Haunted Hacienda in the Tsetsera

[Budmeister]

Haunted Hacienda in the Tsetsera

This is posted in Ride Reports, rightly so, but is really just a snapshot of a particular day, an eventful day, in a ride of many days, when was it, three years back, nearly four years back, that we did in Zim and Moz. I'll post the  we later.

For context, I'll give some time-sequential milestones:

-Nelspruit...we assembled there, five of us, all AdvBikers. No wussy support vehicle. No, not quite true... we trailed our bikes from Nelspruit to start our ride from Gary's place west of Chokwe in Moz.

-Maputo...Lourenço Marques to those from before 1975. Gungy but fascinating. Watch out for the White-Shirts in order to preserve the contents of your wallet. The Polícia da República da Moçambique. Turn left off the EN4 to go north on the EN1 towards Xai-Xai.

-Macia...pretty-ish, nice trees, nice cashews, turn left again here and go north-east towards Zimbabwe. Where we were headed the day after the day after.

-Maccaretane...upriver from Chokwe Town. A Rhodie Bush-war aircraft wreck still lies in the traffic circle before the Limpopo River. Tosh identified it as a Huey.

-Gary's banana farm where the trailers and tow vehicles are left with a case or two of cerveja for our return. Its about 10km further upriver from Maccaretane. In the past Gary has been ready to retreat up on to the roof of his house when the Limpopo floods.

 

[Budmeister]

Next day...
-Chiqualaquala...the Zim border, make sure you stay cool, patient and your paperwork is right.

-Boli village...where we turned right and traveled north keeping Gonarezhou Park on our right. Make a note to bucket list to visit there in a 4X4. No two-wheelers permitted in the Park; the mama ellies will mash you. They have ancestral memories of what we humans did to them there fifty years ago.

-Chimanimani...on the Zim side. Great scenery of this mountain range on the east of us forming the boundary between Zim and Moz. A welcome camp at the Something and Fern. Ask for Jane. Ah, yes, The Frog and Fern.

-Cashel...just a little bit further north than Chimanimani village. A border crossing into Moz, according to the map. But no bikes are allowed through, in fact no vehicles at all the Border Man said, foot traffic only!
Perhaps we could pass on our bikes with some USD folded into our passports? Probably, but we didn't risk it, our paperwork would be wrong at the next border so we turned back south again.

-Selinda/Espungabera Border Post...scenic. Friendly service from all except the Zim CID(?) fellow. He was aggresive/arrogant and looking for deference; unfortunately we're not good at deference.
-Crappy roads on the Zim side, surprisingly good (Chinese-built and financed?) blacktop road past Espungabera on the Moz side going north. But zero maintenance happening to this road. Its getting narrower and narrower as the bush encroaches. Sooner or later the verges will break up due to root wedging.
If other people pay for it then it doesn't have real perceived value to the locals.
Turn north on the #226 towards Chimoio town on the Beira Corridor to Mutare in Zim. By the way, in Moz it's pronounced 'Bay-ruh' not 'Buy-ra'.

 

[Budmeister]

Getting now to the Day:

Joe at Bush Boys near Tonteldois...that's actually Tonteldoos in RSA; Joe, a Rhodie Bush War Vet, had given us many valuable waypoints and descriptions for this ride including the location of a long-abandoned dwelling named Casa Carvalho, high in the Tsetsera vicinity on the Mozambique side of the Chimanimani Mountain Range.

Us?
*Mark the Marker, part-time router and spannerman
*Tosh the enigmatic flyboy, peace-keeper when we participants got too discourteous with one another
*Darrell the clever, linguist, router, sometimes chef
*Ze German, no real portfolio
*Myself, madala trying to keep up, route and planning Quality Control, time keeper
*Andy, a late arrival, non-biker at the time, got called up from an upper Zim tour in his Toyota bakkie when Darrell got stricken with diarrhea on the day before getting to Jane's place.
Neither Darrell nor Andy got to see Casa Carvalho.

Bikes:
*Three well-prepped 640 KTM Adventures-getting a bit long in the tooth now but still the best compromise at the time
*My G650XCh tweaked everywhere to try and realize it's potential. (Read Colebatch on AdvRider.com). Bike clue: it's a small BMW built by Aprilia.
*My Zermann friend brought his Dakar. Swore it was the best. He suffered with it.

 

[Budmeister]

 

[Budmeister]

Boar's 640 loaned to Tosh. Tsetsera Massif in the background

 

[Budmeister]

The night before:

There is a high-tension powerline that runs south all the way from the hydro-electric plant on the Cahora Bassa dam far to the north. We elected to camp on the overgrown access track beneath this powerline on the night before we got to the turn-off to Casa Carvalho.
Not knowing the locals, we wanted to be concealed from the road that we'd been on and in this we thought we were successful.
But shortly after it got dark we heard a commotion from over the hill where we hadn’t done a recce. Drums, chanting, shouting! Some people, a lot of people, were sounding disturbed and/or distressed! Certainly not happy.

Was it to do with us? Were we camping on sacred ground? Had we slighted a Renamo warlord by not seeking permission to camp on his turf? Could we expect a raiding party with burning torches, pangas and assegais to come storming over the hill down the access road to our camp?
By keeping very quiet, switching off our torches and using the weak moon for vision and listening carefully we decided that these locals were possibly holding a funeral ceremony for a deceased member of their community and they were hopefully not aware of our presence.
Their ruckus went on for hours but I fell asleep still hearing it. I didn't sleep well.

 

[Budmeister]

The next morning back on the road north with the Chimanimanis now on our west side.
Midmorning we found a restaurant run by the Mozambique Parks Board not far off our road. We were the only patrons and I think that that had been true for days if not for weeks.
The others tucked into a healthy omelet with all the trimmings. I was cautious, I eat sparingly at the best of times and Darrell's diarrhea condition preyed on my mind. I'd skipped supper the night before because I was a mite queasy.
But, hey, 2M Cerveja comes out of a sealed bottle and is made from hops, barley malt and other foodstuffs so I didn't hold back on having a nourishing liquid breakfast.

Darrell had shared some GPS waypoints with me that he'd compiled, some he'd got from Joe, but some, it turns out, he'd sucked out of his left thumb. I hate that, uncertain waypoints should be labeled with a question mark. One of these dodgy waypoints I only found out later that evening and to my regret.
But the waypoint marking the turnoff westwards to the Casa Carvalho mountain road was true.

We could see the top of the mountains as we approached. They were some thousand meters above us and while the clouds blocked the direct sun, the cloud base was above the ridge.

The two KTM men moved into the lead while us two more vintage BMW pilots took to the slopes with more caution. The road was much the same as Sani Pass, dirt, a bit gnarly and narrower, the track undulated initially in the lowlands but steadily gained altitude through open fields and meadows.
Then it started climbing steadily and some erosion gullies needed to be avoided or negotiated.

The track boundaries then started being lined by trees rather than grasslands and the uphill sides by steep earth banks. Curves and bends were interspersed with switchbacks.
I stopped and waited for the Dakar which had disappeared from my mirrors.
"What's keeping you Boet? You leave the handbrake on?"
"No! My toolkit. It's gone! Fallen off somewhere. Fuck!"

I felt for him. On of the reasons he was good to have on a ride with us was he'd have just about every tool one can imagine in a big heavy roll strapped on the tail frame. Stuff he'd collected over the years. He'd turned around and gone back a few km to see if it was lying somewhere on the track but no. Okay, maybe we'll find it on our way off the mountain but right now we have to go on up.

Round one bend a massive boulder had slid onto the track and partially blocked the track up the mountain. There was adequate space for pedestrians to pass in single file and even us adventure-bike riders with panniers could get past but no four wheeled vehicle could go further up.

When ze German and I reached the top plateau we found Mark and Tosh hadn't waited but had pushed on so we followed the old track meandering towards the really close Zim border for a few km until Joe's waypoint for Casa Carvalho was obviously off to the left and then another track leading that way appeared.
We followed it as it took us off the edge of the plateau and started down a gully. As it became singletrack I stopped because I thought I recognised the shrubs alongside us as Rhododendrons, obviously exotic, but, in my past experience these are usually one metre to two metres tall but these plants I was looking at were about five metres high!

We brushed past them for a hundred meters to a clearing that had previously been somebody's front lawn and there it was... the abandoned Casa Carvalho, an extensive double story with very tall chimneys. Like a manor house. The roof was long gone but inside a broad stair swept up to the first floor and in the drawing room there was what had been a grand fireplace. Obviously built as an upmarket European-style homestead.

No possessions remained, no furniture, no sign of the previous inhabitants and it looked like it had might have been burnt, not sure about that, but it had been uninhabited for some fifty years. In other parts of Africa local people will usually move in to an abandoned place to get some kind of shelter. This place was empty.
We walked through the bare rooms looking at the floors and walls where Mediterranean tiles had been stripped off or broken.

 

[Budmeister]

Casa Carvalho

 

[Budmeister]

There was obviously an untold story relating to the demise of the previous owners. The Portuguese who fled Mozambique were, in most cases, luckier than those in Angola. I've seen photographs of the savagery inflicted on those Portuguese colonials and I've spoken to a few Mozambique survivors and generally they lost a lot but Angola was subject to much more butchery. This particular Casa had obviously been built for a large family who had now vanished In unknown circumstances.
I was looking where to put up my tent as it was already mid afternoon and our schedule only called for us to be on the shores of Barragem de Chicamba sometime the following day.

But Mark had other ideas.

He was loading his bike and putting his riding kit back on.
”We must get off the mountain!"
"Why? We're not in a hurry. Tomorrow's going to be a shortish ride to the Barragem, just a few hours."
He looks towards the ruined Casa, shakes his head, shudders and then turns and gestures to the east where clouds are massing.
"Rain. Its going to rain. The pass we came up is going to be moerse slippery if it's wet. We need to get down while it's dry and while there's still some light."
Yah well okay then, we load up and head off down the mountain.
Halfway down I get my front wheel in one rut, my back wheel in another and then the ruts diverge. On a plastic bike you just give it a blip and correct the posture. With an adventure machine with another fifty kilograms dry plus luggage, gravity pushing and a hairpin approaching...it's not so easy. And as my front wheel was heading for the cliff I just dropped it and, stupidly, trapped my right leg under the pannier bag.

My options:
-1. Yank my leg out and risk tearing my riding pants, tearing the soft pannier bag or ripping off the pannier bag right off the bike.
-2. Wait for the blokes behind and suffer the humiliation of them lifting the bike off the codger.
I opted to wait and they duly arrived and helped me upright.
At the time I naively thought that'd be the only time they'd have to get the bike off me before the day's ride was over.

We regrouped on the main dirt road at the junction of the mountain pass. We didn’t find Hans' tool roll. The most appealing outcome for the day was if our destination was where Darrell's nearby waypoint said it was, only fifteen kilometres away to the north.
Alas, the waypoint had been logged using GoogleEarth and a wishful guess where our destination might be. There was nothing there but dense bush. Darrell, you're a doos.

 

[Budmeister]

So to restart the bike and continue.
Oops. Try to restart the bike! The key turns but the dash stays black and the happy button stays silent.
Scheizen, that's never happened before...20 000km and up till now it's been reliable as an anvil. WTF?
Mark says "it's the ignition key barrel, the 640's have the same shit."
But now!? The storm's on its way and so's the night. The sun has already set!
The others put on their raingear while I jiggle the wiring below the switch...nothing. Mark comes and jiggles, the dash lights up and goes dark again. More jiggling and it lights again.
"Hold this shit like this while I get some insulation tape." "Yes, Sir!"
He binds the wire harness onto something and the dash stays lit.
It starts.
"Go! Ride! Don't switch off!"
"No Sir!"
I start riding. Hard. It's twilight, the wind picks up and the rain starts pelting down. There's thirty five kilometres to the tar road and a filling station. I need to get as far as possible before it's pitch dark because my bike lights are crap. The 640's have much better lights.
But in the tropics twilight is short.
The road has a heavy camber both ways and is extremely slippery now; water is pouring off it. The temperature drops and I'm soaked the skin because I didn't take the time to put on my rainwear. African lowlands in the tropics shouldn't get this cold but this time it does.
This is totally miserable but things get worse. There's an oncoming truck with his lights on bright, it's bouncing on the bumps and corrugations and with the water streaming off my visor it's like I'm looking at a strobe. I have no peripheral vision, zilch, nada, fokkol.
The truck also yields fokkol of the road, it stays right on top in the middle where the left and right cambers cancel each other. If he moves over he knows what'll happen, he'll end up in the ditch.
I move over, I have to or I'll become roadkill.

I end up in the ditch.

Inevitably I slide, blinded, sideways into the left ditch, I still keep it upright but when I put my foot down it slips sideways and I go down.
Again.
I can't even stand up when I try because it's so slippery. Mud has coated my headlight so I'm almost in pitch darkness. But the bike stays idling and I'm holding the clutch in with a death grip. Soon my riding companions arrive and, blessings, they see me capsized in the ditch and help me up and get me going forward again.
I guess they avoided the truck by watching what happened to me.

When we eventually get to the filling station at the blacktop junction I'm shaking badly. I hook neutral to be able to let it continue to idle.
"Hans, take off my helmet...please."
"Why can't you?"
"Because I can't. Fingers don't work. Hypothermia."

 

[Budmeister]

Oops problem... uhh

 

[Budmeister]

It was a further three hours before we found our way to our overnight bivouac at the Barragem. En route we got on the cell phone to Darrell who'd arrived there earlier in the passenger seat of Andy's heated truck with his 640 in the back. I think he was pissed because his directions got us lost three times before we joined them.

Was it my worst riding day ever? No, not the worst. I've had worse but it was up there. Certainly it was memorable.
The ending was good at Casa David. Andy's brother Dave and his delightful free-spirited sister-in-law Ellen made us welcome at their home on the shores of Lake Chicamba -the Barragem.
They fed us, were stocked up with beer for us and we eventually passed out with a roof over our heads, attresses, pillows, blankets...all the luxuries.

In March 2019, some months after we were there, Cyclone Idai, the worst since records began, struck the Chimanimani's and destroyed that road up to Casa Carvalho.

And the title of this piece?
The Haunted Hacienda?
-Mark conceded to me later that he wanted off the mountain, did not want to overnight at Casa Carvalho, not because of the impending rain or the slippery pass.

But because of the ghosts, the unquiet spirits that he could sense were lurking there in the dark corners of the ruined Casa...