WE took it fairly easily after that. There was no hope of getting the wheel repaired quickly – if, indeed, it could be repaired at all – and this was not the best place in the world to find oneself without a spare wheel.
We stopped in Xai-Xai for petrol, and directions to the nearest campsite.
‘Camping’ is ‘camping’ in just about any European language, but the African petrol pump attendant’s knowledge of European languages was limited to ‘regular or super?’
We finally found the campsite and pitched our tent by the light of the car’s headlights. Deidre cooked up a mess of pottage. Don’t ask me what went into it, but it tasted good enough to eat! At long last we could turn in for the night.
But our destination was a lot further north – Inhambane, almost halfway between Laurenco Marques and Beira. We set off at four-thirty next morning, an unintentional but lucky timing which brought us to the Jao Bella lagoons just as the sun was rising.
We sat at the roadside while our coffee brewed and watched the peach-pink dawn light creep towards us across the Indian Ocean, sneak across the palm-fringed spit of sand and finally turn the lagoons into seas of strawberry milk.
We arrived in Inhambane with plenty of time to spare before we were due to meet Pete and the rest of the party. We found a garage which could repair the wheel, and then went to the market to bargain for fresh fruit.
We didn’t do too badly, considering that all the negotiations were carried out in mime. The going rate for oranges was five for one escudo. We got 37 for five, but I’m sure we were swindled on the bananas.
This was actually our second attempt to buy bananas. We had come across a small boy by the roadside on the way from Xai-Xai, but he could only quote us a price in shillingi, a form of currency with which we were not familiar.
We discovered afterwards, from our experts, that Rhodesian money was commonly accepted and that the rate of exchange was four escudos to a shilling. By then it was too late, and we had already paid a much higher price in the market.
The market itself was somewhat disappointing.
I am not sure quite what I had expected, but certainly something a bit more picturesque. Instead of a street market, with pens full of goats in the main square, we found a modern market hall, with a car park outside it. But the organisation was only skin-deep. The goats may not have been in evidence, but the inside of the market was a glorious muddle of fish, fruit, and raffia laundry baskets.
There is something to be said for the system. It is much easier to carry 37 oranges if you have a raffia laundry basket to put them in.
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