We started out in Beira, a port city about half-way up Mozambique’s coastline. Although it is the country’s second largest city and busiest port, it has the feel of a tranquil, breezy seaside town. In fact, for those who know Honduras, it is a great deal like Tela, with Toyota pick-ups running the slalom up and down the sand roads that hug the beach, dodging wandering dogs and young fishermen. Beira has that laid-back, salty air that gets you to slow down, breathe, and not take life quite so seriously.
We were met at the airport by Francisco, who had grown up in Beira and was obviously proud to show it off to someone new. We drove through town, past a mix of boxy concrete businesses on loud city streets, new shopping malls with ATMs and coffee shops, and old colonial wooden homes with wrap-around porches shaded by great trees that had probably been around for the arrival of the Portuguese in the 1880s. We stopped by our hotel, Jardim das Velas, a charming little Mediterranean-style place right on Makuti beach with filtered drinking water from the taps and mosquito nets in every room (Beira is notorious for malaria). Francisco insisted on taking us to Biques on the waterfront for lunch. Like the train station in Maputo, this area of the Beira beachfront made an appearance in the film “Blood Diamond” when Leonardo DiCaprio’s character and Jennifer Connelly’s happen to meet at a bar. There were no Hollywood celebrities there anymore, but we enjoyed a leisurely lunch watching groups of five or six men and young boys rolling the great wooden dug-outs (about four feet wide and maybe fourteen feet long) down the beach and into the murky water for an afternoon of fishing.
The next morning we were up early (again) to squeeze in a walk on the beach before leaving town. The fog was thick, giving the beach, the lighthouse, and particularly the shipwrecks a mysterious and ethereal feel. There were groups of men all up and down the beach already hard at work fishing. Their method is similar to the purse seining method used off the sterns of big ships, except that on the Atlantic and Indian coasts of the continent of Africa it is done manually from the beach. They set up one group of men with one end of the long net at a point on the beach. Another man would then take the rest of the net out in a dugout canoe, paddling in a big arc and dropping the net into the water as he goes. He circles back to shore farther up the beach with the other end of the net where another group of men await. The two groups then haul the net back to shore, heaving hand over hand with all their might until nearly collapsing backward when the net finally gets to the shallows. Then it’s the women’s turn. When the nets are dragged up onto the beach they get to work in their brightly colored wrap skirts and head scarves, tossing jellyfish and other unintended catch aside. Once there are only fish and squid left in the nets, they drag everything up the beach, away from the rolling waves, to where they can sit comfortably in small, chatty groups to sort through their prize by size and species, to later sell at market. Meanwhile, other men ride or walk their old black bicycles up and down the packed sand of the lower shoreline to and from work in town. It all adds up to one of those scenes where it’s just surreal enough that you wonder if you are dreaming or have just stepped into a Tim Burton film. But it’s wonderful!
Francisco picked us up around mid-morning for our drive inland, following the old railway from Beira to Zimbabwe on the road to Chimoio, although we would only be taking it as far as Gorongosa. We left behind the oceanfront and the city streets, driving past rice paddies and small clusters of huts with the red RENAMO flag flying above (Central Mozambique was an area of strong RENAMO support during the civil war and continues to be to this day, although now in a more democratic and peaceful manner). About two hours into our drive west, we turned north off the paved road onto a pretty well-kept dirt road that would deliver us to the GorongosaNational Park (check out the award-winning National Geographic video on the website). Located at the foot of the Great Rift Valley, Gorongosa was once known as Africa’s Eden. Lynne Tinley, whose husband Ken was one of the first ecologists assigned to the Etosha Pan in Namibia and later Gorongosa in Mozambique, wrote a fascinating memoir, “Drawn from the Plains”, where she describes life in these remote areas back before the Civil War broke out in Mozambique in the late 1970s. She talks of the great herds of elephants and wildebeests and the numerous prides of lions that took advantage of Gorongosa’s tremendous ecological diversity and abundance.
This area also played an important role in the country’s history. During the war for independence, the revolutionary soldiers often retreated to the mountain peaks, claiming high ground and never once being defeated from here. In fact, we were told by some of the locals that the word “Gorongosa” comes from the mispronunciation of a Portuguese phrase that basically translates as “that troublesome place”! So, when the civil war broke out, the RENAMO soldiers counted on Gorongosa’s mountains to be their base of operations and place of refuge. Sadly, much of the game on the reserve was hunted down for meat to feed the rebel armies, and the rest was shot and sold off to those foreign entities willing to sell weapons to the rebels. What few animals were left often died in land mine explosions as this area of the country, in particular, was absolutely riddled with them. Happily, game numbers and species diversity are on the rise, the mine fields have been cleared, and with a great deal of help from the Carr Foundation, Gorongosa National Park and its surrounding communities have a bright future to look forward to.
We arrived at the Chitengo headquarters where we enjoyed lunch in a large, open-air, thatch-roof pavilion while watching a National Geographic special documentary on the park and reading through an article in The New Yorker Magazine called “The Monkey andThe Fish”. We then made reservations for our weekend activities (if you are smarter and more organized than we were, you will make these ahead of time as they inevitably fill up quickly) and grabbed a quick nap in our bungalow before heading out to explore a bit. The place, although fenced off, is plagued by warthogs and baboons that roam around knocking over trash barrels and tearing up the lawn. As long as you are not the one having to clean up after them, its rather humorous and entertaining to sit on the screened-in porch of the bungalow to watch! Chitengo includes a handful of bungalows (they are in the process of building more), the restaurant pavilion (gets a little chilly on winter nights), a swimming pool, a gift shop, the activities and reservations headquarters, employee housing, and a large campground area. After dinner we sat around a nearby bonfire to warm up. We met some of the other weekend guests, most of whom had driven over from neighboring Zimbabwe and South Africa, and listened to their tales of hope for the future of their countries and their people, regaled over the background chorus of screeching bush babies, rustling leaves and branches, and belching toads. I was glad for the fence, the fire, and the rugged company (I did admit previously that I am a coward, didn't I?).
Being that we had just come from such a spectacular game drive experience in South Africa, we decided to focus our Gorongosa activities more on the people and the land itself. So, the next morning we set off on a guided walk with Castro to the nearby Comunidade Vinho where many of the employees and their families live. We trekked a good 45 minutes down some little dirt paths to the Pungue River where Castro’s colleague, the “mariner”, loaded us up into his little boat and expertly poled us across the lazier section of the river. I was glad we had remembered our binoculars on this walk as the bird life along the water and back in the trees was phenomenal. In fact, this is precisely what draws many tourists to Gorongosa Park.
The village itself is, at the risk of sounding deprecating, rather cute. Tons of little snot-nosed (literally) kids ran up to us waving with huge, friendly smiles on their faces and shouting something that sounded like “ta-tay! Ta-tay, wazungu!” (hello! Hello, white people!” in the local Sena language). They asked for biscuits. We did not have any so instead we tried the shameful and age-old tourist trick of taking their pictures (ask first) and then showing it to them on the camera screen, and it seemed to delight them just the same. Castro showed us the local clinic, the water pumps and the little school which have been funded mostly, if not entirely, by the Carr Foundation.
Little had we known that morning that this day would be the precursor to one of the most hilarious and memorable trends of our trip (or maybe we are embarrassingly base and simple people): the search for a decent bathroom. In this little village of huts and thatch roofs, my sister Rory and I had our first encounter with … the Mozambique Bush Toilet. Oh! If we had only known that this little four by four cement room with a door and a hole in the floor outside of the local primary school would actually turn out to be quite sophisticated compared to what we would deal with in the days ahead. I went first. No problem. At the risk of getting too personal, I love squatting in the bush. It works wonders for me. Rory, on the other hand, didn’t know that those two little blocks on either side of the hole are actually to position your feet on. Also, there is a technique to this sport that she was not privy to. After a lot of talking back and forth through the door (how low do you squat? do you pull your pants forward or backward? or do you just take them off one leg entirely?) she finally got it. Again, our biodegradable hand wipes proved to be invaluable. But, really, I’ll take a Bush Toilet over a nasty, overflowing, overused urban restroom (no resting about it) any day!
That evening we decided to partake in the lovely and oh-so-civilized tradition of the “sundowner”. There is a place just outside the park called “Bue Maria” near an old, abandoned Portuguese cotton factory with an unequaled view of the great orange orb laying to rest beyond the sea of green below, past where the silvery glint of the Pungue River meets the straight-edged horizon. Rory and Dad indulged in some Dos M (the local beer) as we heard the story of the woman (Maria) who used to live up there until she was sucked away by a tornado and tossed into the waters below. To this I asked our guide, Macadona, if he believed in ghosts. A natural storyteller, I think he had just been waiting for someone to ask! We sat back watching the sun set on another great day in Africa as Macadona dramatically told stories of his time as a soldier during the war, and the different ghosts he had encountered then and later, in the bush. That evening we arrived back at Chitengo just as one of the Land Rovers was pulling in laden with backpacks, water jugs, rain tarps and a rugged group of four or five men. It looked like they had been on a real camping trip, and I mean the real kind that I dream of but am not sure I am brave enough to actually do. We got to talking and ended up having dinner with them. As it turned out, Richard and Justin were national park rangers back in the US who had been asked to come to Mount Gorongosa to help figure out where to cut the new trails. Since the top of the mountain (which is actually outside the Park boundaries) has finally been added to the reserve (the original plan set forth by Ken Tinley to the Mozambique government included the entire mountain as it is a vital source of water to the ecosystem below), the hope was to now find ways for tourists to safely hike up the mountain to see the waterfalls, perhaps camping a night or two up there, all while causing a minimal impact to the delicate natural setting. They, along with Marty, an amazingly adventurous representative of the Carr Foundation, had been camping up on the mountain for two weeks with their young local guide, Tonga (whom we would get to know later), and had at last made their way back down to write up their report. Dinner with this group was not only fascinating, but it set the wheels in motion for us to have our own privileged trek up the mountain the following morning!
So. Sunday. Again up before 6am. We met up with Tonga, a very gregarious and energetic kid who was to lead us up to the Murombodzi Falls on the mountain. His story is a cool one. When Greg Carr first flew up to the mountain and landed his helicopter, everyone scattered. Either they had never before seen a helicopter, or they associated it with the war and the military. The only one who ventured back out was Tonga, who approached and, using his English which he had learned from a Peace Corps volunteer, asked the wazungu how they were doing. He then convinced the village chief to come out and meet with them, and ended up leading them all down the mountain on foot when the weather was too unpredictable for the helicopter to be able to take off and land safely. With this, he earned the trust and respect of the guys in charge, and has been a guide for them ever since, while he was not in school. They are now going to pay his university studies, too! An interesting side-note is that his name, Tonga, means “judge” in the local Shona and Sena languages. I think some of the authority and confidence of his name rubbed off on his personality!
In any case, we set off with Tonga to the local market in Vila Gorongosa, the nearby town, to buy some cigarettes and whiskey to appease the mountain gods (there was a group that would be summiting the next morning and would need these supplies for their ceremony with Samatendji - the local medicine man and chief of one side of the mountain). Apparently, we did not need to worry about any of this. The only condition we needed to comply with was no red clothing (I thought briefly of wearing red underwear just to be rebellious, but thought better of it as I did not want to upset any gods and end up getting bitten by a snake or having a beetle get stuck in my hair). We bounced our way up a washed out dirt road to the base camp, Nhancucu, only to be met by another Bush Toilet, this time with grass and thatch for walls. No door. Still foot pedestals, though. Rory was improving with practice. I had become a master.
We trudged up the old hunting trails for about 45 minutes, with Tonga spurring us on when we slowed the pace saying, “put the hammer down”, or informing us when we remarked upon the great amount of energy and hope for the future that we felt in this part of Mozambique that “that’s how we roll in the jungle”. Apparently, his spending a couple of weeks up in the bush with three guys from the US had advanced his English in some interesting ways! As we climbed, the view opened up and it finally became apparent that we were indeed at the southern tip of the Great Rift Valley. The Chimanimani Mountains were off in the distance to our southwest (I hope to return someday to try the camping trips through that area), and between us (on the Gorongosa Mountains) and them there was a great wide valley, scraped clean and flat straight through to the ocean. After hopping some stones across a stream and climbing around a final bend in the trail, we could finally smell and hear the falls. Climbing up some mossy rocks with colorful birds flitting by overhead, Murombodzi loomed before us. The icy water thundered down through a lush, green, tropical oasis with the yellow savannah grasses and acacia trees whistling in the wind beyond. Beautiful. Picnic lunch on the rocks nearby. Tonga calling out to the birds. Them answering. Then back down the trail, back into the truck, and back down the dirt road. More kids running from the mud huts along the way to smile and wave “ta-tay, wazungu”. It was all like a dream until we got to the park gate where, stopping to check in with the guards, the doors to the vehicle were opened and the dreaded, biting black tsetse flies were let in, their wings buzzing and stingers stinging. One of them bit my arm! I swatted and killed it. Tonga screamed, “Poacher”. Funny. But all the ensuing jokes about me getting sleeping sickness and having maggots growing in my arm were not. Exhausted, we staggered back into camp for a much-needed shower and some rest under the safety of the mosquito nets. I should clarify that, as it was winter and nights were actually rather frigid, there were no mosquitoes, but the nets served to keep out the gummy centipedes and other critters that fell from the thatch roof and wiggled across the floor throughout the nights in the bungalow. I love nets!Next morning we said goodbye to Gorongosa and headed off with Francisco to Chimoio, about a two and a half hour drive to our west (and about an hour east of the Zimbabwe border). There we would stop for a brief lunch before driving another four hours north to Tete (which is about an hour south of the Malawi border). Allow me to remind my readers that Rory and I were tagging along with Dad as he was on business trips, checking out different agricultural and educational projects across the country. So, we were expected to be unobtrusive and to keep a low profile. Whining about being thirsty or hungry or needing a bathroom or having cramped legs in the back seat of a pick-up truck with negligible shock absorbers doesn’t get you far with a Navy Seal on a good day, let alone when he is doing business and you are meant to be grateful for getting a free ride from which to look out the window. OK? OK. So, we packed up our little travel cooler with juice boxes, fruit and whatever we could get our hands on, chugged some Dramamine and tried to find the delicate balance between drinking enough water so as not to get dehydrated and keel over in this dry, smoky part of the country but not drinking too much that we would have to ask for a pit stop. Telling my 86-year-old grandmother from Brookline, Massachusetts about this later she would exclaim with a gasp, “There wasn’t even a Howard Johnson’s along the way?”! No, Grinnie, no Howard Johnson’s. In fact, this part of the country is remote enough that there are no towns in between one city and the next, but still has enough huts strewn out along the highway that you wouldn’t have felt comfortable crouching down behind a bush either. Your best options were to ask a person for permission to use the bush toilet at their house or just hold it. After a couple of weeks of traveling this way, Rory and I were getting pretty good at both. I don’t know what the hell the men did. Not drink water, I guess.
In any case, Tete. For some reason, people kept apologizing when we told them where we were headed for this next leg of our vacation. Apparently, we were not headed for a luxurious resort town or a remote oasis of any kind. I have complained a bit about our traveling conditions, but, I have to give this to road trips: they do allow one to experience the gradual change in landscape and climate and, with that, the change in peoples’ lifestyles. Between Chimoio and Tete the land steadily went from green fields of baby corn, bananas and sesame and a backdrop of towering monoliths jutting out here and there from the plains to a dusty and crumbling flatland with nothing but the thick baobab trees and scrubby bushes breaking the horizon. The closer we got to Tete, in the grain-producing belt of Mozambique, the more we saw little groupings of huts with reed and stick walls and thatch roofs, each with their own little field of maize and a silo, beautifully made from woven grass and sticks and raised about a foot above the ground on stilts.
When we finally arrived in Tete itself, we found a city bursting at the seams. The mining industry is exploding in this area. Outside investors can’t seem to get their foot in fast enough, and people are flooding in from Malawi and across Mozambique for work in the mines. There is a relatively new bridge stretching across the Zambezi River here. It is one of only two crossings of the great waterway in the entire country. All of this is fantastic for the local economy! On the other hand, hotels are booked far ahead of time whether they are accommodating or not, whether they are nice or not, and whether they are exorbitantly expensive or … well, they just are.
By the time we finally arrived at our $100/night hotel, at least I was about ready to pass out (whether from exhaustion, hunger or some form of poisoning from a backed up bladder). Rory and I delicately made our way past the conglomeration of leering businessmen and miners who looked like they had been stuck out here far from their families and their women for quite some time, and quickly ducked into our room (that was unfortunately right next to the road), propping a chair against the locked door. An exaggerated precaution, I’m sure, but it made us feel more relaxed. We turned to our room only to find that the shower had no hot water (Rory cried), the beds were harder than anything I have ever had to camp on, and our bathroom had a damp and musty smell like how the bathroom on my grandfather’s ranch in Argentina used to smell after eight of us had been using it for a few weeks! At least dinner was a success at a small Italian place in town.
The following day, instead of going to visit the Cahora Bassa Dam, as most visitors to the area might have done (it is, after all, the fifth largest dam in the world), we tagged along with Dad the three hours up to Angonia. Situated high on a plateau northeast of Tete, it has a much cooler climate. Again, this brings about changes not only in the natural landscape and vegetation, but also in the manmade structures and the basic way of life. The little huts were now made with mud and clay walls under the thick shade of the mango trees, and each grouping, instead of having a silo and a maize field, now often had a small plot of tobacco and what I would describe as a shaded, open hallway where they would dry their harvest. It is a lovely area, but there was unfortunately no lodging available, so after another adventurous day of bush toilets and hours of road travel, we returned to Tete for another night of cold showers and rock-hard beds. Hoping that a good dinner could again redeem the town for me, we went down the street to Le Petit Café. No joy. The salad was mediocre and, worse than a bush toilet, I was forced to use the men’s room since the ladies’ room was out of order. Two men stood outside my stall whose door would not close so I had to extend one leg out straight to hold it shut while I balanced on the other, hovering over the cootie-ridden seat. By then I had graduated to master ninja warrior of bathrooms! Years of yoga and months of training in balance and meditation had culminated in this moment of great need! Tete was an experience, but I would be happy to head back to Chimoio the next day.The four-hour afternoon drive south to Chimoio is still a blur. I vaguely remember Rory making up songs about mattresses with no springs, bed sheets like sandpaper, shopping attendants who refuse to give you change, showers with no hot water, the fantastic fiber and antioxidant benefits of the malambe (the fruit of the Baobab which is sold all along the roadway in this part of the country), sweaty socks that stink like acid because they have no time to dry, and all of the hotel sinks that we had now scrubbed our underwear clean in. Meanwhile, my asthma was kicking in with a vengeance. In the Mozambican countryside there is tons of burning, not only for clearing fields for crops, but also as a way to scare dinner out of the bush and right into the hands of a hungry human. Most of the rural country remains as it was over a hundred years ago, with no electricity, heat, or indoor plumbing. As darkness settled in and we had not yet reached the city limits, the huts that we passed glowed from within as people set about lighting the nightly fire to heat and illuminate their home and to cook dinner over the burning embers. The combination of the dry air and the tremendous amount of smoke made the simple act of breathing an enormous challenge. Arriving at the hotel in Chimoio was a lifesaver!
The Castelo Branco Hotel was under construction, so our one hope of sleeping in vanished when the workers began their cacophony of banging and hammering at 7am. Not ones to waste a beautiful day, Rory and I headed out with Azeris and Arlette in search of the ‘pinturas rupestres’, the ancient rock paintings we had heard about that were supposed to be near the town of Manica, about a forty minute drive west of Chimoio, just 15 minutes from the border with Zimbabwe. Azeris proved himself to be an exceptional driver and a game adventurer. Arlette was not only the only person we could find who had some idea where the paintings were (she had grown up in the area and had once gone to see them for a school trip) but she was also one of the most outspoken and audacious Mozambican women we met on our entire trip. She chatted us up in Portuguese the whole way to the paintings telling us about the oil pipeline we were driving by, the company that owned all the pine and eucalyptus groves we were seeing, the river that runs red from the mercury and such coming off the mines further upstream, how after her divorce she had considered moving with her young daughter to live amongst the matrilineal tribes of the central Quelimane area (I’m sure by this time Azeris was feeling terribly outnumbered being the only man in the truck)- it was wonderful to see life in Mozambique through the eyes of this strong-willed young woman.
Time flew by and before we knew it we were in the small, colonial town of Manica. This place had once been the center of a great Shona or Karanga empire which was then split between the English (in Zimbabwe) and the Portuguese (in Mozambique). Despite the division, the people remained loyal to their ruler on the Zimbabwe side of the border and continued to share much of their lives with one another. Aspects of the Shona lifestyle can still be seen in the area. For instance, the outer walls of many of the mud huts are painted, often a pinkish or reddish color since natural dyes are used. Manica is now just a small border town, but it is quaint and clean. It is also home to the Vumba bottled water factory, our favorite in Mozambique. We eventually turned off the main road onto a bumpy little side track that started our ascent of the mountain. We stopped at the pink Shona hut of the local elder, a woman from whom Arlette said we needed to get permission before climbing the mountain. She lay outside on a mat, too sick and too old now to guide anyone up a mountainside, but for 50 meticais her daughter (who didn’t look much younger or sportier) would perform the ritual to the old spirits and show us the way up to the paintings. She advised Arlette in the local Chimanica language that we should keep an eye out for snakes and follow closely. Yes ma’am!
Half an hour later I had vowed never again to underestimate the “sportiness” of a rugged, elderly Mozambican woman. We arrived at the top of the slippery dirt path sweaty and out of breath, to find a massive rock wall facing out, overlooking the valley below. Here, beneath the shade of some great big acacia trees were the ‘pinturas rupestres’, somewhat faded from exposure to rain and sun, but we were still able to distinguish the hunting scene: red human figures, many with spears, surrounding what appeared to be two kudu. Nobody was too sure exactly how old they were or who had made them. Maybe the medicine woman herself had come up with this brilliant plot, maybe Pinky and the Brain, maybe the ancestors of the local Shona tribe way back before the Portuguese or the English or the Arabs ever ventured this far inland. In any case, I was glad to have experienced them.
Our plan had originally been to head back for some more ‘civilized’ sight-seeing and some drinks at a nice little hotel/restaurant on the lakeshore by the Chicamba Real Dam before heading back into Chimoio to see the nearby Monte Cabeça do Velho (like New Hampshire’s Old Man on the Mountain). But, after all of our crazy trekking around, it was 14:00 and we were supposed to return the truck by 15:00. So we sped back to town on the highway, passed two big truck accidents (scary), passed the closed down textile factory in Chimoio, passed the Coca Cola factory that has laid off the majority of its employees, passed all of the unemployed dudes hanging out in the shade of the trees, passed the Praça dos Heróis and into our hotel… only to find out that Dad’s business conference had been postponed and we could have stayed out playing longer. Sigh. Oh well! Hakuna matata. We made our way past the central market next door and around the corner to Vapor for some exquisitely refreshing guacamole salad (when you order they hop over to the market to buy everything fresh) and rosemary ciabatta bread. Rejuvenated, we headed back for the hotel around 16:00. As we passed the market that Thursday afternoon we were fortunate to catch something that is apparently not all that uncommon: several of the women vendors had gathered and were feeling in high spirits. They flipped over some plastic tubs, found some sticks to beat their improvised drums with, and had a dance-off. It was fantastic! Two women would leap into the circle and start to dance around. The drums would get faster. Louder. The women jumped higher, pouncing with two feet, dust billowing around them, until one of them somehow decided she was the winner and would signal the other one out of the circle. Although there were men all around and many stopped to watch, none dared to approach or interrupt this display of feminine power. That was one of my safest-feeling moments in Mozambique (I’m sure I was never in any danger whatsoever, but, as I have said several times before, I am a coward).
That evening another adventure awaited us: a nighttime drive back to Beira. We met up with Dad and Stefano, an Italian guy who has been living in Africa for something like twenty years, many of those in Mozambique, and reminds me of one of my uncles in Argentina, with his hands flying everywhere as he speaks excitedly, a cigarette hanging half-way out of his mouth. We hitched a ride in Stefano’s trusty old tank of a Land Cruiser. That night the vehicle was not its trusty self - its lights kept flickering as we hit bumps in the road, and the high beams were on strike, refusing to illuminate the darkness ahead (keep in mind there are no street lights), making it nearly impossible to see the meteoric potholes in the highway. Many trucks, buses and cars don’t have functioning lights and there is always the danger of people or animals crossing in the dark, so it is generally a good idea to stay off the roads at night in Mozambique. That night we did not have a choice, though. Fortunately, it led to one of my favorite memories of the trip. I will never forget Rory and I strapped nervously in to the back seat, hands over our mouths trying not to burst out laughing at the image of Stefano hunched over the steering wheel like an old lady, peering off into the dark with one hand over his eyes, singing along with Tina Turner (she seems to be big with expats worldwide) in his thick Italian accent “dancah fo mah-ney, I do what you wan me to doooo”, maneuvering his way down the obstacle course of a highway through the African night. There must be a Master Card commercial in there somewhere- that’s Priceless!
Safely in Beira, we enjoyed a light dinner on the beach at the Club Nautico before heading back to the Jardim das Velas for an early night. Tomorrow we would be off to the north. I was looking forward to some fresh, salty, smoke-free, beach air. And getting out of the back of the truck!
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