to the exposed beach that gets constantly pummelled by Indian Ocean waves. Strolling on Macaneta beach always has a wild vibe with towering dunes and aggressive surf. The sunset walk was dramatic and windy and we came across a hawksbill turtle quite recently dead and washed up judging by the fresh blood around its mouth.