En route: Windhoek - Jo-burg.
When they say that you need patience in Mozambique, my first impression is that they are not kidding… From the moment that we got near the LAM transfer desk in Jo-burg, everything slooooowed down… luckily, we had some 4 hours to kill so passing 1 of them in a somewhat chaotic queue was not a problem.
Arriving in Maputo was a fun scene: we stood in line to have our passports checked and then had to buy visas. After yelling at Hélène because she told him that she needed a visa (he apparently heard her say that she didn’t), the border guard took our money and passports and disappeared. Everyone else filtered through except for us, a young Saudi woman, a couple of Americans (one wearing an Obama shirt) and a group of 4 Japanese guys who were waiting for their local Japanese contact to facilitate their entry. Well, when she appeared, she certainly displayed a novel way of dealing with the slooooow border guards: she started screaming at them, telling them that they were doing things wrong and that they had made mistakes, etc… You can imagine how well this went over… but she didn’t care and in the end there she was hectoring a group of three of them. At one point one of the female guards started parroting her way of speaking in a high pitch and fast delivery (not exactly a banner moment for race relations, that…) and then told her that she had to “relax” and “speak sloooowly…” Eventually, the issue (whatever it was) got resolved and they left. We were among the last to go, and as a result, it was pretty late by the time that we got to our backpacker’s hostal.
Maybe it'll be nice one day...
Now, I’ve spent the night in some dingy places… that basement in Windsor in ’93, with the spiders and boiler that sounded like it may explode at any minute; the alley in Paris outside the hostal where the manager dude had woken me up in the middle of the night by masturbating next to me, and thus obliged me to pull my knife; and well, the Brisas del Occidente in San Pedro Sula did not exactly pour on the amenities at $2 a night (yeah, 2 bucks…). That said, it has been a good long while since I’ve been to serious dinge and after seeing some very nice and affordable lodgings in South Africa and Namibia (especially the Chameleon, where 25 bucks a night gets you a fantastic room with bath, a pool, a spotless communal kitchen, fun bar, internet facilities AND two cute puppies running around), this place was quite the unhappy shock. First of all, we had to wake up the night clerk, who was dozing/passed out while a couple of groups of hippies drank merrily. She was pretty out of it and just hostile and unhelpful enough for us to take the benefit of the doubt and throw it away... When we trucked up to the room, we noticed that the whole building was a construction site – dust and mortar everywhere, workers’ soiled clothing, beams, tools, the works… Then, when Ms. Cheerful opened the room that she thought was ours, she discovered people already in it… which precipitated a reluctant return trip for her to the reception to find the right room/key. When we did get in to the proper one, I had to immediately kill a cockroach (albeit pantry size, not prime Mexico racing stock) before she left us by reminding us that there was no bathroom in that part of the building and that we had to use the other ones outside… OK, no problem… it’s a hostal and that’s the norm… but then we SAW the bathrooms… vile, vile, vile. I wouldn’t have washed a flea-ridden dog in them (and I could have done, because on top of everything, this place had 3 poor wrinkle dogs that were constantly scratching and rubbing themselves against any and everything to try to alleviate their constant itching…). Yes, charming place. Oh, and the mosquito nets were kind of tattered too, but luckily, there weren’t too many mosquitoes around that evening so the malaria danger factor seemed low. Remembering Rosa’s wise words that everything is temporary, we had a beer and then retired to the room, pretty much set on being good bourgeoisie and finding a better place tomorrow (today).
Inside the net.
This experience has helped me understand the guidebook’s nuances… ie: when it says that “there isn’t a lot of good, safe budget accommodation in Maputo and that most people choose to upgrade a bit,” what they really mean is “Budget accommodation is utter shite; pay a little extra and get a clean place!”
1 comment:
oh my god. i don't look at the blog for a few days and there's this EXPLOSION of activity!
you had me laughing at "basement in windsor '93" - everything about that is funny.
i've got some reading to do here...
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