Mozambique

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22nd September

Thank you so much for all the e-mails we've been getting - home would feel a very long way away without them. I am writing from Maputo at the moment, in Mozambique, although I am actually writing very slowly with one finger...I will explain in a bit!

Things have gone really well since Durban and although we had to spend four days there sorting out the LandRover (the people we were staying with also happened to be hairdressers so Becks has had most of her hair cut off Jonny got blond highlights and his beard dyed black!), we have since covered about 650km in four days, gone through Swaziland in a day and into Mozambique.

Admittedly it has been fairly flat, and one day we covered 170km in about 6 hours because we had a great wind behind us. At one particular point Rob and I were cruising at about 40km/hour along a valley floor in Swaziland - feeling very good about ourselves, with a lovely tarmac road ahead of us. Unfortunately, I picked a very bad moment down a slope to lose concentration and hit pot-hole going pretty fast, which took me flying over the handlebars and the bike flying about 15m down the road - my water bottles made it 25m! Very luckily I landed on my back after the flip so my bum took most of the hit, but somehow I managed to take the skin off the tips of all my fingers apart from one...hence the slow typing! I refused to be cleaned up until Jonny could take a dramatic picture with lots of blood in it to make me look brave, so there will be a picture up on the site soon hopefully! It could have been much worse...and probably shows us how careful we need to be on crap roads. My injuries were just added to the long list of things that spending 6 hours on a bike every day seems to be doing to our bodies...most of which are not things anyone in the group would want me to describe.

That day ended with a huge flood of our room as the shower chose to come on 3 hours after the tap had been turned on and we were out for dinner...pretty eventful all round really.

Apart from that things have been very smooth - although we are starting to realise that getting money out in Mozambique is almost impossible unless you have a VISA card, and there are also 30,000 Metacash to the pound which is a bit confusing. It is beautiful though, and apparently we are going to be heading along one of the most stunning coastlines in Africa over the next week. We have also been investigating the scope for some interviews with people concerning the modern slave trade in Mozambique. There is obviously a great historical and colonial relevance here, and it will be interesting to see if people still consider the term 'slavery' as applicable.

We have got very good at talking to people about what we are doing and finding people who can help us. We even got onto a coach full of French tourists and made a speech about what we are doing. Despite my very rusty French, they seemed to understand the worth of ''Anti-Esclavage International'' and we raised about R300. The free pudding count now stands at 6!

I hope everything is going well for everyone at home - it is starting to get very hot here just as it must be getting colder there...we still haven't decided whether we prefer rain or sweltering heat yet. Unfortunately I think we will be stuck with the latter for a while.

23rd September

Mozambique has been as beautiful as everybody told us it would be, and yet again we have found the people so welcoming and receptive. Our conversations are even more limited however, and even when my poor Spanish is wheeled out in the hope that some of it sounds like Portuguese, we only get as far as 'food', 'water' and perhaps 'sleep' if we're lucky.

As with every place we have visited, we were warned by whites about Maputo: "Ay, listen here ma bru....I'll tell you how it is over here", talking to us as if we had just arrived in full Safari suits and asked "Hello there old boy, which way is the nearest Marks and Spencer?" They go on to explain that "They will rob you blind out there....steal the shirts off your back if you give them half a chance...They'll cut you up and leave you to die, they just couldn't give a shit those guys". We will of course find ourselves in dangerous situations, and the difference between what we have and they have is so huge that we can't avoid being very careful, and also embarrassed. But the nearest we have come to being robbed is over the Landrover, by a white man, and the most genuinely selfless hospitality has been shown by the black Mozambicans, many of whom have nothing.

We were also very happy to bump into some tourists. We stopped cycling just on the edge of central Maputo and put our bikes on the Landy, knowing that we would have to drive around to find somewhere to stay. Three Americans asked, talking as if they were in the middle of a very loud storm and we didn't speak English if we were in a race to London in our Landrover. Our 1964 Landy wouldn't beat a rickshaw in a race to London, but nevertheless we politely told them about our trip and our charity. "So yurr cycling to London....in a Landrover?! (not sure whether she was trying to suggest that we were cheating as we weren't cycling or whether she actually thought we were driving a big 4 wheeled bike)...And 'slavery' finished years ago, didn't ya'll know that?!" There was no answer to this concise understanding of the world, so I just nodded.

Slavery seems to be a word that many people here do understand as applicable to modern Mozambican society, and Maputo has thrown up all sorts of leads for us to pursue in our efforts to gather some information and perspectives on the subject. Unfortunately, the cyclists could not afford the time, so Jonny stayed behind to find out as much as possible and get something on film. If we could we would very much like to devote more of our time to raising awareness and gathering information, but we don't want to lose momentum at this stage. (And we also we didn't want that saddle sore to wear off!)

26th September

Since Maputo, cycling tough and the temperatures have got higher and higher. Luckily, there has been a wind to cool us down, unluckily it has been blowing into our faces! For the first time, we have begun to look forward to hills as they take the edge off wind - you know its windy when you come to a halt cycling down a slope when you stop pedalling! The worst part has been the deterioration of the roads. Potholes are becoming more common than tarmac and as the edges of the road zig zag with erosion, we are often forced dangerously towards the middle. When combined with the problem presented by two trucks passing at the same time on a narrow road, it can become a stressful day!

Despite this, cycling is very popular in Mozambique and many people have flash new bikes. In rural South Africa and Swaziland they stared at our shiny silver bikes in amazement, but here they look as if to say "Well they do have Shimano Deore rear derailers, but they should have upgraded those forks to the lighter titanium alloy model." We are also joined by many cyclists, most of whom seem to be cycling just for fun. As we pass villages a couple of people (often fully grown men!) grab their bikes, sneak up behind us and race passed pretending to ignore us, showing off their speed and no hands skills! A short race follows, which normally involves lots of shouting and laughing, them getting tired and then dawdling back to their village. This is normally cheered on by all those people by the side of the road who would normally be bemused as to why we were cycling in the midday sun! Everyone we wave to apart from the beer swilling, holidaying rednecks, is enormously warm and responsive. Time can pass quickly when there are lots of people and this has become the cyclists favourite part of the trip. The days would certainly be longer without this enthusiastic support.

28th September

This is our first day off since Durban and we picked a gorgeous spot for it. We cycled to Inhambane and then drove off the road for twenty kilometres to Tofo. The night before we had been led deep into the jungle by a local boy with 3 words of English, who assured us with his three words of English that there was a campsite ahead. After half an hour of jungle and mud tracks and then 10 minutes and nothing, we were beginning to feel wary but then out of nowhere appeared two white people in the headlights, sitting amongst what looked like abandoned concrete huts. In fact they were a South African family who had returned to rejuvenate their camping lodge after it was devastated in the floods here. They were very happy to let us camp next to their simple house. Tofo is very different, and although very little there, it has been a very relaxing day.

After 1 month of trip we are all very pleased with our progress, and in a couple of days we will pass the 2000 mile mark. It is difficult to get the scale of a trip like this into perspective, and Africa still feels as immense and intimidating as it did in Cape Town. We do feel, however, that we now know that we are capable to doing it.

29th September

The relationship between modern Mozambique and its colonial history seems very hard to gauge. Perhaps after Communism, a fierce Civil War and devastating floods the memory of the Portuguese has become less relevant. In Maputo the buildings are a remarkable mixture of colonial Portuguese, Communist, Western and African, but that seems more understandable than many of the small towns and villages. These are often made up of a few old Portuguese buildings that provide a bit of shade for a few people but otherwise are abandoned and ignored. Then a stretch of African huts follow, bustling with hundreds of people and small businesses.

30th September

As the sun gets hotter so our routine has to change. We used to get up at 8am which very quickly became 7, and then 6.30. Since Mozambique 5.30am has become 4.30, and we find ourselves covering the majority of the kms before midday, by which time it is getting too hot to cycle. Our first experience of cycling as the sun came up, in the cool morning breeze, on empty roads made such a difference that it has become a regular feature...we aren’t sure how Jonny will react when he comes back from Maputo!

We have also realised in the last few days that places to stay are getting harder to find. Between here and Malawi, which should take us about 10 days, we will pass through at most 2 settlements a day, which does not compare very favourable with the 5 or 6 we have been getting used in. So, as hostels and camps become very sparse we have started to take the advice of a full time traveller we met to approach schools, hospitals and police stations and ask if we can camp on within their grounds. Last night our destination contained three buildings in total, at least one of which was abandoned! So we played charades at the local hospital (only 2 rooms!) until they understood that we needed somewhere to sleep - they were happy to let us stay the night on their porch. Everyone here warns us against bush camping - the number of landmine victims we have seen since arriving in Mozambique is proof enough that this is good advice.

Today we arrived in Vilanculo, and were able to have part of the afternoon on Boabab Beach, which is the most beautiful I have ever seen (Rob has always seen something bigger and better!) .We would like thank Baobab Lodge for their very generous welcome - it is testament to our dedication that we don't spend a few days on the beach here!

October 5th

After passing through very little for a long time we have arrived at Chimoio, with a bizarrely Western shopping centre and, which we really haven’t seen for a while, real toilets! We have also found it very difficult to find places to stay, and the number of nights we have spent on hospital porches is now up to three.

Amazingly, we have all started to get very used to showering under a drinks bottle, using a hole in the ground and sleeping in hammocks in the middle of nowhere. When we arrived last night in Inchope, which wasn’t much more than a junction, Rob spotted a sign for public toilets. What this turned out to be was a few bits of 2 foot high wood around a hole, and some more wood with a stone in the middle...( you stand on the stone and pee into the corner). When he finished he realised that the hole and stone cost 5000 Meticais a pop! (...the price of a bottle of Coke). Which genius entrepreneur came up with the idea of charging M5000 for a hole, we don’t yet know.

We were joined by our first proper cyclist today, and he made us feel a whole lot better about ourselves. It’s very difficult to guess how fit you are when everyday is too hot and too far, but he was knackered and we were not after the first 70km of the day, so we felt pretty chuffed! We are also starting to feel as if we are making progress, and think that we should be in Nairobi in just under 5 weeks. In between here and there we get to follow Lake Malawi and visit Zanzibar for some shots of the old slave trading ports, so there seems to be plenty to look forward to. Also, if we carry on sleeping outside hospitals, it won’t matter that we don’t have any money!