Vilankulo

The bay and its islands were part of the Indian Ocean trading world long before the Portuguese: Bitonga and Tonga fishing communities worked the flats, and traders from the Swahili coast and further afield called along this shore for ivory, ambergris and pearls. The name of the town comes from the local chief Gamela Vilankulo Mukoke, several of its bairros are named after his sons, and the surrounding district still carries the family name.

Under Portuguese rule Vilanculos, as the colonial spelling had it, was a small administrative and fishing centre on a coast whose wealth lay elsewhere. The islands offshore were used for fishing camps, coconut planting and, in the twentieth century, a handful of hotels aimed at settlers and visitors from Rhodesia and South Africa; Santa Carolina, a small rock island of three beaches, was known as Paradise Island. The archipelago was declared a national park in 1971.

Independence in 1975 and the civil war that followed emptied the hotels and cut the coast off from its South African market. Recovery came after the 1992 peace, when the beaches south of the Save River reopened to visitors driving up from Johannesburg and the first island lodges were rebuilt. Vilankulo, with the airport and the shortest crossing, became the mainland base for the archipelago, and the town has grown steadily since, though cyclones periodically damage lodges, houses and the fishing fleet: Favio came ashore in Inhambane province in February 2007 and did widespread damage in the town, where four people were killed and at least seventy injured.

This is Bitonga and Tonga country in the north of Inhambane province, a coastal culture built around fishing, coconut and cashew, with Portuguese as the language of school and administration and English widely used in the lodges. The sailing dhow, still built and repaired on the beach, is the practical centre of local life as well as the image visitors carry away: crews go out on the tide and come back when it turns.

Music and dance follow the wider southern Mozambican pattern — marrabenta in the bars, gospel in the churches, South African house from the minibuses — and the timbila xylophone tradition of the Chopi belongs to districts further south in the same province. Capulana cloth is worn daily, and craft stalls sell wood carving, basketwork and shell work to visitors, some of it brought down from the north.

Christian churches, both Catholic and Pentecostal, are well attended, and a Muslim minority has a long presence along this coast. Custom is relaxed by Mozambican standards because of tourism, but the ordinary courtesies hold: greetings before business, patience with time, and a sharp line between beach dress and town dress.

Vilankulo is a small town, only about five kilometres long, that has grown quickly over the past two decades on tourism investment, and the district around it holds many more people in villages along the coast and inland. Most households depend on fishing, small farming of cassava, maize and coconut, trade in the market, and work in tourism as guides, boat crew, cooks and lodge staff.

The day is set by the tide and the sun. Boats go out early, the market fills in the morning, and the middle of the day is quiet and hot; the flats fill with people gathering clams and small fish when the water pulls back. Building work along the beachfront is constant, and the town has spread inland as people move in from the surrounding district.

Electricity and water reach the centre but supply is uneven further out, and the roads are sand once off the tarred main street. Seasons in tourism matter greatly: the South African holidays and the dry-season months bring work, and the wet months bring little. Cyclone damage, the cost of fuel and food, and competition for fish in the bay are the recurring worries.

Seafood is the plain fact of eating here. Prawns from the bay, crab, calamari, rock cod and other line fish come off the boats and on to grills with garlic, lemon and piri-piri, and lobster appears at the lodges. At the market, cooked food stalls sell fried fish with rice or chips for a fraction of lodge prices.

The staples behind it are xima, the stiff maize porridge, cassava and rice, eaten with matapa — cassava leaves pounded with groundnuts and coconut milk — or with coconut fish curries that mark this coast out from the drier south. Coconut goes into rice, into sauces and into fresh drinking nuts sold from wheelbarrows, and cashews from Inhambane's groves are roasted and salted and sold in bags along the road.

Portuguese habits carry on in the bakeries: crusty rolls in the morning, custard tarts, chamussas and rissóis in the cafés, and frango à piri-piri at the roadside grills. Cold 2M and Laurentina beer are the local drinks, along with sugar-cane spirit, strong coffee, and juices pressed from mango, cashew fruit and baobab in season.