BECAUSE of the fishing convention on Inhaca Island, we had no reservations for the four days after leaving Swaziland. So we booked into the best hotel in Lourenco Marques (now Maputo).
David, who had by now become totally acclimatised to the casual, informal lifestyle of Africa, was horrified to be greeted by a uniformed doorman. How could I bring them to a place where he might actually have to wear a tie? But the dress code applied only to the staff. Guests were expected to make themselves comfortable, which we did and lived like kings on fresh seafood and vinho verde.
It rained during the night but, by breakfast time, the sun was shining. One has to live in parched Africa to appreciate properly an overnight shower.
Where yesterday nature had been tired, wilting in the afternoon heat, hiding her true colours under a layer of grey dust, the morning light showed greener trees and brighter flowers greeting the sunshine with enthusiasm for the new day.
It was a beautiful morning. It would have been lovely to have had breakfast on the terrace overlooking the hotel gardens and the sparkling ocean. Obviously the head waiter was struck by the same thought at the same moment.
From nowhere, there appeared about 20 waiters with trays.
The tables in the dining room were stripped of their place settings and, less that five minutes later, we were being served fresh tropical fruit salad, hot bread rolls and coffee on the terrace.
Lourenco Marques was a city of extreme contrast, the more so because it was not large enough to hide its seamier side from the eyes of tourists. While everything in the luxury hotels was as perfect as management could make it – from the spotless white gloves of the doorman to the spotless white towels in the toilets – two or three blocks away one encountered the other side of life: unswept streets, uncollected garbage, insanitary sanitation and flies on everything.
Despite this, the all-pervading smell was of food. Every second building was a seafood restaurant, exuding the delicious aroma of grilled prawns and peri-peri sauce.
Totally irresistible, in spite of the surroundings, so we picked one of the less grubby-looking eateries and ordered a dozen giant prawns each.
The waiter looked at us askance. Did we know just how big a giant prawn was? Would we not prefer to start with just two dozen, not three?
It was a good thing we took his advice. Two hours and two bottles of wine later, there was still one prawn left on the platter and we had all declared the total impossibility of finding room for it in our digestive systems. I did eventually eat it, because I couldn’t bear the thought of wasting such a delicacy, but I finished up suffering from what David inelegantly called ‘the podge’.
While the scruffy cafés were more amusing than the hotel, we did decide to ‘eat in’ on our last night. Unbeknown to us, we had arrived in time for Mardi Gras, and the Hotel Polana was the centre of the revelry.
Although it is not celebrated in Lourenco Marques to the same extent as it is in Rio, Mardi Gras is still carnival time and quite, quite crazy.
The hotel was full of people in weird costumes and ghastly masks, each more repulsive than the last.
At the height of the revelry, the door opened and in walked a man who was eight feet tall. Wild applause greeted his entry, and hoots of laughter as he nearly tripped over. But we didn’t laugh at him. One look at the size of his hands showed that he was a real giant and not a clown on stilts. I felt very sorry for his wife. Her embarrassment was obvious and they left after only one drink. It was a shame that they couldn’t enjoy the party.
A later look at the Guiness Book of Records confirmed that he hadn’t been part of the act.
Gabriel Estevao Monjane, of Lourenco Marques, was quoted as being 2,438 metres tall and still growing. He later became the tallest man in the world.
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