Mozambique coast line adventure

[CrazyPorra]

Day 10 (23/12/2002)

Up at 04:30 as this was going to be a hard day of over 550km of gravel according to local information, we left camp at 06:00, in town we filled up with petrol and where told that the road to Moma was in good condition, so once we were moving we maintained a average speed of 80km/h for the first 150km, and then all hell broke loose, it felt like we were riding on desert sand, the back wheel would just dig in and I had no control of the front wheel and managed to drop the bike 3 times badly injuring the ligaments in my right leg from the knee down, it was so painful that every time we stop for a break I choose to stay on the bike rather than get off.

This hell of a road carried on until we got to the Legonha river, and this is where I finally lost it and under my breath told every local with any information on road conditions where to get off, here in front of Bob and myself lay a river that was about 200m wide in full flow with no bridge to link the two banks, the only way across was to put our bikes one at a time onto the dhow and hope that it wouldn’t topple over, well 2 hours and 400 000.00mets later both bikes were on the other bank.

Back on the road at about 13:00 and on our way to Moma, the road improved slightly to a 2 track gravel with the only problem being the odd rain water obstacle. We arrived in Moma at 14:15 where we filled up with lots of mineral water, this was now 14:30 and we had only covered 200km of the intended 550km for the day.

We left Moma for Angoche and found the gravel road to be in good condition, so we cruised at about 95km/h average until about 50km from Angoche when at about 15:30 the heavens opened up and it was impossible to ride at any speed above 15km/h, has Bob found out on 2 occasions when he dropped his bike, we were riding on about 3cm of clay and had no control of what the bikes wanted to do.

We arrived in Angoche just after 19:15, it was still raining and by now we where both soaked, but luck was finally on our side, as I had not planned to spend a night in Angoche I had not looked up any information on this town, has we rode in I noticed a brightly lit house with a few locals sitting on the porch and proceeded to ask if we could camp in their yard for the night, the lady not only said yes but even moved the furniture around to accommodate us under the massive gazebo in the backyard, what a luck we had place to sleep and shelter from the rain.

By 20:30 I was flat on my mattress and still in great pain thinking that this was the end of the road for me.

 

[roxenz]

Epic trip! Enjoying this ride report. Reminds me of early trips in the old Landcruiser, going wild camping in Moz.

 

[CrazyPorra]

Day 11 (24/12/2002)

Up at 05:00 and still in pain, I bandaged up my knee and decided to bear with it. We were on the road at 07:30, and I found it very difficult to use the back brake due to the pain, and with the roads still very wet from the previous days rains progress was very slow 40km/h.

Once the sun dried things out our spirits increased my leg wasn’t as painful anymore, the roads became more manageable and our average speed increased, we reached the town of Luipo where we bought freshly baked bread and rode out of town in search of a shady spot where we enjoyed traditional army food (bully beef on bread).

We carried on and if my calculations were correct we still had about 100km left of this forsaken gravel road, it turned out to be good gravel road after the town of Quixaxe, and we made it into Monapo at about 11:30, where we celebrated our feat with a well deserved Manica beer.

We left for Mozambique Island and again we went straight into another storm, luckily we were on tar roads now, we crossed the bridge that joins the island to the mainland and spent 2 hours sightseeing and wondering about what it must have been like before independence the beauty and atmosphere, now even Soweto looks more organized and cleaner.

The last part of the day took us into another storm and through to Nacala, where a very eager business man wanted to charge us half price of $10US each for camping at his resort (Complexo Napala), they didn’t even have showers and we would have to use the servants toilets, we thanked him and left.

On our way in we had spotted a board advertising Bay Diving Safaris and decided to try them, we were not disappointed and it made the 3km of loose sand worth the effort, we had arrived at a camp that was well organized, it had running water with showers, toilets and a covered A-frame structure under where we could erect our tents so that we would not be rained on and a plus was the beautiful view of Nacala Bay, all for the price of 50 000.00mets per person.

We received word from John that his parcel had arrived but he was battling to get a BMW radiator fan to where the front wheel was suppose to go.

We set up camp and decided that we would spend Christmas day here and do some repairs to Bob’s luggage system.

Accommodation: 50 000.00mets

 

[CrazyPorra]

Day 12 (25/12/2002)

Up at 06:00, lazed around and shared some notes with fellow travelers in the camp next door who were coming down from the north.

My right leg is still in pain and is about twice its size from the knee down, got the camp personnel to do some washing and then helped Bob to weld and repair his pannier system.

It must have been around 10:00 when we landed up in the complexes pub, we got chatting to Arthur the owner who shared some of his highs and lows and drank lots of Manica Beer, a little bit about this man from Stellenbosch University who 13 years ago decided that studying was not as interesting as surfing and spear fishing and so packed his bags and moved to Northern Mozambique where he has settled in and now has 2 camps (Bay Diving in Nacala and Fim do Mundo Camp in Mogincual ), he as been through it all and as far as information on conditions of roads and personal security up north there is no better source than Arthur himself who is always willing to share it.

Some Danish and South African expats joined after their diving trip and we got some good info on conditions up north and where to stay, at about 15:00 we sat down to a lamb and chicken potjie for Christmas lunch and was this good or what.

The rest of the afternoon we spent getting our bikes ready for the next day.

Accommodation: 50 000.00mets

 

[CrazyPorra]

Day 13 (26/12/2002)

Up at 04:45 and we where on our way at 06:30, first we went into Nacala to take a few photos and fill up with petrol.

We rode on new tar road so the bikes were eating up the distance that we needed to do for the day, so when we arrived at the Lurio river we decided to take a trip to the waterfalls, the 32km to the falls took us an hour to get there and another hour to get back to the main road, and to make it worse it started raining causing the sand track to turn into slippery mud, yeap you guessed it, I dropped the bike in the mud and became one big mud ball. On the tar again I was praying for the heavens to open so that it could at least wash the mud off my clothes, but as luck would have it this did not happen.

We carried onto Pemba and about 90km away we were stopped by the friendly traffic officials, up to now we had only been stopped about 3 times with just the friendly exchange of greetings, but it quickly became evident that these officials wanted more, firstly he took my license card and no matter which way he turned it, he still could not make out what he was looking at, after about 5 min he asked for the bike papers and the above was again repeated, I must admit that I was a bit illegal, as I had lost my number plate when I fell or on the road. When he saw this he must have thought that now he had to get a bribe, wrong again, I asked him to write out the fine and that I would sort it out when I got into Pemba, he finally let us go.

90km later, now in Pemba we were again stopped and I had to go through the same sequence of events as before, with exactly the same results. I later bought a bottle of Tip-ex and painted my Reg. Number on the back of the bike.

Once in town we worked our way to Russell’s place, as this is the only camping spot in Pemba, we arrived and started setting up camp and then moved our bodies to the pub where we met up with Russell who had just returned from town. He was asking for 100 000.00mets per night which we found to be way to high for what he had to offer, no running water (bucket shower) and a long drop for a toilet, we had stayed in better for less, the only good thing about his campsite was the pub.

We decided that we would leave the next day, and would change our plans for the New Year stopover to somewhere else besides Pemba.

We met up with a few South African expats and shared some good stories over a good supper and lots of Manica Beer.

Accommodation: 100 000.00mets
Supper (Buffet): 80 000.00mets
Beer: 20 000.00mets
Coke: 10 000.00mets

 

[CrazyPorra]

Day 14 (27/12/2002)

Up at 05:00 and left camp at 06:30, we went into town for the usual photo and petrol stops. While in town I was again stopped by the friendly officials who where trapping with a radar gun, no luck again I was under the speed limit, but they did complain about me riding with my headlights on and kindly told me that its illegal in their country, I wonder if it didn’t mess their radar gun around having the headlights on.

We finally left Pemba at 08:30, with intended destination, Mocimboa da Praia. The tar road was in good condition and we rode enjoying the scenery, which consisted of thick bush on both sides with the only obstacles being some knocked over trees lying in the road, could this be the work of elephants as they are very common up north.

We arrived at Macomia and headed up north, a few km further the tar road ended and we where again on our beloved red gravel road that as soon as it rained would turn to clay, we rode for another 40km before coming to a stop and re evaluating the conditions, the distance to a decent road was still another 40km ahead and there where big rain clouds building up fast. We both agreed that we had come to the end of our trip north and decided to turn around and make our way to a place called Pegane, the road was the normal 2 track gravel and we maintained a speed of about 50km/h, until we reached the town of Mucojo, we were informed that Pegane was still another 12km further north and that we would find it very difficult to get there as their was no road, only a soft sand track and this was not what we needed, as we were already disappointed that we had not made it to the Rovuma river. Well they weren’t wrong, these 12km must have taken us close to an hour to do, but when we arrived at the so called camp site in Pegane, we found ourselves in the middle of paradise, our disappointment of not reaching Rovuma quickly disappeared, we found ourselves on the point with sea everywhere around us besides the road we had ridden in on, there were islands scattered all around us and the sea had this turquoise colour to it.

We were met by Ashim, who welcomed us and wished us a pleasant stay. Now this campsite was nowhere near any town, but this man with ingenuity had set up something special, he had a 40 gallon drum situated on top of a structure and from this a pipe with a shower head, the drum was always full of borehole water, and for a toilet he had a normal house toilet with plumbing that led into a long drop at the back, and all this for the price of 50 000.00mets per night, now old Russell from Russell’s campsite in Pemba could learn a lot from this man on our to set up a campsite and make it customer friendly.

We set up camp and enjoyed the afternoon sitting around under coconut trees.

Accommodation: 50 000.00mets
Coke: 8 000.00mets

 

[Grootseun]

Really enjoying this!

 

[Malcolm]

Awesome report and peechas
A radiator for a wheel, yeah I can see that happening....

 

[CrazyPorra]

Day 15 (28/12/2002)

Up at 06:00, it had rained the whole night and it was still drizzling, explored the village and lazed around for most of the day swimming and sharing notes with different travelers.

We ordered some crayfish for the evening, but due to the miserable weather the fisherman never caught any, and we settled for second best fresh fish, good choice.

We retired rather early as we had discussed that we would try and make it back to Beira in 2 days, starting in the morning and this would be no walk in the park taking into consideration all the reports we had received on the condition of the main road south

 

[CrazyPorra]

Day 16 (29/12/2002)

We were up at 04:30 and on the road at 06:15, we knew we were going to have a long day in the saddle. The first 60km took us about 1.5 hours through the thick sand and bush, and we did come across some freshly laid elephant dug.

Once on the tar we maintained a good average speed of about 110km/h all the way to Namialo as we knew that the road conditions were good, from here it was relatively slow going all the way to Nampula due to roadwork’s, from Nampula conditions improved and the speed picked up again up to the now famous Legonha River, this time there was a bridge which we could cross, and this is where we came to the dreaded 100km stretch to Alto Molocue of non existent road but at least there were bridges to get across, this stretch took us about 3 hours, luckily it was dry, at stages we thought that we would never get there as this town wasn’t marked on the GPS World Map it became a thumb suck as to how much further we still had to ride.

We finally arrived at 17:30, and we found a quite little residence (Quintinha), on the road out to Macuba and decided to rent a room for 250 000.00mets with on suite bathroom and ice cold manicas, well they wanted to charge us 150 000.00mets for camping at the Pensao de Alto Molocue.

We decided to have an early night has the next day we were going to attempt the impossible, +/-900km in one day on Mozambique roads including a river crossing.

Accommodation: 250 000.00mets/room
Beer (local): 16 000.00mets

Sorry Pics become very scarce for the next 2 days.

 

[Fuzzy Muzzy]

This thread brings back some great memories of when I did a similar trip over a decade ago..

 

[CrazyPorra]

Day 17 (30/12/2002)

Up at 03:45 and we were on the road at 05:00, the first 200km to Macuba was a mixture of good tar and bad gravel and on this stretch the road exists but the bridges don’t, but we still made good time and arrived at about 07:30.

We had planned to fill up in Macuba, which would have given us just enough to get to Beira, but as luck would have it there wasn’t even a drop in the whole town. Our plans of making it all the way to Beira in a day were quickly being dissolved, as we would now have to do a 90km detour into Quelimane to get petrol, but we struck it lucky again and found petrol in Nicuadala, saving us this detour.

We arrived at the Zambezi River at 10:45, and true to the luck we were having the ferry was stuck on the other side waiting for cargo and this could take up to 3 hours, but as usual the sun was shinning on us and 2 trucks arrived and within 1 hour we were on the other side ready to get on our way.

We left Caia at about 12:00 and prepared ourselves for the 110km of temporary sand/clay road that lay ahead of us, with the knowledge that it had not rained for 2 days we knew it wouldn’t be as bad as it was on the way up. It took 2 hours and I was finally through and waited for Bob, it was 20min and still no sign of Bob I got worried, and 10min later Bob arrived his pannier system decided that enough was enough and one pannier broke off.

We stopped just outside Gorongosa Town, where we filled up the bikes with our spare fuel and at the same time filled our stomachs. We were back on the road and heading towards Beira averaging 120km/h on the new Gorongosa road and at 18:00 we pulled into Biques Campsite, we had traveled 950km for the day.

To our surprise John and his bike were still waiting for the imaginary front rim from BMW in South Africa, I had better start eating the praise I had for BMW earlier in the trip.

We sat down to the usual top class meal at Biques and discussed that we would go into town to fetch John’s new rim, as according to BMW Head office in Pretoria it would be arriving on Tuesday(31/12/2002), well they were so sure of themselves that when John asked them for the air waybill number the representative at BMW replied with “Sir if I say the rim will be there tomorrow then it will be there”, well with this information we could only have a good nights rest.

 

[CrazyPorra]

Day 18 (31/12/2002)

We were up at 06:00 and at about 08:15 John received a phone call from the BMW representative in South Africa, informing him that they had mysteriously lost is front rim. I now have to say, that at least Honda would have told you in the beginning that there was no way in hell that they would supply you with the spares, forcing you to make other plans, where BMW feed you incorrect information by telling you that your spares will arrive on specific days and when nothing arrives they make up some lame excuse and suggest a new date of arrival.

Luckily John had enough of this cat and mouse game, so we decided to go into Beira and try find someone with a jig to straighten the rim, and a welder to weld Bob’s pannier back on. Well Bob started chatting up a French Family who were on holiday from South Africa and managed to convince them to take his panniers back in their 4x4, on the other hand we found a bike workshop that could straighten John’s rim, we left them and a hour and a half later we returned to find a perfectly straight rim although not completely round John was still able to ride at about 120km/h, all this for the expensive price of R35.

We decided to spend the rest of our old years day, sitting on the verandah overlooking the sea, drinking local beer and eating prawn pies. This carried on into the evening until the New Year was celebrated.

 

[CrazyPorra]

Day 19 (01/01/2003)

I got up at 07:30, and there wasn’t much life out of John or Bob’s tents. They finally got up but were still suffering from slurred speech, they had apparently carried on partying until about 04:30, and where still feeling the effects of the alcohol that they had consumed, so they decided to carry on drinking in order to prevent a hangover.

The weather report on CNN painted a gloomy picture, some sort of tropical cyclone moving into the Northern Mozambique. We thought of packing up and leaving but ended up staying.

In the evening we decided to spoil ourselves and order 3 massive crayfish each the size of a 2l coke bottle, for the very expensive price of R140 each. We sat around and discussed the trip back to South Africa through Zimbabwe the next day.

 

[CrazyPorra]

Day 20 (02/01/2003)

Up at 06:00 and we had breakfast before leaving Biques at 09:00. The weather was good for traveling a bit overcast with a slight drizzle. John was experiencing a horrible vibration at about 85km/h, so we maintained a slow speed and I decided to fall back a bit and would catch up later, to my surprise when I finally started riding to catch up +/- 120km/h, I just never seemed to get any closer, I later found out that if John kept his speed above 110km/h then bike was happy.

We filled up our tanks and reserves about 100km from the border and made it to the border at 12:30, the Mozambican side was a breeze with the only problem a nail in my back tyre, it too about 15min to repair and we were on our way to the waiting palms of Mugabe’s cloneys, first John had to pay $30US for a visa because his Australian, we luckily on South African passports didn’t have too, it sort of helps when both Presidents are bum buddies.

We then all had to pay for Third Party Insurance, and true to African procedures no one knew how much to charge for a motorbike, so after a lengthy wait we finally payed R110 per bike. Next was Carbon Tax, this was to be the next joke, you have to tell the clever official beforehand in what foreign currency you are going to pay, and then it runs to a computer and it comes back with the amount owing, and how clever of Mugabe, the change is in local currency at his suggested exchange rate.

We finally left the border post at 14:30 and rode to Mutare, we didn’t even bother to look for petrol, there were queues where ever you looked, even though there was no petrol at the pumps the queues were still there. We pressed on to Masvingo and were stopped at every single roadblock, I last count after about the 10th and we were not even half way yet. It kind of reminded me of Mozambique +/- 13 years ago.

Finally in Masvingo we found petrol at the second station we enquired and there wasn’t even a queue, we exchange money with the pump attendant at R1/$100Zim and I filled 19L for R15.

Later we booked ourselves into the Flamboyant Hotel (Protea Hotels), for the price of $8890Zim. Had supper at the Masvingo Country Club, where we exchanged R200 each at R1/$120Zim to pay for the hotel, supper, drinks and then breakfast in the morning. To our surprise supper cost us in the region of R20- R25 each incl. Drinks, we then rode back to the hotel and paid R80 each for the rooms and this price included full English breakfast, so we tried to drink the rest but after spending R30 each we had, had enough of drinking.

This is when I started to like Mugabe, I had finally found a place on earth where South Africans could go for a cheaper holiday than they could get back home, similar to how the Americans and Europeans feel when they come out to South Africa.

Accommodation: $8890Zim
Double Rum: $2000Zim
Half Chicken: $1500Zim
Beer: $280Zim
Double Brandy/coke: $1200Zim

Sorry no pictures today!!!

 

[CrazyPorra]

Day 21 (03/01/2003)

Up at 06:30, and I felt great it was the first time in 20 days that I had slept in a bed. We had breakfast and by 08:30 we were on our way to Beit Bridge border post, on the way we took in a few sites and spent the rest of our Zim $ buying kudu biltong.

After clearing the Zimbabwe border but not before having to part with more foreign currency for payment to use the bridge built by South Africa, we finally had arrived back home, even the GPS seemed happy it was now showing lots of roads in all different directions, maybe because Mugabe still hasn’t been here to confiscate them.

After a short discussion it was decided that we would push hard to make it back home to Gauteng before nightfall. We all managed and I finally pulled into my garage at 19:15, and was it good to be home again.

By the way my New Year’s resolution was to start paying for Toll Gates when on my bikes, well I am ashamed to say but I have already broken it.

 

[Gumba]

Well documented,well written. Trip of a lifetime.

 

[Grootseun]

Thanks for sharing your trip with us.

 

[brianw]

Thanks for sharing Jose. Time well spent

 

[Sheepman]

Lekker report of good times you guys & gal surely lived it up