Africa & Middle East > Mozambique > Bazaruto Archipelago > Bazaruto > Articles > Wild Life in Mozambique

Having spent three days on the neighbouring Benguerra Island, we landed on Bazaruto Island with high expectations of yet another tropical idyll in this chain of islands off the coast of Mozambique.

Perhaps it was the relieved-to-be-leaving air about the out-going guests that should have rung alarm bells. Or their down-at-heel appearance. Or simply the fact that the lodge’s one vehicle was broken down and we had to carry our bags the (admittedly short) distance to reception.

Lisa, the blonde hostess, was all smiles and bounce, straight out of the red-coat school of jollification. Her strong Afrikaans accent and inarticulate welcoming speech belied the fact that she was Yorkshire born and bred. With creditable enthusiasm, she explained that there were three other guests staying (in a 40 bed lodge) and apologised for the fact that the planned refurbishment had not in fact happened. Then she assured us that it would very soon.

Swaying palm trees did nothing to alleviate the air of decay about Indigo Bay Lodge. Our chalets were spartan. The cracks in the paths symptomatic of a pervading atmosphere of gloom. Blaring piped music helped us locate the dining room for lunch. A tired buffet was laid out around two enormous pieces of coral, painted candy-floss pink.

In the afternoon we opted to take a boat trip to Paradise Island, once a popular holiday resort during the Portuguese colonial era and reputedly where Bob Dylan wrote his song, Mozambique. Our boatman told us that the island is also known as Santa Carolina, after a Portuguese nun who fell in love with a local fisherman and came to live on the island. The story goes that she bore his child but the other locals didn’t like the arrangement and killed mother and child. Whether fact or fiction, there are two graves, one of an adult and one of a child at the end of the island.

Away from this cheery welcome, the shell of the Santa Carolina hotel sits decaying exactly as it was abandoned by the Portuguese in the seventies at the beginning of Mozambique’s long civil war. It is a ghastly monument to the concrete architecture of its day. Walking around the empty buildings, with their fractured concrete walkways and glass-less windows, was like entering an African Sarajevo. Fresh flowers in the derelict church only added to the surreal atmosphere. An over-fertile imagination could all too easily picture it as the setting for the final cataclysmic scene in some macabre horror movie. We giggled nervously as we discussed possible story-lines, and left.

Back at Indigo Bay Lodge teethmarks in the soap revealed the presence of rodents in our chalet. We dived into our bags in search of moral support - duty free whisky was never more comforting. Dinner continued the surreal tone: ultra-violet strip lights made the table cloths and the pink painted coral glow hideously as the dining room took on the appearance of a seedy lap-dancing club. Surrendering in the face of the piped music we retired to bed.

It was an unsettled night. No sooner had we turned out the lights than we heard the sounds of scurrying feet. Our attempts to pretend to ourselves that this was not rats running round the room were foiled by a bout of squeaking and squealing culminating in a loud thud as two of the repulsive rodents fought for the trophy of our shower soap. Heightened by the hallucinogenic effects of our anti-malarial prophylaxis, Lariam, what little sleep we achieved was plagued by nightmares in which Bob Dylan strummed funeral dirges against a backdrop of corpses swinging from gibbets on Paradise Island.

We roused ourselves blearily to a suitably overcast day. Over a microscopic breakfast of bacon and egg that was more irradiated than fried, our protestations about the nocturnal disturbances fell on deaf ears. Lisa, in ever more ebullient form, announced that she had never before had complaints of rats, but anyway as we were in a wildlife preserve she couldn’t do anything about them.

By now a survivors spirit had gripped us. We snorkled on the reef regardless of drumming rain, and lightning arcing across the sky. It was warmer in the water than out and, had the water been clearer, there were amazing, exotic fish to see. We fished with guides who knew nothing of fishing, and photographed distant flamingos that on a sunnier day would have looked sublime. The rats scurried openly along the beams in the dining room as we partied with a desperation borne of stoicism.

To set the record straight, under normal circumstances the Bazaruto Archipelago matches up to one’s expectations of a tropical idyll: long golden beaches, swaying palms, high dunes, world class big game fishing and peerless diving. You may catch a glimpse of a manta ray gliding by, or a dugong, one of nature’s mermaids. The local fisherman are extremely friendly and will take you out for relaxing sundowners on their creaky old dhows. There are some wonderful comfortable lodges, that are stylish, comfortable and rodent-free. But I will check carefully on the state of refurbishment at Indigo Bay before planning a return.

Articles

• More from John Warburton-Lee