The bustling beach town and the deserted island: Day 39 - 41

Beautiful Magarouque.

Flamingoes in the sea!

Driftwood on Magarouque island.

Our next destination was Vilanculo. Despite the warnings against visiting the town of “Villian”culo, we decided to listen to the positive reviews we’d heard and arrived to a relaxed yet happening atmosphere, with the sea so still it blended into the sky – just the islands in the distance were evidence of a horizon. And how glad we were that we gave it a chance! It goes to show that different people have different tastes when travelling, and what some don’t enjoy, others adore. 

Vilanculo definitely had a good dose of beach spunk. We followed some rusty signs along a sandy road right next to the beach (which seemed as if it was a village path or someone’s back garden instead of a legitimate town road), asked a local where a nice place to stay was, who then hopped on to the bonnet of the Landy and gave us directions by waving his arms around as we drove to Beach Village.

The new place in town, Beach Village offers chalets and dorms, has a great bar and restaurant that are open and practically on the beach. It is still under construction, and is not officially open, however they were not turning guests down, and happily welcomed us.

Colourful water wonderland.

That afternoon we organized with a local rusta called Daute, who we met through the barman at Beach Village, to take us out to the nearby islands on his boat snorkeling and fishing the following day. Magarouque is the closest island to Vilanculo, with Bazaruto far in the distance.  So we decided that would be the one to explore. For 25 dollars each we were going on a half-day island adventure – 6 hours of sailing, snorkeling and exploring, with lunch included. We couldn’t wait!

The most amazing lunch!

The next day we hopped aboard the local sailing boat and headed towards the small piece of land on the horizon. The boys had their lines trawling while the girls lay sunbathing on deck. The colourful sea life below us was even visible in the deep waters, which was as mesmerizingly blue as the turquoise shoreline. We eventually set foot on the Magarouque sand, and decided to go walking, knowing eventually we’d land up in the same place. We had about an hour to wait before the tide was right for snorkeling, and were told by our sailors that it only took half an hour to walk around the whole island. Never trust African time. An hour and a 45 minutes later we got back to the boat, but looking out onto the sea in all directions, strolling along completely serene white beaches with driftwood scattered everywhere, and seeing flamingoes in the ocean it was totally worth the trek.

Our sailing boat...

We fetched our snorkeling gear from the boat and walked back down the beach to where the rock drop off started, ready to snorkel all the way back right along the shore with the tide. Bright yellow and blue gar fish with their long stouts, giant multi-coloured parrot fish, a big and shy octopus, hundreds of small stripy angel fish and polka-dotted box fish gliding in and around the rocks…what an under-water wonderland! When we got back to the boat, a delicious local lunch of fish, coconut rice, Portugese bread, fruit and salad and soft drinks was waiting. We savoured every bite before heading back to the mainland after a day well worth ever dollar spent.