Advertisement
Published: October 14th 2005
Edit Blog Post
We had planned to write about our bus trip from Vilankulo to Beira (Mozambique) as a classic Africa transport experience (i.e., bus runs out of gas in the middle of a brush fire at high noon, insects and spiders streaming onto the roadway to escape, driver’s assistant gets arrested while bringing us gas canisters - an act made illegal to combat black market sales to neighboring Zimbabwe - but various combinations of borrowed gas, pushing the bus, and other roadside repairs finally getting us on our way). But the whole experience got trumped before we could put it on paper…
Our amazing train trip across the center of Mozambique (see blog post) gets us only as far as Cuamba. We immediately spot a covered pick-up truck headed for Entre Lagos, a remote Malawi border crossing. The truck is packed, which in Africa means it will leave within the next couple hours. With a “desculpa,” and a, “com licença,”we climb in, wedge our knees and feet between the tightly packed knees and feet of the existing passengers, and plop our bottoms on burlap sacks of something - thankful that it's not dried fish this time. With the two of us, the
truck is truly packed, so we must only wait another 30 minutes for a few more passengers. The final would be passenger begins to get in and decides that the truck is simply too full. Unprecedented!
By now, we are used to the exhaust and dust deluge that accompanies open air transport and have come to believe that we hypersensitive westerners are the only ones plagued by such petty desires for oxygen. So, when we start rolling and half of the passengers pull out their dust masks and bandanas, we know we are in for it.
Before we can pick-up any speed, we encounter a classic Mozambique police check point. The police notice our discomfort and ask for everyone’s ID. No one volunteers to buy our way through so with much squirming and squiggling, we produce our documents. Unfortunately, the driver doesn’t have his. We drive back to town, make some circles, drive back to the police check point, exchange words and other things, and carry on our merry way.
We pick-up just enough speed for a light face-coating of dirt, when the tire blows-out. This is truly shocking since the point of the blow-out seems to
have been stitched together with a quite high quality thread. Just bad luck, I guess. But there's a spare! And it is even more firmly stitched.
All’s great until we come to a fork in the road. We take the turn to Entre Lagos and someone explodes into irate Portuguese cursing. The rest of the truck responds even more fervently. Sarah somehow deciphers that one passenger has been told that he’d be dropped at his village - 45 minutes out of the way. By now, we are 4 hours behind “schedule,” but he is VERY persuasive and wins the debate. After dropping him - along with his three bags of dried beans, each wedged under a different 50kg burlap sack which collectively make-up the seats for most of the passengers - we take the back route to Entre Lagos which is little traveled even by African standards. Once we’re a good and proper distance from this village, the truck breaks down for good…or so we deduce when the other passengers begin to find a place to lie down.
After a few hours of reclining on the truck roof, Sarah and I give ourselves over to fate and opt
to set-up our tent. Given the prevalence of land mines in rural Mozambique, we walk along the road to the nearest mud hut and get permission to camp there.
When we wake, the farmer’s wife has warmed water for us to wash our faces. We leave a few dollars in exchange for their generosity, and from their reaction, we gather that this will go a long way.
We begin walking the 20km toward the border, expecting to catch a ride, and after only a few kilometers, we do. Each sitting on the back rack of a bicycle being peddled up and down sandy hills toward our destination, we enjoy the landscape of gorgeous huts, ladies carrying water jugs on their bicycles, and everyone out hoeing their fields for the new corn season. Our 90 pounds of packs are carried on a third bike, by the 10-year-old, barefoot, little brother of our drivers.
From here, it’s just a 2 km walk across the boarder, 45 km in an incessantly stalling pick-up across another very dusty road, and a few more packed minibuses to lovely downtown Blantyre. (jjk)
Other Assorted Mozambique Transport Photos
Advertisement
Tot: 0.123s; Tpl: 0.008s; cc: 12; qc: 91; dbt: 0.0545s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.3mb