On our return to Dar Es Salaam, still stoked on getting some surf on Zanzibar, I motored out to have a look at a beach just outside the city center which reportedly had some decent waves once in awhile. We had to come out to that way to get a visa for Mozambique in any event, but we found nothing to get very excited about riding.
Jamie and I had decided to slow our traveling pace down a bit, so much so that we were now headed backwards. We’d come north through Botswana, Zambia, and Malawi rather than along the coast of Mozambique. In addition to wanting to see some the places along our alternative route, the middle latitudes of Mozambique have recently erupted into fighting that could make travel inconvenient as militant groups have been active along the roads. The hearsay that we received was that groups aren’t targeting foreigners, only military convoys of the central government. The problem is that the Mozambique government is requiring travel for some stretches within these convoys for tourists, so you get to be part of the target. You might be better off riding down the road with an American flag streaming behind your bike waving fists full of greenbacks in the air.
Jamie and I planned to enter Mozambique from Tanzania and stay far north of any of fighting. After what seemed like an hour in congested streets, we finally broke from the traffic and headed south from Dar. Free again! We sailed along the highway for hours passing small villages and waving at kids until we found a section of road construction that we were diverted around. We ran into long stretches of fine, deep sand. Blast – our nemesis! We flailed around for 10 miles or so and I was getting exhausted in the heat, wrestling to keep the bike upright with all of our weight behind it. Jamie even had to get off to walk one super deep section. The shame!
We stopped for a break and considered the situation. We didn’t have very good information about this stretch of the journey and for all we knew, the deep sand could continue for hundreds of miles. In that case, we just weren’t going to be able to pull it off very easily. We decided to carry on for another 20 miles or so and if nothing changed, we would discuss our options again. To our delight, the sand ended and the road returned. I breathed a sigh of relief and rolled on the gas whizzing by the landscape studded with thorny trees scratching at the clouds above.
We had fast food for lunch.
We spent the night at a place called Kilwa Mosoko and motored towards the Mozambique border and the river we would need to cross to get there. We arrived too late for the ferry, which could only run at high tide so we had to stay another night just near the border. Living on a motorbike is no excuse for being disorganized.
The next morning we made our way towards the tiny immigration and customs offices. About 10 miles from the boarder the road turned to very rough ride with big protruding rocks and lots of sharp edged holes that were hard to see.
We were getting rattled to bits, but all we cared was that it wasn’t deep sand. We arrived at the river and spent a few hours staring at the water level waiting for it to rise high enough to allow the ferry to cross. As the tide rose, the riverbank began to come alive with activity: mini-bus drivers vying for position to get on the ferry, taxi drivers fighting over passengers arriving from the other side, and kids push poling small boats around. We watched two grown men have a wrestling match over the rights to a single passenger. The poor passenger didn’t seem to know what on earth to do, and no one else seemed to take any notice as this was just business as usual. Jamie kept a smile through the madness of it all.
They weren’t kidding about the water level – on the hour long crossing, we could hear the bottom scraping the sandbars below. There was barely enough water in that river to float the ferry and the driver had to pick his line very carefully to avoid getting stuck somewhere. Meanwhile Jamie and I did some ferry surfing.
It was dark by the time we got across the river and we found a family at the border village with some very basic rooms where we could pass the night. There was nothing but a candle for light, but they had cooked rice and fried some fish for dinner and had plenty for the weary travelers.
We rode some more rutted track on the other side of the border headed south. After four days journey, we finally arrived at the beachside town of Pemba and found our camp spot for the week. Unfortunately our camp spot also turned out to be the party spot and we endured some all-night dance music sessions in our tent. Very bad dance music; the same overplayed mixes that you’ve heard a million times. It literally sounded like our tent was right in the middle of the party even though the party was on the beach across the road from us. When the first rays of dawn began to shine through I thought, awesome, they’ve made it to dawn, now its time for everyone to go home and we can get a couple hours of sleep. But the dawn didn’t send anyone home. In fact the music continued at the same quaking volume until 11 that morning.
Aside from the nightlife that we just weren’t up for, we found Pemba a beautiful place with pretty beaches and fishing villages.
I even found some waves. If only I were 3 inches tall, I’d be out there. Suffice it to say, we found no waves to ride on north shore of Mozambique, which is just as you’d expect, given that Madagascar, the Comoros, and the Seychelles all sitting pretty much right in the way of anything that would be coming from the Indian ocean.
Despite some beautiful beach scenes, Pemba just wasn’t our place. Drainages from the fishing villages were overflowing with trash that spilled out onto the beaches and most of the accommodation and restaurants were out of our price range. Some expats found Pemba a long time ago and made it their place and we’d crashed the party. After a few days we decided to start the return journey north.
We rode a long day to get to the last town before the Tanzanian border, called Palma. It was already dark and I was nearly out of gas when we arrived. I had stopped in a village to buy just enough fuel in plastic bottles to get us to Palma, but unfortunately the single station was out of petrol, and Palma had no affordable accommodation for us. We were exhausted and hungry and were running low on options.
We rode the length of the town a couple of times before we returned to the petrol station. This time, we met the manager of the station, a very nice Indian man named Vijay. We chatted for a bit and asked if he thought it would be safe to bush camp just outside of the town. He invited us to camp right there on the lawn of his gas station where he had a security guard all night. He also let us know that he keeps some petrol in reserve and that we were welcome to some of it. And just like that, after a friendly conversation both of our problems were solved. We set up our tent and got to making some pasta for dinner while Vijay went about cooking some chapatti and dhal in his little cookhouse that he had set up on the same lawn. He had only been in this little town for a year from India running the station for his uncle and still felt very much an outsider there. We set up a table of milk crates on the lawn and shared our meals together and talked all about the charms and frustrations of living in Africa.
Arriving at the river the next morning, we learned that the tide was too low for the ferry to run and would not come high enough for three days hence. We couldn’t have screwed the timing up any better than this. There was a bridge over the river about 100 miles away, but by all accounts the road was deep sand much of the way and I didn’t think that Jamie and I would still be smiling at the end of such a trip. But we certainly don’t want stay here for 3 days waiting! Options were looking slim until an alternative presented itself: one of the boatmen could motor us across in one of the small boats. His craft looked seaworthy enough, but the trick would be getting the bike in and out of the boat.
There was a steep sand bank down to the water level and it took four of us to hoist Dyna Rae over the rail and into the boat. It was precarious, and she could very well have ended the morning upside-down in the river on the traverse from the bank, but slow and steady, we managed it. Our captain motored us safely across the river and the crew helped us hoist the bike up and out to solid ground once again.
On the opposite bank, we met a Dutch couple driving a Toyota 4-Runner who also wanted to get across the river. The solution that the local crew came up with was to build a raft using beams to tie three of their boats together. They were mid-way through the construction when we arrived and so far the craft didn’t look terribly confidence inspiring. The Dutch couple looked on, mildly concerned with the plan to keep their vehicle off the bottom of the river.
The ride back across southern Tanzania towards Dar was just as long as it was on the way south. We rode 350 miles, which made for a very a long day since we’re constantly slowing way down for villages along the way. The deep sand section was easier this time around, since we knew that the end wasn’t far ahead. We spied some perfect pointbreak setups in southern Tanzania that would never be.
Back in Dar, Jamie and I took care of logistics for the next leg of the journey to come. We found the Kenya High Commission and managed to get an East Africa tourist visa the same day. A single visa that covers 3 countries and took 3 hours to get, unbelievable!
We also paid a visit to the American embassy to have pages added to our passports as they were filling up quickly with colorful visas. My passport was blank at the onset of this trip and now was completely full up. I’d managed to procure a second passport from the embassy in Freetown and space in that one ran out with the Mozambique visa and border crossing stamps. Thanks to the friendly folks at the US embassy in Dar, I now had two extra-thick passports ready to roll.
There’s something truly satisfying about getting through a couple weeks on the road and meeting the little challenges that the journey brings. Compared to the day to day back home, out here we have such basic problems to solve: find some petrol, find some food, find a place to sleep. The magic of the journey is that in the course of their resolution, we’re often led to unexpected places and find things that we had no notion to look for in the first place. The next stop for us has loomed large in my imagination since forever. Jamie and I spent some time online researching climbs and costs in the mountains and made ready to ride north, dreaming of the snows of Kilimanjaro.