Varela: water music

As every day I wanted to set off early. Today I even got up at 7am. As every day I left the accommodation at 10am.

It looked like it would be a long wait but it wasn’t. I checked in the toca toca going to Varela. I had a demi-baguette with two-egg-omelette in one of the bus station chop joints. This and coffee (instant but I was given the whole can so I could splurge) cost 600CFA. A man in the same joint was having a tasty-looking spaghetti with omelette. The pasta was dark from some sauce but it ceased looking tasty after the chef dropped thick layers of mayonnaise on it. People are strong in mayonnaise around, the chop joints serve it from huge plastic buckets. I also saw women serving huge bowls of rice and sauce for breakfast in the village but the seating situation – men were eating sitting on benches with no tables, holding the bowls in hand – discouraged me well from trying the rice.

Varela is mentioned by my Rough Guide to Africa as one of the Guinea Bissau highlights. I am down to the 2008 Rough Guide and the latest Lonely Planet’s West Africa but honestly Lonely Planet cannot be more useless. There was a couple of Italians on motorbikes in the guesthouse with me and they had an ancient Lonely Planet to Senegal, Gambia, Guineas and I think Sierra Leone. I couldn’t even Google this book.

Varela has only one attraction and that’s the beach. I’m not big on beaches but I thought it could be nice to go – beaches in West Africa are often empty.

The toca toca that took me to Varela was in horrible shape. The seat cushions were all ripped off, the doors on my side (I was sitting in front, next to the driver), were not closing, there was a latch, of the kind that you can see on public toilets’ doors. The latch opened a few times while we were driving.

I paid 1250CFA for the ticket and threw my rucksack in. I was kinda hoping that that’s it re baggage fees but ha! Nope. The boys asked 1000CFA more, I said 500CFA and they agreed.

The road to Varela is bad. A standard 2WD car will struggle. It’s 53kms and it took us almost 3 hours to get there. At times the road became very narrow and the dry thorny bushes were lashing at me through the open window.

Occasionally we stopped, the driver’s assistant would open the bonnet and pour water on the engine to keep it from boiling over. It was +37C.

I stay at Chez Helena Apart Hotel. Apart hotel that’s stretching it but the room is OK, ensuite in a white-painted bungalow. Chez Helena is also confusing, as the hotel seems to be run by two Portuguese men.

There are signs pointing to another hotel, almost next to the beach but I decided not to check it out.

The two men running Chez Helena speak Portuguese. The first man I met told me in Spanish the price is 15.000CFA. It’s much though the guide books mention 17.000CFA. When I was shown to the room by a French-speaking woman she started asking me what I want to eat for lunch and that I could pick whatever I want. When I asked for the price the 2nd man running the hotel probably thought I’m asking for the price of the room and he said 12.000CFA, saying that normally it’s 15.000 but he will lower it for me, breakfast included We’ll see how much I’ll pay tomorrow. Lunch and dinner are 4.000-6000CFA depending on the order.

Since I didn’t know what I could really eat and the woman claimed they had everything I picked poulet as usual. I even asked if they had porc and she said they did. The reason I asked is because on the way to Varela I had a discussion with a fellow passenger about the pigs. There are many running around but nobody eats them in this Muslim region.

Back to lunch, one of the owners mentioned I could eat caldilho de choco (or something like that, I have no idea) but since he couldn’t explain what it is, I stack to the chicken.

Lunch was tasty, there were four other men eating with me and they had the mysterious caldilho. It turned to be squid! I’m not much of a seafood eater, except the squid, which I adore. I was left with my chicken.

After lunch I went to the beach. It’s a bit of a walk from Chez Helene, a kilometre or so. The village looks poor. There is no electricity. Chez Helene has its own generator. Bizarrely, there are solar lamp posts on the main road that look a bit off in this environment. Many hats are still thatched. There are signs displaying Chinese help promos of giving satellite TV to 100thousand Guineans. There are signs talking about integration of Senegalese refugees (!). There are no proper tap wells built in Varela, I saw people collecting water with a bucket on a rope by hand from wells.

I assumed walking straight ahead will get me to the beach. I entered a forest and climbed uphill a little. The landscape was bleak. It looked like there has been a fire recently, there were smouldering logs, the grass was blackened and there were many empty house skeletons. From the hill I saw the ocean but the hill fell steeply to the water and there was no sand. I continued walking through this landscape that looked like taken straight from the Fallout computer games and saw the beach.

The ocean is obviously taking the land in Varela. The land ends with an escarpment and it looks like it’s continuously washed away. There is a ruined building that is already falling into the sea. The beach was smooth, very clean. The water was quiet. And I was the only person there.

I walked on and in my head I had Fallout games – a post-nuclear war world, with the blackened forest and ruined houses around. I had Zone X from Annihilation book series in front of me. Not a single person in sight and the beach went on till the horizon.

I walked on and after 30-40mins I saw a few fishermen processing their catch. After another 20mins I saw a probably Lebanese family. The men catching fish, the women sitting by the table smoking shisha, the children playing around and their black servants sitting on the sand.

And that was the whole population of the Varela beach. The low escarpment ends after about 15mins and the ground smooths down and it’s only sand, water, sun and myself. I lied down and stayed mesmerised until sunset.

On my way back I saw the other hotel. It’s also bungalows. There were three cars, all Gambian registrations (I’ve seen very many Gambian-registered cars in Guinea Bissau, I wonder) but it was dead empty. I saw a white man in a bug house in the compound, he said he rents it here but we didn’t find any staff.

Dinner at Chez Helene today was a vegetable soup, not too tasty. Everyone got two bowls of it.

I finished reading “Water music” on a couch under a big mango tree. As hilarious as the book is, it’s also bitter and sour. I enjoyed reading it very much.