Day 14
Senga Bay, Lake Malawi to Campismo Jesus e Bom, Tete
Distance: 410 kilometres
In Africa, sometimes it takes a really long time to do a really short distance. This was the case on Day 14 of the rally: a day riddled with potholes, road taxes and opportunistic officials … welcome to Mozambique. ‘This better be worth it’, I thought. It was, but more on that later.
HQ Taxi at the Dedza Border
We crossed the border at Dedza, the most shambolic farce of a border post I’d ever encountered. First we got slapped with a hefty road tax. Then our driver (above, holding the paperwork), who’d not yet had his Yellow Fever shot, got poked in the back room. I stood outside on the dusty road and watched as locals strolled through the gates from Malawi to Mozambique and vice versa without so much as entering an office. After that, we played a little dodgem with pedestrians, taught a few policeman how to read a South African driver’s licence and wove wildly between crater-sized potholes. The irony of paying that massive road tax didn’t escape Kim, our on-board video editor.
In hindsight (I am writing this a few days later), this section of Mozambique would be the perfect setting for the next instalment of Grand Theft Auto, no concept team needed: there’s enough real-world chaos to perpetuate hours of gaming fun.
Tete, from across the Zambezi
We made it to Tete at around 22h00 that evening and checked into Campismo Jesus e Bom on the banks of the Zambezi River. It’s as much a campsite as I am a crocodile, but there’s something wildly romantic about setting up your tent next to a rubble heap, showering under a builder’s faucet and taking in the inexorable buzz of a city that never rests from across a river that never sleeps. Tete is Mozambique’s New York … but dirtier, more frantic and inundated with a flaming sense of warped city dynamism that makes you feel uneasy but excited at the same time.
Mozambique’s New York
The next morning we crossed the Tete Bridge, got the hell out of dodge and made the long drive to Inhambane, the final checkpoint of the rally. As always, more of that in the next post.
