Mozambique Part 1

This has definitely not been “Christmas as usual”  filled with decorating the tree, catching up with family and eating till you want to burst. No, this Christmas has been spent by riding in the back of pickup trucks, ‘negotiating’ with immigration offices, and traveling like the locals do.  I’ve always said that if you can’t spend christmas with family and friends, you mine as well do something exotic, but I wasn’t quite prepared for the adventures we had ahead.

Let me start at the beginning…

We spent a lovely, mostly hassle free first two days of our holiday on Lake Malawi (as you’ve read in previous posts) before we ventured east to Mozambique. From there we planned to take 3 days to make our way to the coast and spend 2 weeks along the Indian Ocean, hitting 3 cities. Currently we are at our first destination, Mozambique Island, and over the past day have changed our travel plans drastically because there is no way we can endure the crazy amount of traveling needed to get to the other 2 cities.  I’m not sure exactly what I expected in terms of road infrastructure and modes of travel, but it is very difficult to get from point A to point B here in the northern part of Mozambique.. especially if you are on a schedule and especially if you are impatient like Josh and I!

As I look back now at the 3 days it took to get here I can laugh a little and see that they were really ‘once in a lifetime’ experiences, but during those extremely long and uncomfortable hours I wasn’t sure if i was going to be able to keep my sanity!

Day 1:

So we spent the first day making our way from Lake Malawi to the border then on to a town called Cuamba- The distance between these two points is actually not that long (200km)  but it took us over 12 hours to get there using 5 different modes of transportation! I think it really was this first day that put us over the edge. Everything seemed to go wrong and for travel ‘veterans’ (as we sometimes like to think of ourselves) it was just extremely frustrating and irritating!  After we left Lake Malawi we were driven by the lodge owners to a town called Mangochi (a ride in an actual car? the day was starting off great!), and it was here that we would catch a mini-bus (or so we thought) to the border town of Chiponde and then take a bicycle taxi to the border crossing, cross the border and then proceed with the bicycle taxi to the nearest city in Mozambique. So it was only 50 km to the border town of Chiponde but it took us over 4 hours to get there! It turned out that we needed to take a pick up truck (not a mini-bus as we had expected) and we waited for over an hour for it to leave this depot. It was rather unfortunate as the depot was slightly sketchy and we were right in the hot sun. So when it finally left (filled to the brim with ppl and goods) we were all ecstatic! Little did we know though that this truck wouldn’t actually make it the whole way and after going about 20 km up a switchback on the mountain it broke down. So now, here we are,  the hood has been opened and about 5 guys are standing around discussing what to do. At one point they were using a wrench to hit the gas tank or the carborator… josh said it was the funniest things he’s ever seen. So after about 20 minutes with no luck, they pushed the truck around, everyone got back in and we coasted back where we started from. When the truck could no longer coast (Josh and I just kept wondering, where do they think they are going to go?) it stopped near a shady spot (thank God!) and we waited for another truck to come and pick us all up.  When this one finally arrived, it looked in no better condition (josh and I were taking bets on when this one would break down, before or after the spot the other one did) but we did as told and got into the back. To our surprise we actually made it to Chiponde (but not without wasting precious time), but we were burnt, hungry and exhausted! At this moment we were met by swarms of people wanting to take us across the border on their bicycles and asking if we needed to exchange money.  Not really sure where we were supposed to go from here, we were guided to the nearby immigration point, where we had to get an exit stamp. So here we found out that we had actually stayed in Malawi longer than our visa’s had allowed (you apparently had to renew after 30 days, I thought it was 90!) so after some ‘negotiation’ with the officer we were now on our way to the actual border via bicycle taxi.

 This probably had to be my favorite mode of transport and besides being hot, hungry, and slightly disorientated, I very much enjoyed being cycled down the dusty roads to the actual visa checkpoint of Mozambique. Here we obtained visas to Mozambique. The cost, instead of being 25$USD for a visa was 100$USD because at this checkpoint they had power.. which meant they had these fancy machines that take your picture and print it out.. so despite our best bartering , there was no budging, and they explained that this high cost was to cover these services. So after this whole process we got back on our bicycle taxi and were cycled into the nearest town of Mandimba (took about 20min.). Unfortunately because we had wasted so much time in the morning we had missed the daily mini-bus to Cuamba (our final destination that day), but were assured that in an hour or so there would be another. It was now about 4pm, and we were not entirely convinced that there would actually be another mini-bus (these usually come once or twice a day). So not really knowing what to do (our options were to a. wait and possible stay the night in this shabby town if the mini-bus didn’t come, b. hire a private car to drive us that would cost about 200$USD or c. go in the back of a truck) we decided to go into town to go to the bank, get something cold to drink and think through our options (we had yet to eat anything that day!). To our horror our bank cards didn’t work (when we were assured that they would), so now here we were with no Metical (the Mozambican currency) , no plan, hot, sweaty, burnt, hungry and irritated after having an already stressful travel day. We were lucky though that we took along some Kwacha (the Malawian currency) and some USD so we were able to get some local currency.  So after exchanging with some of the street vendors (at an outrageous rate! But we had no other option as the banks were closed) we decided that we were just going to suck it up, pay the 200$USD and get to Cuamba tonight. See the problem is that we were pressed for time because we needed to take the train from Cuamba the following day and if we wanted to ride 2^nd class (it only goes on certain days) we had to get to Cuamba that night. So after a quick fanta and some water we asked the street vendors again kinda just for fun, “how do we get to Cuamba?” and just at that moment a large truck went by packed with people in the back, they pointed and said, that truck, so someone whistled and it stopped as we made our way over to it. There was no room.. My Canadian love for personal space and a seat was just screaming inside my head, are you kidding me?  But it was this (which cost about 10$ each) or spending 200$- so josh just looked at me, I at him, and we said, ok let’s do it.  Again, a picture here is worth a thousand words, but it just wasn’t possible nor the thing to do. Besides, Josh was hanging on for dear life sitting on the back corner of the truck and I was at the front standing and holding on to the truck bed and “luggage rack”.  I just kept looking back at him thinking, ok, here we go- 4 hours of this!?  So in this truck holding about 25 people plus all their goods (tires, grain, food, a chicken) we made our way to Cuamba down a bumpy dusty ‘highway’. I felt myself lucky that I was standing as I didn’t feel the bumps as Josh did (he was lucky to still have his butt after that ride!) and actually found it a little exhilarating standing there with the wind in my hair and nothing but the vast mozambiqan landscape ahead of me. 

Standing on my left was another Malawian and on my right was a former Malawian, now  living in mozambique. They both spoke English and we actually had good conversation (they were asking me if I played sports and if this was my real hair-lol). But after about 3 hours of standing, and trying to shift my feet so that I could balance my weight equally I needed to sit down. People would come and go from this truck, shouting out for the driver to stop at random places on the road (one thatched village looked the same as the others.. we wondered how people knew which was their’s!) and eventually I was able to sit on a sack of grain near Josh. At this point it had become dark and the sky was absolutely enormous- we saw stars that we never knew existed and I felt lucky that we were able to experience this despite everything.  Around 9pm we arrived in Cuamba (the Malawian who lived in Mozambique was so nice and showed us to our hotel- we would have been so lost without him!), checked in, ate our first meal of the day and prepared ourselves to leave the next morning at 3am to line up to get tickets for the train that left at 5am.... TBC....